The American Missionary, a monthly paper, and organ of this Association, for July, 1855, has the following quotation from the letters of the missionaries, recently received. It is given, as abolition testimony, in further confirmation of the moral condition of the colored people of Jamaica:
"From the number of churches and chapels in the island, Jamaica ought certainly to be called a Christian land. The people may be called a church-going people. There are chapels and places of worship enough, at least in this part of the island, to supply the people if every station of our mission were given up. And there is no lack of ministers and preachers. As far as I am acquainted, almost the entire adult population profess to have a hope of eternal life, and I think the larger part are connected with churches. In view of such facts some have been led to say, 'The spiritual condition of the population is very satisfactory.' But there is another class of facts that is perfectly astounding. With all this array of the externals of religion, one broad, deep wave of moral death rolls over the land. A man may be a drunkard, a liar, a Sabbath-breaker, a profane man, a fornicator, an adulterer, and such like—and be known to be such—and go to chapel, and hold up his head there, and feel no disgrace from these things, because they are so common as to create a public sentiment in his favor. He may go to the communion table, and cherish a hope of heaven, and not have his hope disturbed. I might tell of persons guilty of some, if not all, these things, ministering in holy things."
What motives can prompt the American Missionary Association to cast such imputations upon the missions of the English and Scotch Churches, in Jamaica, we leave to be determined by the parties interested. Few, indeed, will believe that the English and Scotch Churches would, for a moment, tolerate such a condition of things, in their mission stations, as is here represented.
Next we turn to the Annual Report of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1853, which discourses thus, in its own language, and in quotations which it indorses:[54]
"The friends of emancipation in the United States have been disappointed in some respects at the results in the West Indies, because they expected too much. A nation of slaves can not at once be converted into a nation of intelligent, industrious, and moral freemen.". . . . "It is not too much, even now, to say of the people of Jamaica,. . . . their condition is exceedingly degraded, their morals woefully corrupt. But this must, by no means, be understood to be of universal application. With respect to those who have been brought under a healthful educational and religious influence, it is not true. But as respects the great mass, whose humanity has been ground out of them by cruel oppression—whom no good Samaritan hand has yet reached—how could it be otherwise? We wish to turn the tables; to supplant oppression by righteousness, insult by compassion and brotherly kindness, hatred and contempt by love and winning meekness, till we allure these wretched ones to the hope and enjoyment of manhood and virtue."[55]. . . . "The means of education and religious instruction are better enjoyed, although but little appreciated and improved by the great mass of the people. It is also true, that the moral sense of the people is becoming somewhat enlightened. . . . . But while this is true, yet their moral condition is very far from being what it ought to be. . . . . It is exceedingly dark and distressing. Licentiousness prevails to a most alarming extent among the people. . . . . The almost universal prevalence of intemperance is another prolific source of the moral darkness and degradation of the people. The great mass, among all classes of the inhabitants, from the governor in his palace to the peasant in his hut—from the bishop in his gown to the beggar in his rags—are all slaves to their cups."[56]
This is the language of American abolitionists, going out under the sanction of their Annual Reports. Lest it may be considered as too highly colored, we add the following from the London Times, of near the same date. In speaking of the results of emancipation, in Jamaica, it says:
"The negro has not acquired, with his freedom, any habits of industry or morality. His independence is but little better than that of an uncaptured brute. Having accepted few of the restraints of civilization, he is amenable to few of its necessities; and the wants of his nature are so easily satisfied, that at the present rate of wages, he is called upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion. The blacks, therefore, instead of becoming intelligent husbandmen, have become vagrants and squatters, and it is now apprehended that with the failure of cultivation in the island will come the failure of its resources for instructing or controlling its population. So imminent does this consummation appear, that memorials have been signed by classes of colonial society hitherto standing aloof from politics, and not only the bench and the bar, but the bishop, clergy, and ministers of all denominations in the island, without exception, have recorded their conviction, that, in the absence of timely relief, the religious and educational institutions of the island must be abandoned, and the masses of the population retrogade to barbarism."
One of the editors of the New York Evening Post, Mr. Bigelow, a few years since, spent a winter in Jamaica, and continues to watch, with anxious solicitude, as an anti-slavery man, the developments taking place among its colored population. In reviewing the returns published by the Jamaica House of Assembly, in 1853, in reference to the ruinous decline in the agriculture of the island, and stating the enormous quantity of lands thrown out of cultivation, since 1848, the Post says:
"This decline has been going on from year to year, daily becoming more alarming, until at length the island has reached what would appear to be the last profound of distress and misery,. . . . when thousands of people do not know, when they rise in the morning, whence or in what manner they are to procure bread for the day."
We must examine, more closely, the economical results of emancipation, in the West Indies, before we can judge of the effects, upon the trade and commerce of the world, which would result from general emancipation in the United States. We do this, not to afford an argument in behalf of the perpetuation of slavery, because its abolition might injuriously affect the interests of trade and commerce; but because the whole of these results have long been well known to the American planter, and serve as conclusive arguments, with him, against emancipation. He believes that, in tropical cultivation, African free labor is worthless; that the liberation of the slaves in this country, must, necessarily, be followed with results similar to what has occurred in the West Indies; and, for this reason, as well as on account of the profitable character of slavery, he refuses to give freedom to his slaves. We repeat, we do not cite the fact of the failure, economically, of free labor in Jamaica, as an argument for the perpetuation of slavery. Not at all. We allude to the fact, only to show that emancipation has greatly reduced the commerce of the colonies, and that the logic of this result militates against the colored man's prospects of advancement in the scale of political and social equality. But to the facts:
