Let the governor and principal magistrates, therefore, be sent out from Europe; let them be gentlemen of fortune and education; and, above all, men [[362]]of liberal minds, men that are firm and proof against the allurement of a bribe, or the glittering of gold, and whose passions are restrained by sentiment and manly feelings. Let these men be handsomely rewarded by that nation whom they so materially serve, and the colony which they so conspicuously protect; but let their salaries be ascertained, without depending on the blood and sweat of the miserable Africans. Then let such men enact impartial regulations, by which the negro slaves are to perform no more than their fair task and labour a reasonable number of hours in the twenty-four: let these be followed by protecting laws, and let them be no longer racked, tormented, wantonly murdered, or infamously robbed of all that is dear to the human affections, their wives and daughters. Let regulations be adopted, by which they may be properly fed; and attended to when sick or indisposed; and, above all, let equal justice be administered; suffer them, when outraged or plundered, to obtain a hearing; permit them to complain, and enable them to prove by evidence the grievances by which they are oppressed. Even give them what we so much value ourselves, AN INDEPENDANT JUDGE, and AN IMPARTIAL JURY, nay, partly composed of their own sable companions. Thus, would you have them work and act like men, first suffer them to be such.
When regulations conform to these shall be adopted and enforced, then I venture to say, that nations will feel the benefit of their colonies—then planters will become rich, and their overseers become honest; then slavery will be little [[363]]more than a name; and subjects will, with pleasure, fulfil their limited task: then, and not till then, will population sufficiently encrease for the necessary work, and the execrable Guinea trade be totally abolished, which is now too frequently carried on with barbarity and unbounded usurpation. Then the master will with pleasure look on his sable subjects as on his children, and the principal source of his happiness, while the negroes will bless the day their ancestors did first set foot on American ground.
Having thus, according to my opinion, pointed out the way, and the only way (if well considered) to redress the grievances of this and many other colonies, I would also recommend to planters and overseers in general, to peruse with attention a small work, entitled “Letters to a young Planter; or Observations on the Management of a Sugar Plantation: to which is added, the Planter’s Calendar. Written on the Island of Grenada, by an old Planter,” and published in London in 1785, 8vo. price One Shilling and Sixpence, and sold by Strachan.
Let them next take an example by that incomparable woman Mrs. Godefroy, by Mr. Thomas Palmer, and a few others, who consider their slaves as their fellow-creatures, without paying the smallest regard either to their paganism or complexion; and who increase both their wealth and their happiness by their humanity.—I will now once more proceed with my narrative.
On the 16th, being invited to dine with his excellency the governor, I laid before him my collection of drawings, [[364]]and remarks on the colony of Surinam, which I had the satisfaction to see him honour with the highest approbation. I then returned him my thanks, not only for the material assistance he had afforded me in completing this work, but for the unlimited marks of regard and distinction with which he had treated me from first to last, during the whole time I resided in Guiana.
Availing myself of his friendship, I ventured, two days after, to give him the following very uncommon request, praying him to lay it before the court; which, with a smile on his countenance, and a hearty shake by the hand, he actually promised me to perform; viz.
“I, the under-subscribed, do pledge my word of honour, (being all I possess in the world besides my pay) as bail, that if my late ardent request to the court for the emancipation of my dear boy Johnny Stedman be granted, the said boy shall never to the end of his life become a charge to the colony of Surinam.
(Signed) John G. Stedman.”
“Paramaribo,
Feb. 18th, 1777.”
Having now done the utmost that lay in my power, I for several days waited the result with anxiety, but without meeting with the smallest hopes of success; thus, with a broken heart, I was obliged at last to give him (sweet fellow) over for lost, or take him with me to Europe, which must have been plunging a dagger in the bosom of his mother. [[365]]
While I remained in this situation, the transport ships were put in commission on the 26th for our departure, and I myself ordered as one of the commissaries to see them wooded and watered; the officers were also cleared their arrears, and thirteen men discharged at their own desire, to push their fortune at Paramaribo. I ought here not to omit, that the industrious Colonel Fourgeoud once more paid us all in paper, by which, as usual, we lost ten per cent.; which, by letting the Jews have the gold and silver, he prudently lodged in his own pocket; and while the many hundreds of florins allowed us by government to defray excise duties, taxes, &c. were never brought to account, or, rather, we were forbidden to enquire after them at all. These were trifles indeed, when divided among so many gentlemen; but, in one solid mass, they were no contemptible picking.
On the 1st of March a serjeant arrived from the camp at the Casseepore Creek, in Rio Cottica, where the last-arrived troops were hourly dying away; and brought the almost incredible account, that the man I mentioned to have been lost in the woods on the 10th of February, was actually returned, after having been missing six-and-twenty days, nine of which he subsisted on a few pounds of rusk biscuit, and seventeen on nothing at all but water. He added, that he had entirely lost his voice, and was reduced to a perfect skeleton: however, by the care taken of him by the officers, there were still hopes of his life. Should [[366]]any person hesitate to believe this extraordinary fact, let them read Monsieur Godin’s well-authenticated letter to his friend Monsieur de la Condamine, wherein he gives an account of the dreadful sufferings of his lady during her route from Rio Hamba to Laguna, through the woods of South America, in October 1769; where a delicate woman, after being deserted by the Indian guides, and after both her brothers had fallen martyrs to their hardships and misery, subsisted ten days alone in a wild forest without food, without knowing where she was, and surrounded with tigers, serpents, and dangers of every description: I say, let them only read the narrative of this lady’s sufferings, and their credulity will no longer be staggered at what I myself have related. I have, indeed, even omitted facts, which, on account of their singularity, must in the eyes of some have appeared to border on the marvellous. But in the forests of South America such extraordinary realities are to be found, that there is assuredly no need to have recourse to fiction or the least exaggeration.