Between 1853 and 1855, there was an increase in exports to the amount of £166,049 ($804,507.40).
The Governor, in his report for 1855, says: "I feel more confident of the ultimate restoration of prosperity than I ever did before."
The Governor, in his speech at the opening of the Legislature, 1858, says: "A still progressive increase, both in the quantity of the staple exports, and in the amount of revenue derived from duties on articles of consumption, indicate a gradual improvement in the productive industry of the Colony." He alludes to a succession of dry seasons, that have diminished the crops; and yet with that very serious drawback, the exports were increasing. He admits that complaints still came from the old plantations of a deficiency of continuous labor; which he says he can readily believe, from the "admitted fact that the portion of the agricultural peasantry, who, with their families, industriously and systematically apply themselves to the independent production of sugar, and other staples, is day by day increasing."
When Lord Belmore, the Governor in 1832, said to the Jamaica Assembly, "Depend upon it, gentlemen, the resources of this fine island will never be fully developed, until slavery is abolished," he gave them very great offence. The grandsons of the men he offended will see his prediction verified. Even amid all the desolation and discouragement in 1850, Mr. Bigelow says: "I made extensive inquiry, but I did not find a man upon the island who regretted the Emancipation Act, or who, if I may take their own professions, would have restored slavery, if it had been in their power."
Ernst Noel, who writes from Jamaica to the New York Times, in the winter of 1860, says: "It is an undoubted fact that the exportation of coffee in Jamaica has declined from twenty-five and thirty millions to five and six millions; but it is also an undoubted fact that where one pound was used in the island prior to emancipation ten are used now. [Every laborer has his cup of coffee now.] It is my firm conviction that there is no such great discrepancy between the amount grown at the time of emancipation, and the amount now grown; especially when the extent of exhausted coffee land is taken into account. The same statement will apply with much greater force to provisions of every description. It is undoubtedly true that most of the large coffee properties formerly in cultivation have been abandoned, or turned to other uses. Coffee requires new land; and the clearance of fifty acres of wood is a Herculean enterprise for coffee planters, among whom want of capital prevails as much as among sugar planters. But whatever large coffee planters may say about their profits and losses, it is a notorious fact that thousands and thousands of settlers grow the delicious berry to advantage; as any merchant engaged in the trade will be able to testify. They come to the towns and villages with one, two, six, or a dozen bags, and in this way many a cargo is made up for foreign ports."
The same writer says that several experienced planters, to whom he proposed questions concerning investment of capital in that island, assured him that profits from ten to twenty per cent might be securely counted upon.
Note.—In Mauritius, a fertile island in the Indian Ocean, belonging to Great Britain, the sugar crop, during the last ten years of slavery, averaged 68,741,120 lbs. annually. During four years, after emancipation, beginning with 1845, the average crop was 171,122,500 lbs.; an increase of 102 millions of pounds annually; nearly 150 per cent in favor of free labor.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The population of Jamaica, at the time of emancipation, was 87,000 whites; 311,692 slaves; 55,000 free colored people.
[7] During slavery, the military defence of the West Indies annually cost England £2,000,000 ($9,960,000). For the single insurrection of 1832, in Jamaica, it cost the government $800,000: and private property was destroyed, to the amount of $6,000,000.