The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign / Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished

by Henry Charles Carey

The phraseology of the two is different, but the object is the same—that of rendering it necessary to send all the raw products of the land to a market far distant, and thus depriving the farmer or planter of the power to return any portion of the loan made to him by the earth, and which she is always willing to renew, on the simple condition that when the borrower has used it, he shall return to the lender the elements of which it had been composed.

CHAPTER IX.

HOW SLAVERY GREW, AND HOW IT IS NOW MAINTAINED, IN THE WEST INDIES.

The system described in the last chapter was fully carried out in the West India colonies. Manufactures were so entirely interdicted from the date of their coming under the crown of Great Britain, that the colonists were not permitted even to refine their own sugar, and still less to convert their cotton into cloth. The necessary consequence was that women and children could have no employment but that of the field. This, of course, tended to sink both mother and child far lower in the scale of civilization than would have been the case had the lighter labour of conversion been associated with the more severe one of production. The next effect was, that as all were bound to remain producers of raw commodities, there could be no markets at hand, and no exchanges could be made except at a distance of thousands of miles. Difficulties, too, arose in regard to the diversification of labour, even in agriculture itself. Indigo was tried, but of the price for which it sold in England so large a portion was absorbed by ship-owners, commission merchants, and the government, that its culture was abandoned. Coffee, was extensively introduced, and as it grows on higher and more salubrious lands its cultivation would have been of great advantage to the community; but here, as in the case of indigo, so small a portion of the price for which it sold was received by the producer that its production was about being abandoned, and was saved only by the government agreeing to reduce its claim to a shilling, or twenty-four cents, a pound. This amounted to about a hundred and eighty dollars per acre, the estimated produce being about 750 pounds of merchantable coffee;[26] and very much of it came out of the producer—the poor negro. How enormously burdensome such a tax must have been may be judged by the farmers who feel now so heavily the pressure of the malt duties; and it must always be borne in mind that the West India labourers were aided by the most indifferent machinery of production. By degrees these various taxes rendered necessary the abandonment of all cultivation but that of the sugar-cane, being of all others the most destructive of health, and as the whole population, men, women, and children, were limited to that single pursuit, we shall scarcely err in attributing to this fact the great waste of life recorded in a former chapter.

Commerce, too, was interdicted, except with Great Britain and her colonies; and this led to efforts at a smuggling trade with the Spanish possessions on the continent; but this was brought to a close by the watchfulness of the ships of war.[27] Slaves, however, might be imported and exported, and this traffic was carried on a most extensive scale, most of the demand for the Spanish colonies being supplied from the British Islands. In 1775, however, the colonial legislature, desirous to prevent the excessive importation of negroes, imposed a duty of £2 per head, but this was petitioned against by the merchants of England, and the home government directed the discontinuance of the tax.[28] At this period the annual export of sugar is stated,[29] to have been 980,346 cwt., the gross sales of which, duty free, averaged £1 14s. 8d. per cwt., making a total of £1,699,421,—so large a portion of which, however, was absorbed by freight, commissions, insurance, &e., that the net proceeds, of 775 sugar estates are stated to have been only £726,992, or less than £1000 each. If to the £973,000 thus deducted be added the share of the government, (12s. 3d. per cwt.,) and the further charges before the sugar reached the consumer, it will be seen that its grower could not have received more than one-fourth of the price at which it sold. The planter thus appears to have been little more than a superintendent of slaves, who were worked for the benefit of the merchants and the government of Great Britain, by whom was absorbed the lion's share of the produce of their labour. He was placed between the slave, whom he was obliged to support, on the one hand, and the mortgagee, the merchants, and the government, whom he was also obliged to support, on the other, and he could take for himself only what was left—and if the crop proved large, and prices fell, he was ruined. The consequences of this are seen in the fact that in twenty years following this period, there were sold for debt no less than 177 estates, while 92 remained unsold in the hands of creditors, and 55 were wholly abandoned. Seeing these things, it will not be difficult to understand the cause of the extraordinary waste of life exhibited in the British Islands. The planter could exist, himself, only by overworking his people; and notwithstanding all his efforts, no less than 324 out of 775 estates changed hands by reason of failure in the short space of twenty years. Whatever might be his disposition to improve the condition of the labourer, to do so was quite impossible while receiving for himself and them so small a portion of the price of his commodity.

In the early years of the present century, land had become more valuable. The price of sugar had risen about 80 per cent., and the planters were gradually extricating themselves from their difficulties; and a consequence of this was seen in a considerable amelioration of the condition of the slave, who was now much better fed, clothed, and otherwise provided for.[30] Slaves that had been as low as £34, average price, had risen to £50, at which the 250,000 in the island amounted to £12,500,000, and the real and personal property, exclusive of the slaves, was estimated at £25,000,000.[31] How great, however, were the difficulties under which the planters still laboured, may be seen from the following extract, which, long as it is, is given because it illustrates so forcibly the destructive effects of the policy that looks to the prevention of that association which results from bringing the loom and the anvil to the side of plough and the harrow.

