The foregoing are sufficient to convey to the reader some idea of the ban of pains and penalties under which a resident is placed; at the same time it may be as well to inform him, that, except those enactments which bear upon espionage, they are about as much attended to as the laws with regard to the introduction of slaves, respecting which latter I will now give you a few of the regulations.
Slave owners are bound to give their slaves three meals a-day, and the substance thereof must be eleven ounces of meat or salt-fish, four ounces of bread, and farinaceous vegetables equal to six plantains; besides this, they are bound to give them two suits of clothes—all specified—yearly. Alas! how appropriate is the slang phrase "Don't you wish you may get 'em?" So beautifully motherly is Spain regarding her slaves, that the very substance of infants' clothes under three years of age is prescribed; another substance from three to six; then comes an injunction that from six to fourteen the girls are to be shirted and the boys breeched. I am sure this super-parental solicitude upon the part of the Government must be admitted to be most touching. By another regulation, the working time is limited from nine to ten hours daily, except in the harvest or sugar season, during which time the working hours are eighteen a-day. No slave under sixteen or over sixty can be employed on task-work, or at any age at a work not suited to his or her strength and sex.
Old slaves must be kept by their master, and cannot be freed for the purpose of getting rid of the support of them. Upon a plantation, the houses must be built on a dry position, well ventilated, and the sexes kept apart, and a proper hospital provided for them. By another law, marriage is inculcated on moral grounds, and the master of the slave is required to purchase the wife, so that they may both be under one roof; if he declines the honour, then the owner of the wife is to purchase the husband; and if that fails, a third party is to buy both: failing all these efforts, the law appears non-plused, and leaves their fate to Providence. If the wife has any children under three years of age, they must be sold with her. The law can compel an owner to sell any slave upon whom he may be proved to have exercised cruelty; should any party offer him the price he demands, he may close the bargain at once, but if they do not agree, his value is to be appraised by two arbiters, one chosen by each party, and if either decline naming an arbiter, a law officer acts ex officio. Any slave producing fifty dollars (ten pounds) as a portion of his ransom-money, the master is obliged to fix a price upon him, at which his ransom may be purchased; he then becomes a coartado, and whatever sums he can save his master is bound to receive in part payment, and, should he be sold, the price must not exceed the price originally named, after subtracting therefrom the amount he has advanced for his ransom. Each successive purchaser must buy him subject to these conditions. In all disputes as to original price or completion of the ransom, the Government appoints a law officer on behalf of the slave. The punishments of the slave are imprisonment, stocks, &c.; when the lash is used, the number of stripes is limited to twenty-five.
The few regulations I have quoted are sufficient to show how carefully the law has fenced-in the slave from bad treatment. I believe the laws of no other country in regard to slaves are so merciful, excepting always Peru; but, alas! though the law is as fair as the outside of the whited sepulchre, the practice is as foul as the inside thereof; nor can one ever expect that it should be otherwise, when we see that, following the example of the treaty-breaking, slave-importing Queen Mother, every official, from the highest government authority down to the lowest petty custom-house officer, exposes his honesty daily in the dirty market of bribery.
A short summary of the increase of slave population may be interesting, as showing that the charges made against the Cubans of only keeping up the numbers of the slaves by importation is not quite correct. In the year 1835 a treaty was made with Spain, renewing the abolition of slave traffic, to which she had assented in 1817 by words which her subsequent deeds belied. At this latter date, the slave population amounted to 290,000, since which period she has proved the value of plighted faith by introducing upwards of 100,000 slaves, which would bring the total up to 390,000. The present slave population, I have before remarked, amounts to 600,000, which would give as the increase by births during nearly twenty years, 210,000. If we take into consideration the ravages of epidemics, and the serious additional labour caused by the long duration of the sugar harvest, we may fairly conclude, as far as increase by birth is admitted as evidence, that the treatment of slaves in Cuba will stand comparison with that of the slave in the United States, especially when it is borne in mind that the addition of slave territory in the latter has made the breeding of slaves a regular business.
The increase of the produce of Cuba may very naturally be ascribed to the augmentation of slave labour, and to the improvements in machinery; but there is another cause which is very apt to be overlooked, though I think there can be no doubt it has exercised the most powerful influence in producing that result: I allude to the comparative monopoly of the sugar trade, which the events of late years have thrown into her hands.
When England manumitted the 750,000 slaves in the neighbouring islands, the natural law of reaction came into play, and the negro who had been forced to work hard, now chose to take his ease, and his absolute necessities were all that he cared to supply: a little labour sufficed for that, and he consequently became in his turn almost the master. The black population, unprepared in any way for the sudden change, became day by day more idle and vicious, the taxes of the islands increased, and the circulation issued by the banks decreased in an equally fearful ratio. When sugar the produce of slave labour was admitted into England, a short time after the emancipation, upon the same terms as the produce of the free islands, as a natural consequence, the latter, who could only command labour at high wages and for uncertain time, were totally unable to compete with the cheap labour and long hours of work in Cuba; nearly every proprietor in our West India colonies feel into deep distress,—some became totally ruined. One property which had cost 118,000l., so totally lost its value, owing to these changes in the law, that its price fell to 16,000l. In Demerara, the sugar produce sank from 104,000,000 lbs. to 61,000,000 lbs., and coffee from 9,000,000 lbs. to 91,000 lbs., while 1,500,000 lbs. of cotton disappeared entirely.
These are no fictions, they are plain facts, borne testimony to in many instances by the governors of the colonies; and I might quote an infinite number of similar statements, all tending to prove the rapid growth of idleness and vice in the emancipated slaves, and the equally rapid ruin of the unfortunate proprietor. The principles upon which we legislated when removing the sugar duties is a mystery to me, unless I accept the solution, so degrading to the nation, "that humanity is a secondary consideration to £ s.d., and that justice goes for nothing." If such were not the principles on which we legislated, there never was a more complete failure. Not content with demoralizing the slave and ruining the owner, by our hasty and ill-matured plan of emancipation, we gave the latter a dirty kick when he was falling, by removing the little protection we had all put pledged our national faith that he should retain; and thus it was we threw nearly the whole West India sugar trade into the hands of Cuba, stimulating her energy, increasing her produce, and clinching the fetters of the slave with that hardest holding of all rivets—the doubled value of his labour.
Perhaps my reader may say I am taking a party and political view of the question. I repudiate the charge in toto: I have nothing to do with politics: I merely state facts, which I consider it requisite should be brought forward, in order that the increase of Cuban produce may not be attributed to erroneous causes. For this purpose it was necessary to show that the ruin we have brought upon the free West Indian colonies is the chief cause of the increased and increasing prosperity of their slave rival; at the same time, it is but just to remark, that the establishment of many American houses in Cuba has doubtless had some effect in adding to the commercial activity of the island.
I have, in the preceding pages, shown the retrogression of some parts of the West Indies, since the passing of the Emancipation and Sugar-Duty Acts. Let me now take a cursory view of the progression of Cuba during the same period.—Annual produce—