Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 6 / With a Memoir and Index

by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay

We really stand aghast at the extravagance of a writer who supposes that the principle which leads a man to prefer light labour and twenty-one pounds, to hard labour and six Bounds fifteen shillings, is a principle of which the operation is confined to the torrid zone! But the matter may be put on a very short issue. Let Major Moody find any tropical country in which the inhabitants prefer mechanical trades to field labour when higher advantages are offered to the field labourer than to the mechanic. He will then have done what he has not done hitherto. He will have adduced one fact bearing on the question.

If the circumstances which we have been considering prove any thing, they appear to prove the inexpediency of the coercive system. The effect of that system in the West Indies has been to produce a glut of agricultural labour, and a scarcity of mechanical dexterity. The discipline of a plantation may stimulate a sluggish body; but it has no tendency to stimulate a sluggish mind. It calls forth a certain quantity of muscular exertion; but it does not encourage that ingenuity which is necessary to the artisan. This is the only explanation which at present occurs to us of the enormous price which skilled labour fetches in a country in which the cultivator can barely obtain a subsistence. We offer it, however, with diffidence, as the result of a very hasty consideration of the subject. But it is with no feeling of diffidence that we pronounce the whole argument of the Major absurd. That he has convinced himself we do not doubt. Indeed he has given the best proof of sincerity: For he has acted up to his theory; and left us, we must confess, in some doubt whether to admire him more as an active or as a speculative politician.

Many of the African apprentices emigrated from Tortola to the Danish island of St. Thomas, some with the consent of their masters, and others without it. Why they did so, is evident from the account which the Major himself gives. The wages were higher in St. Thomas than in Tortola. But such theorists as the Major are subject to illusions as strange as those which haunted Don Quixote. To the visionary Knight every inn was a castle, every ass a charger, and every basin a helmet. To the Major every fact, though explicable on ten thousand obvious suppositions, is a confirmation of his darling hypothesis. He gives the following account of his opinions and of his consequent measures.

“The occupations followed by the apprentices in the Danish island of St. Thomas, on these occasions were generally the irregular and occasional industry of porters, servants on hoard vessels, &e., in which they often got comparatively high wages, which enabled them to work for money at one time in order to live, without working for a longer or shorter period; such a mode of existence being more agreeable to them than steady and regular industry affording employment during the whole year.

“From this irregular application to certain kinds of labour and dislike to that of agriculture, it was my wish to turn the attention of the African apprentices, and therefore I was anxious to prevent their running away to the Danish island of St. Thomas, or being sent there. His Excellency Governor Van Seholton afforded me every facility in removing them; but they soon returned again. It will also be seen that in St. Thomas they were liable to be taken up and sold as slaves, it was actually the case with one apprentice. It is not undeserving of remark, that not one of the apprentices who thus withdrew themselves from Tortola, ever hired themselves to agricultural labor for any fixed period.”

“The occasional high wages in irregular kinds of industry, however uncertain, appear to have pleased them belter than the permanent rewards procured by an employment less exposed to uncertainty, but which required a steady exertion.”

What the permanent rewards of agricultural labour were in Tortola, we have seen. The planter would have found it ruinous on most estates to give more than six pounds fifteen shillings a year, or about fourpence a day. Unless, therefore, they were much higher in St. Thomas, it is surely not extraordinary that they did not induce these apprentices to quit the employments to which, not by their own choice, but by the orders of the Government, they had been trained, for a pursuit uncongenial to all their habits. How often is it that an Englishman, who has served his apprenticeship to an artisan, hires himself to agricultural labour when he can find work in his own line?

But we will pass by the absurdity of condemning people for preferring high wages with little labour, to low wages with severe labour. We have other objections to make. The Major has told us that the African apprentices could not legally be employed in agriculture on the island of Tortola. If so, we wish to know how their dislike of agricultural labour could be their motive for quitting Tortola, or how, by bringing them back to Tortola, he could improve their habits in that respect? To bring a man by main force from a residence which he likes, and to place him in the hands of an employer acknowledged to be cruel, for fear that he may possibly be made a slave, seems to us also a somewhat curious proceeding, and deserves notice, as being the only indication of zeal for liberty which the Major appears to have betrayed during the whole course of his mission.

The Major might perhaps be justified in exerting himself to recover those apprentices who had emigrated without the consent of their masters. But with regard to the rest, his conduct appears to have been equally absurd and mischievous. He repeatedly tells us that Tortola is a poor island. It appears from the schedules, that he was in the habit of asking the masters and mistresses, whether their apprentices, after the term of service should have expired, would be able to support themselves. In the ease of some most respectable and industrious workmen, the answer was, that they possessed all the qualifications which would enable them to earn a livelihood; but that Tortola was too poor to afford them an adequate field: And this was evidently the cause which induced so many to transport themselves to St. Thomas. Of all the innumerable instances in which public, functionaries have exposed their ignorance by officiously meddling with matters of which individuals ought to be left to judge for themselves, we remember none more conspicuous than that which Major Moody has thus recorded against himself.

But it seems the industry of these emigrants, and indeed of the free Blacks generally, is not regular or steady. These are words of which Major Moody is particularly fond, and which he generally honours with Italics. We have, throughout this article, taken the facts as he states them, and contented ourselves with exposing the absurdity of his inferences. We shall do so now. We will grant that the free blacks do not work so steadily as the slaves, or as the labourers in many other countries. But how does Major Moody connect this unsteadiness with the climate? To us it appears to be the universal effect of an advance in wages, an effeet not confined to tropical countries, but daily and hourly witnessed in England by every man who attends to the habits of the lower orders. Let us suppose, that an English manufacturer can provide himself with those indulgences which use has rendered necessary to his comfort for ten shillings a week, and that he ean earn ten shillings a week by working steadily twelve hours a day. In that case, he will probably work twelve hours a day. But let us suppose that the wages of his labour rise to thirty shillings. Will he still continue to work twelve hours a day, for the purpose of trebling his present enjoyments, or of laying up a hoard against bad tunes? Notoriously not. He will perhaps work four days in the week, and thus earn twenty shillings, a sum larger than that whieh he formerly obtained, but less than that which he might obtain if he chose to labour as he formerly laboured.