"I have now to enter upon a painful part of my task, a part in which I am under the necessity of stating such circumstances as cannot but reflect disgrace on those who give rise to them, and from which the weakness, I will not use a harsher term, of the legislature, is but too apparent. These circumstances arise from the various modes of agency, such as that of the attorney of estates, mortgagee in possession, receiver in chancery, &c. The first of these characters requires a definition. By the word attorney, in this sense, is meant agent; and the duties annexed to his office are so similar to those of a steward in England, that were it not for the dissimilarity of executing them, and the dignity attendant upon the former, I should pronounce them one and the same, But as this colonial stewardship is the surest road to imperial fortune, men of property and distinguished situation push eagerly for it. Attorneys are of two sorts; six per cent. attorneys, and salaried attorneys; the profits of the former arise from commissions of six per cent. on all the produce of an estate, and various interior resources; the latter are paid a certain stipend by some unincumbered proprietors, who have lately discovered that a steward in Jamaica may be hired like a steward in England, by which several thousand pounds a year are saved, and instead of enriching their agents, are poured into their own coffers. The office of both is to attend to the estates of their employers, and to all their interests in the island, deputed to them that the proprietors themselves may live at home, that is to say, in Europe.

"Of all the evils in the island of Jamaica, which call for a remedy, and by means of which the most unjustifiable practices are continued, the first and most crying is that of the business of a certain description of attorneys of orphans, mortgagees in possession, trustees, executors, guardians, and receivers under the court of chancery; and these evils arise in a great measure from the unjust and impolitic law which allows six per cent. commission on the gross produce of the estates under their charge and direction. The iniquitous practices, screened, if not authorized by that law have long been too glaring to be unnoticed; and attempts have been made to reduce the commission, and to fix it on some more equitable principle; but unfortunately there have always been in the House of Assembly too many of its members interested in benefits resulting from the present law to admit the adoption of the measure. That the interest of attorneys is not always the interest of those whose estates they hold is an undeniable fact, of which I think you will be convinced by the time you arrive at the conclusion of this letter. In many instances, too, this superior collateral interest militates against the happiness and amelioration of the state and condition of the slaves, which is now professed by the colonists to be an object of their most serious attention; and it proves not unfrequently the total ruin of the unfortunate planter, whose involved situation compels him to submit to the condition of consigning his estate to the management of an attorney appointed by his creditor, who is generally his merchant, and who throws the full legal advantages of his debtor's estate into the hands of his own agent in the island, to compensate for the economical bargain he makes for the management of his own concerns; a practice common also to trustees, guardians, &c. The law allowing such enormous commissions for services so inadequate, is also very defective in an important point; for it establishes no data for fixing the charge of this commission, which is never made according to the sales of sugar, for that is not soon, if ever known to the attorney. Hence, in the different accounts, the charges are estimated on sugar at several prices, from 20s. per cwt. to 45s., and even 50s.; and in the same books of one and the same attorney, these charges are found to differ according to his connection with his employer, generally increasing in proportion to the distress of the property and of the proprietor. To form some notion of the advantages attending these appointments, and of their injurious tendency to involved proprietors, and even to their creditors, let us see what a receiver under the court of chancery can do. In the first place, it has not always been the practice to select him from among the inhabitants in the vicinity of the unfortunate estates, or from among the friends of the proprietor; he is frequently a resident in one of the towns, with perhaps as little knowledge of the management of an estate as is possessed by the sweeper of the chancery office; and indeed it would not be inapplicable to distinguish such receivers by the appellation of chancery-sweepers. These gentlemen seldom if ever see the estates which they are to direct, and have no other directions to give than, in a lumping way, to make as much sugar as possible, and to ship it, most likely to their own correspondents. Whatever the estates clear is so much in their hands, and of course the more money the better for them; money takes root in every soil, and propagates itself a thousand ways; not a dollar of it therefore finds its way into the chancery chest, for the receiver having given security, the treasure is, by a common fiction in use, held to be fully as safe in his hands. While the different creditors of the estate are fighting the battle of priority, the receiver continues to direct the management of it, to ship the crop, and to take care of the money. At length a prior debt is established, and the creditor having gained the point, remains for a time satisfied; but finding, though his principal accumulates, that he receives nothing, he becomes clamorous for a sale. This may take place in five or six years time, when all pretexts for delay are worn out, and in the mean time the receiver takes care to have money, adequate to the simple sums received, turned over by his consignee or merchant to another hand, his banker's, to be ready to answer bills to be drawn on his own account, for which he must have a premium of from twelve to seventeen and a half per cent. The estate at last is advertised for sale by a master in chancery, in consequence of an order from the chancellor. The sale, however, is spun out, a year or two longer, till the creditor or his attorney begins to remonstrate with the master: stipulations for an amicable settlement ensue, that is, for an admission of the receiver's accounts such as they may be, and for time allowed him for payment of the mesne profits or balance in his hands; which agreed to, the sale is positively to take place when the next crop is over. The sale then is actually concluded, the accumulations of these annual funds go unperceived to the further propagation of wealth for the receiver; and