M. de Tocqueville, who has judged America with so sure an eye, has been, notwithstanding, mistaken upon some points; his warmest admirers must admit it. Writing at an epoch when the great results of English emancipation had not yet been produced, he was led to frame that formidable judgment of which so much advantage has been taken: "Hitherto, wherever the whites have been the more powerful, they have held the negroes in degradation and slavery; wherever the negroes have been the more powerful, they have destroyed the whites. This is the only account which can ever be opened between the two races."
Another account is opened, thank God, and no one will rejoice at it more sincerely than M. de Tocqueville—he who is so generous, and whose abolition sentiments are certainly no mystery to any of his colleagues of the Chamber. But his opinion remains in his book, and every one repeats after him, that the blacks and the whites cannot live together on the same soil, unless the latter be subject to the former.
I repeat, that at the time at which he wrote, he had reason, or at least known facts gave him reason, to say this; the liberty of the blacks had then but one name—St. Domingo. To-day, the victories of Christian emancipation have come, to contrast with the catastrophes provoked by impenitent despotism.
The English Colonies bear a striking analogy to the Southern States of the Union. The blacks there are numerous, more numerous even in proportion to the whites than in the Carolinas or Florida. The climate is even more scorching, and the cultures demand still more imperiously the labor of the blacks. As to the prejudices of the masters, I dare affirm that the planters of the Continent and those of the Antilles have not long had any thing with which to reproach each other. Notwithstanding, what has happened in the Antilles? Not only has liberty been proclaimed—this was the act of the metropolis—but the coexistence of races has subsisted. It is to this point that I claim attention. They, the whites and the blacks, alike free, invested with the same privileges, exercising the same rights, encountering each other in the ranks of the militia, in the magistracy, and even in the seats of the colonial assemblies, admirably accept this life in common. And the whites there, observe, are Anglo-Saxons; that is, they belong to that race which is declared incapable of enduring free blacks in its neighborhood.
It is necessary to appeal sometimes from those axioms so boldly laid down, which serve us to make inflexible laws for that which must be subject in an infinite measure to the mobility of circumstances and influences. The influence of the Gospel, especially, is a fact, the scope of which is never sufficiently measured. It has created in the Antilles a negro population which maintains its equality face to face with the whites, yet which does not entirely reject their patronage; a dependent population which is also a free population, free in the most absolute sense of the word. The blacks of the Antilles labor on the plantations, and secure the success of large plantations; but, at the same time, they themselves become landholders, forming by degrees one of the happiest and most remarkable classes of peasants that ever existed. Their little fields, their pretty villages, manifest real prosperity; and there is something among them that is worth more than prosperity, there is moral progress, the development of intellect, and the elevation of souls.
It will be demanded of us if, in the midst of so much progress, the production of sugar has not suffered. I answer that, on the contrary, it has increased. It had been predicted that emancipation would be a death-blow to the British colonies. I suspect that many people are even yet persuaded of it; now, in spite of the faults committed by the planters, who have neglected nothing to disgust the negroes with labor and to drive them from their old mills, they are found to return to them, contenting themselves with wages that scarcely rise above an average of a shilling a day. If we compare the two last censuses of liberty with the two last years of slavery, we shall discover that the total production of sugar has increased in the colonies in which emancipation was effected in 1834. And they have not only had to endure this crisis of emancipation, but also another crisis still more formidable, that of the sudden introduction of free trade in 1834. The colonial sugars, exposed to competition with the sugar produced at Havana and elsewhere by slave labor, experienced a prodigious decline. There was cause to believe that the production was about to be destroyed; it has risen again, notwithstanding, and the English Antilles, with their free negroes and their unprotected sugar, forced to face entire liberty in all its forms, import to-day into the metropolis nearly a million more hogsheads than at the moment when the crisis of free trade broke forth.
Liberty works miracles. We always distrust her, and she replies to our suspicions by benefits. The English Antilles, which, during the last thirty years, have had to surmount, besides the two crises of emancipation and free trade, the earthquake of 1840 and six consecutive years of drought; the English Antilles, which have had to liquidate their old debts, and to repair the ruin accruing from the failure of the bank of Jamaica, are now in an attitude which proves that they have no fears for the future and scarcely regret the past.
Under slavery, the Antilles were hastening to their ruin; with liberty, they have become one of the richest channels of exportation which England possesses; under slavery, they could not have supported the shock of free trade; with liberty, they have gained this new battle: such are the net proceeds of experience. If we still have doubts, let us compare Dutch Guiana, which holds slaves, to English Guiana, which has emancipated them. The resources of these two countries are almost equal; English Guiana is progressing, while the cultures of Surinam are forsaken; three-fourths of its plantations are already abandoned, and the rest will follow.
But the question of profits and losses is not the only one here, I think, and after having computed the proceeds of sugar, after having shown that in this respect English emancipation is in rule, it is allowable to mention also another kind of result. Look at these pretty cottages, this neat and almost elegant furniture, these gardens, this general air of comfort and civilization; question these blacks, whose physical appearance has become modified already under the influence of liberty, these blacks, who decreased rapidly in numbers during the epoch of slavery, and who have begun to increase, on the contrary, since their affranchisement; they will tell us that they are happy. Some have become landowners, and labor on their own account, (this is not a crime, I imagine;) others unite to strengthen large plantations, or perhaps to carry to the works of rich planters the canes gathered by them on their own grounds; some are merchants, many hire themselves out as farmers. Whatever may be the faults of some individuals, the ensemble of free negroes has merited the testimony rendered in 1857 by the Governor of Tobago: "I deny that our blacks of the country are of indolent habits. So industrious a class of inhabitants does not exist in the world."
An admirable spectacle, and one which the history of mankind presents to us too rarely, is that of a degraded population elevating itself more and more, and placing itself on a level with those who before despised it. Concubinage, so general in times of servitude as to give rise to the famous axiom, "Negroes abhor marriage," is now replaced by regular unions. In becoming free, the negroes have learned to respect themselves: the unanimous reports of the governors mark the progress of their habits of sobriety. Crimes have greatly diminished among them. They are polite and well brought up, falling even into the excess of exaggerated courtesy. They respect the aged: if an old man passes through the streets, the children rise and cease their play.