"Berbice," says Lord Stanley, "has fared no better. Its rural population amounts to 18,000. Of these, 12,000 have withdrawn from the estates, and mostly from the neighborhood of the white man, to enjoy a savage freedom of ignorance and idleness, beyond the reach of example and sometimes of control. But on the condition of the negro I shall dwell more at length hereafter; at present it is the state of property with which I have to do. What are the districts which together form the county of Berbice? The Corentyne coast—the Canje Creek—east and west banks of the Berbice River—and the west coast, where, however, cotton was formerly the chief article produced. To each of these respectively the following passages, quoted in order, apply:—
"'The abandoned plantations on this coast,[181] which, if capital and labor could be procured, might easily be made very productive, are either wholly deserted, or else appropriated by hordes of squatters, who of course are unable to keep up at their own expense the public roads and bridges; and consequently all communication by land between the Corentyne and New Amsterdam is nearly at an end. The roads are impassable for horses or carriages, while for foot passengers they are extremely dangerous. The number of villages in this deserted region must be upward of 2500, and as the country abounds with fish and game, they have no difficulty in making a subsistence. In fact, the Corentyne coast is fast relapsing into a state of nature.'
"'Canje Creek was formerly considered a flourishing district of the county, and numbered on its east bank seven sugar and three coffee estates, and on its west bank eight estates, of which two were in sugar and six in coffee, making a total of eighteen plantations. The coffee cultivation has long since been entirely abandoned, and of the sugar estates but eight still now remain. They are suffering severely for want of labor, and being supported principally by African and Coolie immigrants, it is much to be feared that if the latter leave and claim their return passages to India, a great part of the district will become abandoned.'
"Under present circumstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs here,[182] that the two gentlemen whom your commissioners have examined with respect to this district, both concur in predicting "its slow but sure approximation to the condition in which civilized man first found it."'
"'A district[183] that in 1829 gave employment to 3635 registered slaves, but at the present moment there are not more than 600 laborers at work on the few estates still in cultivation, although it is estimated there are upward of 2000 people idling in villages of their own. The roads are in many parts several feet under water and perfect swamps, while in some places the bridges are wanting altogether. In fact the whole district is fast becoming a total wilderness, with the exception of the one or two estates which yet continue to struggle on, and which are hardly accessible now but by water.'
"'Except in some of the best villages,[184] they care not for back or front dams to keep off the water; their side-lines are disregarded, and consequently the drainage is gone, while in many instances the public road is so completely flooded that canoes have to be used as a means of transit. The Africans are unhappily following the example of the Creoles in this district, and buying land on which they settle in contented idleness; and your commissioners cannot view instances like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of squatting is allowed to extend to the immigrants also, there is no hope for the colony.'"[185]
We might fill a volume with extracts to the same effect. We might in like manner point to other regions, especially to Guatemala, to the British colony on the southern coast of Africa, and to the island of Hayti, in all of which emancipation has been followed by precisely similar results. But we must hasten to consider how it is that emancipation has wrought all this ruin and desolation. In the mean time, we shall conclude this section in the ever-memorable words of Alison, the historian: "The negroes," says he, "who, in a state of slavery, were comfortable and prosperous beyond any peasantry in the world, and rapidly approaching the condition of the most opulent serfs of Europe, have been by the act of emancipation irretrievably consigned to a state of barbarism."
§ III. The manner in which emancipation has ruined the British Colonies.
By the act of emancipation, Great Britain paralyzed the right arm of her colonial industry. The laborer would not work except occasionally, and the planter was ruined. The morals of the negro disappeared with his industry, and he speedily retraced his steps toward his original barbarism. All this had been clearly foretold. "Emancipation," says Dr. Channing in 1840, "was resisted on the ground that the slave, if restored to his rights, would fall into idleness and vagrancy, and even relapse into barbarism."
This was predicted by the West Indian planters, who certainly had a good opportunity to know something of the character of the negro, whether bond or free. But who could suppose for a moment that an enlightened abolitionist would listen to slaveholders? His response was, that "their unhappy position as slaveholders had robbed them of their reason and blunted their moral sense." Precisely the same thing had been foretold by the Calhouns and the Clays of this country. But they, too, were unfortunately slaveholders, and, consequently, so completely "sunk in moral darkness," that their testimony was not entitled to credit. The calmest, the profoundest, the wisest statesman of Great Britain likewise forewarned the agitators of the desolation and the woes they were about to bring upon the West Indies. But the madness of the day would confide in no wisdom except its own, and listen to no testimony except to the clamor of fanatics. Hence the frightful experiment was made, and, as we have seen, the prediction of the anti-abolitionist has been fulfilled to the very letter.