EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES A BLESSING, AND NOT A FAILURE.
Letter to a Public Meeting at Framingham, Massachusetts, July 30, 1860.
Boston, July 30, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR,—If I forego the opportunity which you offer me of uniting with the earnest Abolitionists of Massachusetts in celebrating the anniversary of Emancipation in the British Islands of the West Indies, I pray you not to believe me insensible to the magnanimous teachings of that day,—destined, I doubt not, as men advance in virtue, to take its place yet more and more among the great days of History.
Nothing shows the desperate mendacity of the partisans of Slavery more than the unfounded persistence with which they call this act “a failure.” If it be a failure, then is virtue a failure, then is justice a failure, then is humanity a failure, then is God himself a failure; for virtue, justice, humanity, and God himself are all represented in this act.
Well-proved facts vindicate completely the policy of Emancipation, even if it were not commanded by the simplest rules of morality. All testimony, whether from official documents or from travellers, shows, beyond question, that in these islands the condition of the negro is improved by emancipation; but this testimony is especially instructive, when we learn that the improvement is most strongly manifest in those who have been born in Freedom. Ask any person familiar with these islands,—as I have often done,—or consult any unprejudiced authority, and such will be the answer. This alone is enough to vindicate the act. Moreover, it is enough, if men are raised in the scale of being, even though sugar perishes from the earth.
But careful statistics attest that the material interests of these possessions share the improvement of the population. In some of the islands, as in Barbadoes and Antigua, the advance is conspicuous, while in Jamaica itself, which is the instance most constantly cited of “failure,” the evidence is unanswerable, that the derangement of affairs cannot be charged upon Emancipation, but is a natural incident to the anomalous condition of that island throughout its history, aggravated by insane pretensions of the Slave-Masters. Two different Governors of this island[165] have assured me, that, with all their experience there, they looked upon Emancipation as a “blessing.” Thus is it shown that the true policy of this world is found in justice. Nothing is truer than that injustice, beside its essential wickedness, is folly also. The unjust man is a fool.
Only recently important testimony on this subject has found place, where it would be hardly expected, in the columns of the “New York Times”; and similar testimony occurs in other quarters, both in England and America. And yet, with the truth flashing in their faces, our Slave-Masters misrepresent the sublime and beautiful act as a “failure”! This, however, is of a piece with their whole conduct.