It is impossible for any one who is at all conversant with the negro character not to say, that the Code Rural is just such a law as the exigences of Hayti particularly require: and that it is absolutely and imperatively called for in order to extend cultivation, and to bring the people to some sense of duty towards their country and themselves. Left any longer to pursue their uncontrolled and unlimited propensity for indolence, they must recede into barbarism and uncivilization, and the country fall a sacrifice to the mistaken policy of its chief and the leaders of his government, and to those false ideas of philanthropy with which they are so often assailed by persons who are incompetent to advise, because they are without any knowledge of the country or its people.
The Code Rural, therefore, now enforces labour with a rigid hand,—nothing more excessive can be demanded of the slave in the British colonies; and I aver, that if the whole of the clauses of this code be complied with, it will exceed the labour performed by persons in actual slavery. I have my doubts, however, respecting the feasibility of carrying its clauses into successful operation, and whether the temper of the people at the present moment will be submissive enough to adhere to it in all its parts, I am inclined to think that they have been too long indulged in those vices which seem inherent in the negro, to be brought to obedience; and that too rigid an enforcement will bring on discontent, and finally a general resistance. I think it therefore exceedingly probable that Boyer with all his vaunting, with all his proclamations, and aided by his military force, will never proceed to those extremities to promote agriculture, to which he can now go under the sanction of laws made expressly for that purpose. The Code Rural must unquestionably astonish those advocates for free labour who have held up Hayti as an example of what can be accomplished by it; and I think they cannot now have the temerity to say that cultivation in the tropics can be effectually carried on without coercion, when even the Haytian government is constrained to have recourse to it. For my part, I have seen nothing in Hayti to induce me to alter the opinion which I have always entertained of the negro, nor for a moment to expect that cultivation can be carried on with any probability of success without coercion. But I declare it to be my firm conviction, that unless coercion be resorted to, the negro will not labour. The impulse for indulging in sloth and in indolence is too irresistible, and it will not be in the power of the government to make any progress in agricultural labour, except it be done by actual force.
The system pursued by the Haytian government respecting the disposal of its lands seems to be erroneous. Allotting it out in small grants of ten to fifteen acres, is an injudicious measure: it only tends towards extending and perpetuating the evil and pernicious habits of the people. When a negro obtains a grant of a small tract of land, he cares little about the cultivation of it beyond the production of enough for his own immediate wants, and those wants are trifling. Two or three hours’ labour in each week will suffice to answer all the purposes of the culture required to produce food enough for himself; the rest of his time is then allowed to dwindle away in the most puerile pleasures and inconsistencies. No object which moderate industry could procure would balance the insatiable desire for reposing under the shade of the guava, and for ablutions in the neighbouring stream; with these and a little food all his wants are supplied. Such being the case, and known to be so by the government, it is enough to surprise one that they should parcel out their lands in this way, because, even under the Code Rural, the person holding it is no longer a labourer, but a proprietor, and is not therefore amenable to it. Had the government proceeded differently, and let the estates to farm as they were originally laid out, so many petty proprietors would not have existed, but would have remained amenable to the law for enforcing cultivation. From this unwise system, labourers are scarce in Hayti, and the few that are to be obtained are of the worst characters, negroes so abandoned as not to have been considered worthy of inheriting a patch of land. Hayti abounds with these small proprietors; their patches of land, with their huts upon them, are generally situate in the mountains, in the recesses, or on the most elevated parts, on spots, as the poet has described, “the most inaccessible by shepherds trod.” They are therefore lost for the purposes of agriculture: their cultivation does not extend beyond vegetables for the markets in their vicinity, added to which they furnish an occasional supply of pork, poultry, and wild pigeons.
Another important question arises on this subject, and that is the quantum of labour which a negro is capable of performing within the day. In the British colonies an experienced planter can at once discern how much labour a slave is capable of performing. He can also discriminate between slaves who are willing and industrious, and those who are careless and indolent; and apportions their labour according to their respective deserts and capacities. The Haytian proprietor is deficient in these requisites; he is not a planter practically, and he is ignorant of its theory. There is nothing regular in his system; it is an anomaly, a strange, incongruous method of proceeding, having no tendency either to improve the soil or benefit himself. The sugar planter in the first place is so ignorant that he knows not the virtue which his soil possesses, nor what it is capable of producing. He considers not whether one field is better adapted for the production of canes than another, but plants indiscriminately in bad or good soil, in heavy or light; in fact he knows not whether it ought to be planted with canes or cotton, or if it would be wise to allow it to become common pastures. He is contented, and seems to be quite satisfied, if he can but obtain vegetation in any way; careless about the manner in which it is accomplished. To ascertain whether it can be improved by art or industry, is a matter about which he is unconcerned.
