Here, now, is presented the key to the mystery overhanging the British West Indies. Men, high in station, have asserted that West India emancipation has been an economic success; while others, equally honorable, have maintained the opposite view. Both have presented figures, averred to be true, that seemed to sustain their declarations. This apparent contradiction is thus explained. The first take the aggregate production in the whole of the islands, which, they say, exceeds that during the existence of slavery;[70] the second take the production in Jamaica alone, as representing the whole; and, thus, the startling fact appears, that the sugar crop of the last three years in Jamaica, has fallen 63,603,000 lbs., below what it was during the first three years of freedom. This argues badly for the free negroes; but it must be the legitimate fruits of emancipation, as no exterior force has been brought into that island to interfere, materially, with its workings. In Mauritius, Trinidad, and British Guiana, it will be seen that the production has greatly increased; but from a very different cause than any improvement in the industry of the blacks who had received their freedom—the increase in Mauritius having been more than double what it had been when the production depended upon them. The sugar crop, in this island, for the three years preceding the introduction of immigrant labor, was but 217,200,000 lbs.; while, during the last three years, by the aid of 210,000 immigrants, it has been run up to 469,812,000 lbs.
Taking all these facts into consideration, it is apparent that West India emancipation has been a failure, economically considered. The production in Jamaica, when it has depended upon the labor of the free blacks alone, has materially declined in some of the islands, since the abandonment of slavery, and is not so great now as it was during the first years of freedom; and, so far is it from being equal to what it was while slavery prevailed, and especially while the slave trade was continued, that it now falls short of the production of that period by an immense amount. In no way, therefore, can it be claimed, that the cultivation of the British West India islands is on the increase, except by resorting to the pious fraud of crediting the products of the immigrant labor to the account of emancipation—a resort to which no conscientious Christian man will have recourse, even to sustain a philanthropic theory.
But the Island of Barbadoes is an exception. It is said to have suffered no diminution in its production since emancipation, and that this result was attained without the aid of immigrant labor. The London Economist must be permitted to explain this phenomenon; and must also be allowed to give its views on the subject of the effects of emancipation, after the lapse of a quarter of a century from the date of the passage of the Emancipation Act:
"We are no believers in Mr. Carlyle's gospel of the 'beneficent whip' as the bearer of salvation to tropical indolence. But we can not for a moment doubt that the first result of emancipation was, in most of the islands, to substitute for the worst kind of moral and political evil, one of a less fatal but still of a very pernicious kind. The negroes had been treated as mere machines for raising sugar and coffee. They were suddenly liberated from that mechanical drudgery; they became free beings—but without the discipline needful to use freedom well, and unfortunately with a larger amount of practical freedom than the laboring class of any Northern or temperate climate could by any possibility enjoy. They suddenly found themselves, in most of the islands, in a position in many respects analagous to that of a people possessed of a moderate property in England, who can supply their principal wants without any positive labor, and have no ambition to rise into any higher sphere than that into which they were born. The only difference was, that the negroes in most of the West India islands wanted vastly less than such people as these in civilized States,—wanted nothing in fact, but the plantains they could grow almost without labor, and the huts which they could build on any waste mountain land without paying rent for it. The consequence naturally was, that when the spur of physical tyranny was removed, there was no sufficient substitute for it, in most of the islands, in the wholesome hardships of natural exigencies. The really beneficent 'whip' of hunger and cold was not substituted for the human cruelty from which they had escaped. In Barbadoes alone, perhaps, the pressure of a dense population, with the absence of any waste mountain lands on which the negroes could squat, rent free, was an efficient substitute for the terrors of slavery. And, consequently, in Barbadoes alone, has the Emancipation Act produced unalloyed and conspicuous good. The natural spur of competition for the means of living, took the place there of the artificial spur of slavery, and the slow, indolent temperament of the African race was thus quickened into a voluntary industry essential to its moral discipline, and most favorable to its intellectual culture."
In further commenting on the figures quoted, the Economist remarks:
"These results, do not of course, necessarily represent in any degree the fresh spur to diligence on the part of the old population, caused by the new labor. In islands like Trinidad, where the amount of unredeemed land suited for such production is almost unlimited, the new labor introduced cannot for a long time press on the old labor at all. But wherever the amount of land fitted for this kind of culture is nearly exhausted, the presence of the new competition will soon be felt. And, in any case, it is only through this gradual supply of the labor market that we can hope to bring the wholesome spur of necessity to act eventually on the laboring classes. Englishmen, indeed, may well think that at times the good influences of this competitive jostling for employment are overrated and its evil underrated. But this is far from true of the negro race. To their slow and unambitious temperament, influences of this kind are almost unalloyed good, as the great superiority in the population of Barbadoes to that of the other islands sufficiently shows."
The Economist, in further discussing this question, favors the introduction of a permanent class of laborers, not only that the cultivation may be increased, but because there is "no doubt at all that if a larger supply of labor could be attained in the West Indies, without any very great incidental evils, the benefit experienced even by the planters would be by no means so great as that of the negro population themselves;" and thinks that "the philanthropic party, in their tenderness for the emancipated Africans, are sometimes not a little blind to the advantages of stern industrial necessities;" and that, "what the accident of population and soil has done for Barbadoes, it cannot be doubted that a stream of immigration, if properly conducted, might do in some degree for the other islands."
Lest it should be thought that the Economist stands alone in its representations in relation to the failure of negro free labor in Jamaica, we quote a statement of the Colonial Minister, which recently appeared in the New York Tribune, and was thence transferred to the American Missionary, February, 1859:
"The Colonial Minister says: 'Jamaica is now the only important sugar producing colony which exports a considerable smaller quantity of sugar than was exported in the time of slavery, while some such colonies since the passage of the Emancipation Act have largely increased their product.'"
Time is thus casting light upon the question of the capacity of the African race for voluntary labor. Jamaica included 311,692 negroes, at the time of emancipation, out of the 660,000 who received their freedom in the whole of the West Indian islands. This was but little less than half of the whole number. It was a fair field to test the question of the willingness of the free negro to work. But what is the result? We have it admitted by both the Economist and the Colonial Minister, that there has been a vast falling off in the exports from Jamaica, and that a spur of some kind must be applied to secure their adopting habits of industry. The spur of the "whip" having been thrown away, the remedy proposed is to press them into a corner, by immigration from India and China, so that the securing of bread shall become the great necessity with them, and they be compelled to labor or starve, as has been the case in Barbadoes. This is the opinion of the Economist, always opposed to slavery, but now convinced that the "slow, indolent temperament of the African race" needs such a "spur" to quicken it "into a voluntary industry essential to its moral discipline, and most favorable to its intellectual culture."