CHAPTER X.
COOLIE SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES.
The British government emancipated the negro slaves held under its authority in the West Indies, thereby greatly depreciating the value of the islands, permitting a half-tamed race to fall back into a state of moral and mental darkness, and adding twenty millions to the national debt, to be paid out of the sweat and blood of her own white serfs. This was termed a grand act of humanity; those who laboured for it have been lauded and laurelled without stint, and English writers have been exceedingly solicitous that the world should not "burst in ignorance" of the achievement.
COOLIES.
Being free, the negroes, with the indolence inherent in their nature, would not work. Many purses suffered in consequence, and the purse is a very tender place to injure many persons. It became necessary to substitute other labourers for the free negroes, and the Coolies of India were taken to the Antilles for experiment. These labourers were generally sober, steady, and industrious. But how were they treated? A colonist of Martinique, who visited Trinidad in June, 1848, thus writes to the French author of a treatise on free and slave labour:—
"If I could fully describe to you the evils and suffering endured by the Indian immigrants (Coolies) in that horribly governed colony, I should rend the heart of the Christian world by a recital of enormities unknown in the worst periods of colonial slavery.