But the cane is not often planted. Most of the cane pieces on plantations are old, probably they were planted by the French, or subsequently in the time of Toussaint. They exhibit an appearance of age, for their circumference is small, and their joints are not more than three inches apart, nor do they ever exceed four feet in length. These are very seldom manured or trashed, nor do they receive any attention from the time of cutting until they are again ready for the mill the following year. There is no such thing as stirring the soil between the rows at particular times, nor do the cultivators ever trouble themselves about divesting the cane of its superfluous and decaying leaves, so as to open a free course for the air through the whole. Nothing of this is done in Hayti. The fertility of the soil, the congeniality of climate, and the regularity of seasons, suffice for manure, and the rest is left to nature. Art and the industry of man contribute little or nothing to the growth of the cane. The hoe and other implements of tillage are rendered useless by indolence, the planter’s unconquerable love of ease having brought them into disrepute; and I shall be somewhat astonished if the Code Rural will have power enough to revive their use.
The same irregularity attends the operations at the mill, the boiling-house, the distillery, and the other departments of the plantation. I have been through them often, and have been surprised at the want of order which every where prevails. There is nothing systematically arranged,—every thing seems in confusion; the works are detached, and resemble more a heap of ruins than conveniences for manufacturing and distilling. The interior of the boiling-house would astonish a Jamaica planter: the several boilers are not ranged in succession from the receiver to the teacher, as they are in the British colonies. They are placed without rule, and in their manner of conveying the liquor from one copper to another the waste is considerable; and this is observable too in all their operations. There is nothing like cleanliness in their works; filth and every species of dirtiness are to be seen in them; and this is prevalent, although they must be sensible that it is injurious, and often destructive to the quality of the sugar. The distillery department is also very injudiciously constructed. They take no pains to keep the heat at the proper degree requisite for fermentation: every thing has the appearance of negligence, and conveys to the observer a very bad specimen of Haytian skill in the art of manufacturing sugar or of distilling spirits. They do not often make rum: I only know of one or two plantations on which rum is distilled, and these are conducted by Englishmen; one in particular at Aux Cayes, a Mr. Towning, who has an extensive distillery. He produces rum, which, in point of flavour, strength, and every other quality, I do not think inferior to that of Jamaica. To all persons who visit Aux Cayes this gentleman is well known for the hearty and hospitable reception he always gives to a stranger. He is the only person in Hayti who devotes his attention to the distillation of rum. The Haytians cannot distill it; they are ignorant of its principle, and consequently confine themselves to the distillation of what is known in the British colonies under the denomination of low wines. The flavour of this spirit is most unpleasant; which arises, I conjecture, from the ingredients thrown into the fermenting vessels, and from which it is distilled: these, consisting of the molasses from the boiling-house, with all the sweepings of the works, with a proportion of water from any pool however stagnant, if pure water be not near, I apprehend give to the spirit a very acrid quality, as well as a fetid smell. It is however held in great estimation by the people, who drink it freely, and they can obtain it cheap. Upon the whole there can be no difficulty in declaring that the Haytians are ignorant both of the cultivation of the cane, and of the process of manufacturing sugar.
It is evident that sugar is not much cultivated, as in every district throughout the republic there are only a few plantations to be seen in the plains of Cul de Sac and vicinity of Port au Prince where sugar is produced. There were in the time of the French about one hundred and forty sugar estates, very few, if any, with less than one thousand acres of land, one-fourth of which would be in canes, and the remainder in pastures and other crops. Now in the same space there are not more than twenty estates, and in each of them there cannot be found more than from forty to fifty acres of canes, the remainder of the land being in a neglected state, overrun with different weeds. President Boyer has an estate within a small distance of Port au Prince, called Tor, the favourite residence of the late Petion. This plantation has upwards of two thousand acres of land attached to it, and, from the great strength of the soil, it is impossible to select a spot more eligible for the production of sugar. But there are not more than forty acres of the land in canes. This, however, is not singular; it is general throughout the island. When the sugar cane in Hayti was cultivated properly, and received the requisite care and attention in the several stages of its growth, it produced very abundantly. Bryan Edwards gives an average of two thousand seven hundred and twelve pounds of sugar per acre through the island; and at this period I have been informed, and in fact I have seen it calculated myself, that in the plains of Cul de Sac and Leogane the average does not exceed one thousand pounds of sugar per acre; and an experienced planter on looking at the canes when they are ripe for cutting, would conclude that they would not produce so much. Formerly a pound of sugar was obtained from a gallon of juice in some districts, in others sixteen pounds from twenty gallons, and in some sixteen pounds from twenty-four gallons: but now it requires nearly treble the quantity of juice to produce the same quantity of sugar: and this must remain so, until a new system of cultivation be tried, and the management of the plantations be entrusted to men of experience, men who have been practical planters, and who are conversant with the whole of its duties; men, I say, who have a perfect knowledge of the soil, its capabilities and its wants for the work of tillage, and who will devote their time and attention to all the minutiæ of plantation labour. If such a system should ever be pursued in Hayti, and there be labourers to cultivate, and capital can be invested securely, then sugar planting may be carried on with some chance of a successful issue: until this take place, I have great doubts whether the culture of the cane will prove profitable to the occupier of the soil.
