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

by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay

When the wages of the workman rise, he Everywhere takes out, if we may so express ourselves, some portion of the rise in the form of repose. This is the real explanation of that unsteadiness on which Major Moody dwells so much—an unsteadiness which cannot surprise any person who has ever talked with an English manufacturer, or ever heard the name of Saint Monday. It appears by his own report, that a negro slave works from Monday morning to Saturday night on the sugar grounds of Tortola, and receives what is equivalent to something less than half-a-crown in return, then he ceases to be a slave, and becomes his own master; and then he finds that by cutting firewood, an employment which requires no great skill, he can earn eight shillings and fourpence a week. By working every other day he can procure better food and better clothes than ever he had before. In no country from the Pole to the Equator, would a labourer under such circumstances work steadily. The Major considers it as a strange phenomenon, peculiar to the torrid zone, that these people lay up little against seasons of sickness and distress—as if this were not almost universally the case among the far more intelligent population of England—as if we did not regularly see our artisans thronging to the alehouse when wages are high, and to the pawnbroker’s shop when they are low—as if we were not annually raising millions, in order to save the working classes from the misery which otherwise would be the consequence of their own improvidence.

We are not the advocates of idleness and imprudence. The question before us is, not whether it be desirable that men all over the world should labour more steadily than they now do; but whether the laws which regulate labour within the tropics differ from those which are in operation elsewhere. This is a question which never can be settled, merely by comparing the quantity of work done in different places. By pursuing such a course, we should establish a separate law of labour for every country, and for every trade in every country. The free African does not work so steadily as the Englishman. But the wild Indian, by the Major’s own account, works still less steadily than the African. The Chinese labourer, on the other hand, works more steadily than the Englishman. In this island, the industry of the porter or the waterman, is less steady than the industry of the ploughman. But the great general principle is the same in all. All will work extremely hard rather than miss the comforts to which they have been habituated; and all, when they find it possible to obtain their accustomed comforts with less than their accustomed labour, will not work so hard as they formerly worked, merely to increase them. The real point to be ascertained, therefore, is, whether the free African is content to miss his usual enjoyments, not whether he works steadily or not; for the Chinese peasant would work as irregularly as the Englishman, and the Englishman as irregularly as the negro, if this could be done without any diminution of comforts. Now, it does not appear from any passage in the v hole Report, that the free blacks are retrograding in their mode of living. It appears on the contrary, that their work, however irregular, does in fact enable them to live more comfortably than they ever did as slaves. The unsteadiness, therefore, of which they are accused, if it be an argument for coercing them, is equally an argument for coercing the spinners of Manchester and the grinders of Sheffield.

The next ease which we shall notice is, that of the native Indians within the tropics. That these savages have a great aversion to steady labour, and that they have made scarcely any advances toward civilization we readily admit. Major Moody speaks on this subject with authority; for it seems that, when he visited one of their tribes, they forgot to boil the pot for him, and put him off with a speech, which he has reported at length, instead of a meal.1 He, as usual, attributes their habits to the heat of the climate. But let us consider that the Indians of North America, with much greater advantages, live in the same manner. A most enlightened and prosperous community has arisen in their vicinity. Many benevolent men have attempted to correct their roving propensities, and to inspire them with a taste for those comforts which industry alone can procure. They still obstinately adhere to their old mode of life. The independence, the strong excitement, the occasional periods of intense exertion, the long intervals of repose, have become delightful and almost necessary to them. It is well known that Europeans, who have lived among them for any length of time, are strangely fascinated by the pleasures of that state of society, and even by its sufferings and hazards. Among ourselves, the Gypsey race, one of the most beautiful and intelligent on the face of the earth, has lived for centuries in a similar manner. Those singular outcasts have been surrounded on every side by the great works of human labour. The advantage’s of industry were forced upon their notice. The roads on which they travelled, the hedges under which they rested, the hen-roosts which furnished their repast, the silver which crossed their palms—all must have constantly reminded them of the conveniences and luxuries which are to be obtained by steady exertion. They were persecuted under a thousand pretexts, whipped for vagrants, imprisoned for poachers, ducked for witches. The severest laws were enacted against them. To consort with them was long a capital offence. Yet a remnant of the race still preserves its peculiar language and manners—still prefers a tattered tent and a chance-meal of carrion to a warm house and a comfortable dinner. If the habits of the Indians of Guiana prove that slavery is necessary within the tropics, the habits of the Mohawks and Gypsies will equally prove, that it is necessary in the temperate zone. The heat cannot be the cause of that which is found alike in the coldest and in the hottest countries.

Major Moody gives a long account of the Maroon settlements near Surinam. These settlements were first formed by slaves, who fled from the plantations on the coast, about the year 1667. The society was, during the following century, augmented from time to time by fresh reinforcements of fugitive negroes. This supply, however, has now been for many years stopped. It is perfectly true, that these people were long contented with a bare subsistence, and that little of steady agricultural industry has ever existed amongst them. The Major again recurs to physical causes, and the heat of the sun. A better explanation may be given in one word, insecurity. During about one hundred years, the Maroons were absolutely run down like mad dogs. It appears from the work of Captain Stedman, to which the Major himself alludes, that those who fell into the hands of the whites were hung up by hooks thrust into their ribs, torn to pieces on the rack, or roasted on slow fires. They attempted to avoid the danger, by frequently changing, and carefully concealing their residence. The accidental crowing of a cock, had brought destruction on a whole tribe. That a people thus situated should labour to acquire property which they could not enjoy—that they should engage in employments which would necessarily attach them to a particular spot, was not to be expected. Their habits necessarily became irregular and ferocious. They plundered the colony—they plundered each other—they lived by hunting and fishing. The only productions of the earth which they cultivated, were such as could be speedily reared, and easily concealed. But during the last fifty years, these tribes have enjoyed a greater degree of security; and from the statement of Major Moody, who has himself visited that country, and who, though a wretched logician, is an unexceptionable witness, it appears, that they are rapidly advancing in civilization; that they have acquired a sense of new wants, and a relish for new pleasures; that agriculture has taken a more regular form; and that the vices and miseries of savage life are disappearing together.

