The Right Way the Safe Way / Proved by Emancipation in the British West Indies, and Elsewhere

by Unknown

"Sometimes, a single fact will prove more convincing than a multiplicity of arguments. I will state one fact, of which I am assured on the best authority. The value of land in Barbadoes is so much increased since emancipation, that an estate will now sell for as much as it did formerly, when the slaves necessary for its cultivation were included in the purchase. Who would have believed this to be possible, before slavery was abolished?

"Now let us compare the moral condition of the population with what it was previous to emancipation. It is admitted that, in the time of slavery, planters, attorneys, managers, merchants, etc., were licentious. Concubinage was common, and not held in discredit. There was a looseness of conduct and conversation, which could not fail to have an injurious effect on the mind. Youth was particularly exposed to this degrading and enervating influence, when there was no check to indulgence, no call to exercise control; when too often a gentleman's house was a kind of brothel, and when instances occurred of planters keeping in slavery their own offspring by slave mothers. From what I have seen and heard, the higher classes of the white population now appear to be exemplary in their conduct. A natural change has also taken place with regard to the emancipated race. Formerly, a colored woman esteemed it an honor to be the kept mistress of a white man. Now, she considers it disreputable; and few such connections are found. Marriage is more common among the black and colored people. The understanding is, that marriage is right, and concubinage wrong. There is still a good deal of irregular connection among them; the marriage tie is loose, and the senses little under the control of principle. But these remarks apply to the older portion of the population, whose habits were formed in slavery, when the marriage ceremony was not permitted, and when chastity was not known, even by name. I believe they do not apply to the rising generation, a certain proportion of whom have come under the influence of moral and religious training. The children of the laborers manifest great facility in learning at school; and the men have great aptitude in learning whatever they take an interest in, belonging to their trades and occupations; such as the use of implements in husbandry, and improved methods in the useful arts."

Dr. Davy states that three-fourths of the laborers in Antigua had cottages of their own, and small freeholds. Small as that island is, there were, at the time he wrote, about eighty-seven villages, all built by emancipated laborers, near the estates on which they were formerly chattels. He says: "It is a mistake, often committed, to suppose the African is by nature indolent, less inclined to work than the European. He who has witnessed, as I have, their indefatigable and provident industry, will be disposed perhaps to overrate, rather than underrate, the activity of the negroes."

In 1857, the Governor of Tobago published this statement: "I deny that the peasantry are abandoned to slothful habits. On the contrary, I assert that a more industrious class does not exist in the world; at least, when they are working for themselves."

When Louis Philippe sent Commissioners to the British West Indies, to inquire into the state of things, with a view to emancipation in the French Colonies, they published a Report, from which I translate the following extract: "In Guiana, some planters declare the impossibility of getting along with the existing system. Others, on the contrary, assure us that they never want for laborers; they praise the assiduity of the blacks, and say they produce as much as under the former system. So much for the old planters. But when we consult the new planters, men who know coerced labor only by tradition, we find among them entire unanimity. They all tell us that the labor is satisfactory, and that their agricultural operations succeed well."

Rev. Henry Bleby has been a missionary in the West Indies for thirty years. He resided there before emancipation and since. On the 1st of August, 1858, he delivered an address at Abington, Mass., from which I extract the following: "Since I have been here, I have heard that emancipation is understood to have been a failure. I am prepared to give that statement an unqualified contradiction. In no sense whatever has the emancipation of the slaves in the British Colonies proved a failure. I am at present laboring as a minister among the colored churches in Barbadoes, and I can tell you that never, even in the most palmy lays of slavery, was there such prosperity as now. This year, a long drought has lessened the crop of sugar; yet they have raised more than double the amount of produce they ever raised under slavery; and with no greater amount of labor, than in the time of slavery. You cannot get an acre of land, in any part of the island, for less than four or five hundred dollars. In my own neighborhood an estate of not more than two or three hundred acres was sold for nearly $90,000 in your money; paid in cash. The case is the same in Antigua, where I lived three years. A member of my own church there bought an estate, which was sold under a decree of Chancery for $24,225. He has taken off three valuable crops, which have more than repaid the original purchase money; and he has been offered $48,450 for the property, and refused to take it. That is the kind of ruin that has come upon the West Indies because of emancipation!

"As for the moral condition of Barbadoes, I believe the criminal statistics, for the last five or six years, would compare, without disadvantage, with any country under heaven. We seldom hear of any thing like serious crimes. Intemperance is not prevalent among the people. I have a membership of seventeen hundred colored persons, and, during the last two years, I have not had one single case of intemperance reported to me. Every sabbath our churches are crowded with people anxious to receive instruction. I know of no people in the world who will make such efforts, and exercise such self-denial, to obtain education for their children, as the people of Barbadoes. One of my colored church members had just finished manufacturing his little portion of sugar, grown on part of the half-acre of land on which his house stood, and on which he raised provisions for his family; and he brought me six dollars in advance, as school fees for his four children the next twelve months. It is the only instance I ever knew of a man in his condition pre-paying the education of his children for a year. It is a falsehood that emancipation has failed to improve the condition of the colored race. Throughout the West Indies, in every island, the condition of the people is incomparably superior to what it was in slavery. Some say if it has not ruined the laborers, it has ruined the planters. I deny that statement, as plainly as I deny the other. Emancipation proved a blessing, instead of a curse, to the proprietors. What I have told you concerning the prices of land are facts that speak volumes in regard to the sort of ruin brought upon British planters by emancipation."

Lord Stanley, now Earl of Derby, in a despatch, dated February, 1842, says: "Experience has shown, what reason would anticipate, that the industry of the negro, like that of all mankind, is drawn out just in proportion to the interest he has in his labor." Lord John Russell declared in one of his public speeches: "None of the most inveterate opponents of our recent measures of emancipation allege that the negroes have turned robbers, or plunderers, or bloodthirsty insurgents. What appears from their statements is that they have become shopkeepers and petty traders, hucksters, and small freeholders. A blessed change this, which Providence has enabled us to accomplish!"

Sir Francis Hincks, formerly Prime Minister of Canada, is Governor of the Windward Islands, which comprise Barbadoes, St. Vincent, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Tobago. He is distinguished for financial ability, and practical good sense as a statesman. Being on a visit to England, he was present at an anniversary meeting in London, August 1st, 1859; on which occasion, he offered the following resolution: "That, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies, this meeting joyfully records its satisfaction in the retrospect of that great act of national justice and sound policy; and emphatically affirm that the emancipated population of those Colonies have triumphantly vindicated their right to freedom, and the justice of the Act of Emancipation, by the signal progress they have since made, morally, religiously, and politically."