The labour required for the cultivation of coffee is exceedingly light: I was therefore much surprised to see the very little progress the people had made in this branch of agriculture. When an individual, who has been accustomed to plantations in the British, French, and Spanish islands, visits the coffee plantations in Hayti, and observes the whole conducted without judgment or care, it impresses him with a most unfavourable idea of the people; and when he sees the easiest branch of agriculture so much neglected, it convinces him that their idleness is almost invincible. In the British islands every coffee plantation is arranged with the greatest exactitude. The lands are divided into fields as nearly equal as possible, and in those fields, in all probability, the coffee has been planted in successive seasons, so that when the period arrives in which the trees begin to exhibit a decline in their growth, the planter provides for the loss of them by planting others, and by this expedient manages always to keep up his crop. The fences which divide the fields are constantly kept up with regularity and order, the whole having the appearance of a garden laid out with neatness and precision. The plantation works for washing, drying, and preparing the coffee, are in the best condition, and with the barbacues, exhibit a well-arranged system for the production of the berry. In Hayti the scene is different: what is denominated there a coffee plantation, is neither more nor less than a large tract of land, throughout which grows spontaneously the coffee tree; not planted there by the people, but sprung from the seed which has fallen from those planted by the French, and which escaped destruction during the revolution. There is no such thing as a plantation established upon the same principle as in other islands. There are no divisions, no laying out of the lands, no order of planting in succession, nothing done towards improving and fertilizing the soil, in order to aid the growth of the tree, no lopping it of its excrescences, and pruning it to strengthen the parent stem; but every thing is left to nature, the pruning knife is sheathed, and the rank luxuriance of the tree is permitted to increase, whilst the hoe is seldom called into use, to extirpate those weeds which are so destructive to vegetation.
A person must be somewhat conversant with travelling in Hayti before he can discover on his road that a coffee plantation is near him. For my part, I could see nothing that resembled one, nor should I have known the coffee tree, growing as it did in a pyramidal form, surrounded by numberless other shrubs, had it not been for the appearance of a few red berries on one of its lower branches. I alighted from my mule to examine some trees just round the spot: as nearly as I could ascertain, every tree must have exceeded twelve feet in height, and I am convinced that each of them at the time would not have produced two pounds of coffee in the husk. I had the curiosity to go a little way into the interior of this settlement to see if there were any thing like cultivation, but I could discover nothing bearing the least resemblance to a plantation. I saw nothing but a hut, and four or five people in it, whom I found to be the proprietors of the place. They were inquisitive, and not much pleased that I should have intruded on their privacy, and therefore I had a hint from my guide that it would be prudent not to advance farther. I saw, however, enough to convince me that there was no regular system of cultivation pursued in this place, although there were twelve hundred acres of land in the Keen; and that the coffee grew in a wild state, the soil never being touched or disturbed, save, occasionally, by pigs, goats and asses, which range through the whole, and feed on the grass which grows luxuriantly in the intervals. Mills are not very common, and the few which exist are very small and turned by asses. Washing and pulping are not performed by machinery. Indeed I am inclined to suspect that they are dispensed with altogether, as I could not find any apparatus for these operations. My guide knew this plantation well, and he told me, that although the proprietor had this large tract of land, yet he was so poor that he could not afford to hire cultivators, who, when employed, never did work enough to pay for their hire. I was anxious to ascertain the annual quantity of coffee which this place produced, and I was told that it did not exceed four thousand five hundred pounds weight. I have mentioned this plantation because it is considered to be a settlement in a productive part of the country, the mountains of Leogane; and extraordinary as it may appear, it is a very good illustration of the coffee settlements in general, all of which exhibit negligence and want of that industry which characterize the Haytian planter and cultivator.