the purchaser, who is no other than the prior creditor, is put in possession of an estate in ruin, with a gang of negroes dispirited and miserable, who had been long sensible of their situation, conceiving themselves belonging to nobody, and almost despairing of ever falling into the hands of a kind master, interested in their welfare and happiness. Let us now turn to the attorney of a mortgagee in possession, and see what better he offers. The debt of the involved estate is due to a man of large property, or to a merchant; if to the former, he has a merchant to whom the consignment is of considerable value. It is immaterial what the debt is, an estate in possession of a mortgagee is generally made to pay full commissions to the attorney employed for it. In justice to all parties the most is to be made of the property, and it is soon found that the negroes upon it are not equal to the returns it is capable of making, consequently hired negroes are added to the plantation-gangs, to plant, weed, and take off the crop; the works are extended, to be adequate to the proposed increase; more stock, more carts are bought, more white people employed. To keep pace with these grand designs, the poor plantation negroes are of course overworked. What is the result? A great deal of sugar and rum is made, to the credit as well as profit of the attorney, and by which the merchant is benefited, as the consignments are augmented; but six per cent. interest on the principal, six per cent. on that interest by compound arithmetic become principal, six per cent. commissions, with the contingent charges for labour, improvements, stores, etc., absorb the whole produce, and the planter daily sinks under an accumulating debt, till he is completely ruined. The greater the distress, the more the attorney fattens; in a war, for instance, a considerable additional benefit occurs; he becomes lumber-merchant, and having the rum of the estate at his command, and perhaps a little sugar, though in the latter article he is usually restricted, as the disposal of it in the island would interfere with the loading of ships and consignments, he purchases wholesale cargoes, and retails them out to the estate at a large profit. Staves bought by the attorney at £18 per thousand, have been known to be sold to the estate for £45 per thousand; and the cart belonging to the property has carried the rum to pay for them. It is well known that the rum made upon an estate will seldom pay its contingent expenses, and that frequently bills are drawn on Great Britain to the amount of one thousand pounds, and sometimes two thousand pounds, for the excess of the contingencies over and above the amount of the sale of the rum: here the attorney finds another avenue of amassing for himself. Settling the excess from his own means, he appropriates the bills which it enabled him to draw to the purchase of the remainder of a cargo of negroes, after the best have been culled at the rate of from ninety to ninety-five pounds per head: these inferior negroes he disposes of to his dependent overseers, jobbers, doctors, tradesmen, distillers, and book-keepers, at forty or fifty pounds a head profit; nor is it without example, that the very estates on the credit of which some of the bills are drawn, have been supplied with negroes in the same manner, and at the same rate. This manoeuvre indeed is ventured only on estates of minors, whose trustees are merchants in Great Britain, ignorant of such practices; or may be, when they have committed the estates to the attorney, liable to the full advantages to be made of them, to compensate for the moderate allowance they give for the management of their own concerns. An island merchant, or according to the West India appellation, storekeeper, in great business, told a friend of mine, that he had sold a cargo of mules at eighteen pounds per head to an attorney, which were dispersed in separate spells of eight each to several estates, but that at the special instance of the purchaser, he had made out the bills of parcels at thirty pounds per head. This does not speak much in favour of the virtue of the storekeeper, but it must be observed that he would have lost his customer had he demurred, and would probably have been considered as righteous overmuch. There is a variety of smaller advantages enjoyed by the attorney, such as forming connections with butchers who may purchase the fatted cattle, with jobbers of negroes for the purpose of intermingling negroes at a proportionable profit, fattening horses, and a long et cetera. To the attorney the commanders of the ships in the trade look up with due respect, and as they are proper persons to speak of him to the merchant, their good-will is not neglected. To the involved planter their language often is, 'Sir, I must have your sugars down at the wharf directly;' that is, your sugars are to make the lowest tier, to stand the chance of being washed out should the ship leak or make much water in a bad passage. When they address an attorney, they do not ask for sugars, but his favours, as to quantity and time; and his hogsheads form the upper tier."[32]

An examination made about this period proved that these persons, 193 in number, held in charge 606 sugar-works, producing about 80,000 hhds. of sugar, and 36,000 puncheons of rum, which at the selling prices of that day in England yielded about £4,000,000, upon which they were entitled to six per cent., or £240,000. We have here a most extensive system of absenteeism, and absentees must be represented by middlemen, having no interest in the slave or in the plantation, except to take from both all that can be taken, giving as little as possible back to either.

Why, however, did this absenteeism exist? Why did not the owners of property reside on their estates? Because the policy which looked to limiting the whole population, male and female, old and young, to the culture of sugar, and forbade even that the sugar itself should be refined on the island, effectually prevented the growth of any middle class that should form the population of towns at which the planter might find society that could induce him to regard the island as his home. Such was not the case in the French Islands, because the French government had not desired to prevent the weaker class of the population from engaging in the work of manufacture, as has been seen in the case of Grenada, in which sugar was refined until the period of its surrender to the British arms.[33] Towns therefore grew up, and men of all descriptions came from France to make the islands their home; whereas the English colonists looked only to realizing a fortune and returning home to spend it. All this is fully shown in the following extract, in which is given a comparative view of the British and French Islands immediately before the emancipation act of 1832.