“The young men among the Maroons acknowledged, that the conduct of the chiefs had become much better, in respect of not interfering with the wives of others, and that everybody now could have his own wife.”.......

“I observed, that they had adopted the system of sometimes domesticating wild animals, and rearing those already domesticated for food; that instead of always boucaning their meats, like the Indians, they now often used salt when they could get it; and, finally, that instead of depending on the forests for fruits, or cultivating roots which were soon reaped, and conld easily be concealed, they had generally adopted the banana and plantain as a food, which requires about twelve months to produce its fruits, and the tree obtains a considerable height.”....

“I also found, that a certain degree of occasional industry had taken place among the Maroons. Some of these young men had devoted a few days in the year to cutting down trees which nature had planted. From such occasional labour they were enabled to procure finery for a favourite female, a better, gun, or a new axe.”

Surely this statement is most encouraging. No sooner was security given to these Maroons, than improvement commenced. A single generation has sufficed to change these hunters into cultivators of the earth, to teach them the use of domestic animals, to awaken among them a taste for the luxuries and distinctions of polished societies. That their labour is still only occasional, we grant. But this, we cannot too often repeat, is not the question. If occasional labour will supply the inhabitant of the temperate zone with comforts greater than those to which he is accustomed, he will labour only occasionally. These negroes are not only willing to work rather than forego their usual comforts, but are also willing to make some addition to their labour, for the sake of some addition to their comforts. Nothing more can be said for the labourers of any country. The principle which has made England and Holland what they are, is evidently at work in the thickets of Surinam.

That the habits of the fugitives were altogether idle and irregular till within the last fifty years, is nothing to the purpose. How much of regular industry was formerly to be found among the outlawed moss-troopers of our Border, or in the proscribed elan of the Macgregors? Down to a very late period, a large part of the Scotch people were as averse to steady industry as any tribe of Maroons. In the year 1698, Fletcher of Saltonn called the attention of the Scottish Parliament to this horrible evil. “This country,” says he, “has always swarmed with such numbers of idle vagabonds as no laws could ever restrain. There are at this day in Scotland two hundred thousand people begging from door to door, living without any regard or subjection to the laws of the land, or to even those of God and nature. No magistrate could ever discover or be informed which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptised.” He advises the Government to set them to work; but he strongly represents the difficulty of such an undertaking. That sort of people is so desperately wicked, such enemies of all work and labour, and, which is yet more amazing, so proud in esteeming their own condition above that which they will be sure to call slavery, that, unless prevented by the utmost industry and diligence, upon the first publication of any orders for putting in execution such a design, they will rather die with hunger in caves and dens, and murder their young children. Fletcher was a brave, honest, and sensible man. He had fought and suffered for liberty. Yet the circumstances of his country shook his faith in the true principles of government. He looked with dismay on the mountains occupied by lawless chiefs and their gangs, and the lowlands cursed by the depredations of some plunderers and the protection of others. Everywhere he saw swarms of robbers and beggars. He contrasted this desolate prospect with the spectacle which Holland presented, the miracles which human industry had there achieved, a country rescued from the ocean, vast and splendid cities, ports crowded with ships, meadows cultivated to the highest point, canals along which hundreds of boats were constantly passing, mercantile houses of which the daily payments exceeded the whole rental of the Highlands, an immense population whose habits were sober and laborious, and who acquired their comforts, not by injuring, but by benefiting their neighbours. He did not sufficiently consider that this state of things sprung from the wisdom and vigour of a government, which insured to every man the fruits of his exertions, and protected equally the pleasures of every class, from the pipe of the mechanic to the picture-gallery and the tulip-garden of the Burgomaster;—that in Scotland, on the contrary, the police was feeble, and the gentry rich in men and destitute of money; that robbery was in consequence common; that people will not build barns to be burned, or rear cattle to be lifted; that insecurity produced idleness, and idleness crimes, that these crimes again augmented the insecurity from which they had sprung. He overlooked these circumstances, and attributed the evil to the want of coercion. He censured the wreak humanity of those fathers of the church who had represented slavery as inconsistent with Christianity. He cited those texts with which the controversies of our own times have rendered us so familiar. Finally, he proposed to convert the lower classes into domestic bondsmen. His arguments were at least as plausible as those of Major Moody. But how signally has the event refuted them! Slavery was not established in Scotland. On the contrary, the changes which have taken place there have been favourable to personal liberty. The power of the chiefs has been destroyed. Security has been given to the capitalist and to the labourer. Could Fletcher now revisit Scotland, he would find a country which might well bear a comparison with his favourite Holland.

The History of the Maroons of Surinam appears to us strictly analogous to that of the Scottish peasantry. In both cases insecurity produced idleness. In both security produces industry. The African community indeed, in the middle of the last century was far more barbarous than any part of the Scotch nation has ever been since the dawn of authentic history. Not one of the fugitives had ever been taught to read and write. The traces of civilization which they brought from the colony were very slight, and were soon effaced by the habits of a lawless and perilous life. Of late, however, their progress has been rapid. Judging of the future by the past, we entertain a strong hope that they will soon form a flourishing and respectable society. At all events, we are sure that their condition affords no ground for believing that the labourer, within the tropics, acts on principles different from those which regulate his conduct elsewhere.