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

by Unknown

As early as 1792, a Report to Parliament stated that, in the course of the preceding twenty years, one hundred and seventy-seven estates in Jamaica had been sold for the payment of debts; the cultivation of fifty-five had been abandoned; ninety-two were in the hands of creditors; and 80,021 executions, amounting to £22,500,000 sterling ($109,012,500), had been lodged in the provost marshal's office. In 1805, the Reports described the condition of the West India planters as one of "increasing embarrassment, and impending ruin." The Reports in 1807, 1808, 1812, 1830, and 1832, were still more lamentable. In 1830, four years before emancipation, Lord Chandos presented to Parliament a petition from West India planters and merchants, setting forth "the extreme distress under which they labored." In his speech, in support of the petition, he said, "They are reduced to a state in which they are obliged earnestly to solicit relief from Parliament. It is not possible for them to stand up against such a pressure any longer." Mr. Bright said: "The distress of the West India Colonies is unparalleled in the country. Many families, who formerly lived in comparative affluence, are reduced to absolute penury." The West India Reporter also quoted thus from a Report on the commercial state of the Colonies: "There are strong concurrent testimonies and proofs that, unless some speedy and efficient measures of relief are adopted, the ruin of a great number of the planters must inevitably take place." An able writer in the Edinburgh Review informs us that, "In the small island of St. Lucia an Encumbered Estate Court was established in 1833, and, small as that island is,[1] in the first eighteen months, liabilities were recorded to the enormous amount of £1,089,965 ($5,280,880); all debts incurred under slavery. Nor did that island stand alone. In each one of them the same state of things prevailed." The laborers were decreasing rapidly. The Edinburgh Review declares: "What gave the death-blow to slavery, in the minds of British statesmen, was the appalling fact that the Population Returns, from only eleven of the Colonies, showed that, in the course of twelve years, the slaves had decreased 60,219. Had similar returns been procured from the other seven Colonies, they must have shown a decrease of little, if at all, less than 100,000. Had the same rate of decrease gone on, one century would have seen the extinction of slavery by the extinction of the slaves."[2] Production was also decreasing. A table of exports, in the Appendix to Mr. Bigelow's work on Jamaica, shows that, in the ten years ending 1830, there was a decrease in that island, of 201,843 hogsheads of sugar, from the amount in the ten years ending with 1820. In view of these, and similar facts, the Edinburgh Review says: "Plainly, the artificial, arbitrary interference of law with the freedom of man, and freedom of trade, was bringing about the extinction of the working-class, and was whirling their masters along to utter ruin."

At the time when the planters were complaining of such excessive embarrassments, they had a monopoly of the sugar market in Great Britain, so close that not even the East India Colonies were allowed to compete with them; a monopoly, which cost the consumers $25,000,000 annually. They paid no wages to their laborers; and furnished them merely with rags to tie about their loins, and enough of coarse food to keep them in working condition. Yet while they produced from a prolific soil the great staples of commerce, without paying for the labor, and with an enormous premium from the consumers in Great Britain, they were so nearly reduced to "ruin," that they were compelled "earnestly to solicit relief from Parliament."

A few facts will help to explain this apparent anomaly. In the first place, the system of slavery contravenes all the laws of human nature, and therefore contains within itself the seed of ultimate ruin. It takes away the motive power from the laborers, who naturally desire to shirk as much as possible of the work, which brings them no pay; consequently, overseers and drivers must be hired to force out of them their unwilling toil. It makes them indifferent to the destruction of property on estates, in whose prosperity they have no interest. It stimulates them to theft, by perpetual privations, from which they have no prospect of relief. It kills their ingenuity and enterprise, by rendering them utterly unavailing for any improvement in their own condition; while all their faculties are stupefied by the extreme ignorance in which they must necessarily be kept in order to be held in slavery. The effects on the white population are quite as injurious, though in a different way. Slavery unavoidably renders labor a degradation, and consequently, it is a matter of pride with them to live in idleness. Extravagance and dissipation follow of course. All, who have examined into the subject, are aware that intemperance, licentiousness, and gambling, are fearfully prevalent in slave-holding countries. One hint will suffice to suggest the immoral condition of the West Indies, during slavery. It is a well-known fact that the white subordinates employed by planters were very liable to lose their situations if they married; because it was for the interest of the proprietors to have them live with slaves, and raise up laborers for the estates. As for the slaves, being regarded as animals, and treated like live-stock, they unavoidably lived like animals. Modesty and self-respect were impossible to their brutalized condition. In this Tract, I merely aim at presenting a business-view of the subject. Therefore, I will not describe the cruelties, which were continually practised, and which kept the worst passions of both masters and slaves in perpetual excitement. The barbarities recorded were the same that always must prevail, under a system of coerced labor and irresponsible power.

In addition to the unavoidable expenses, and inevitable deterioration involved in the very nature of slavery, the West India planters had another difficulty to contend with. "Nearly the whole of the sugar estates were owned by absentees, the greater part of whom never set foot in the islands." This involved the necessity of hiring managers and attorneys to look after the property. Mr. Bigelow computes the average annual expense of an estate to have been $3,000, solely to pay for the absence of the proprietor. The Rev. Henry Bleby, who was a missionary in the West Indies before emancipation, and has resided there ever since, says: "Let us look at the condition of a West India estate under slavery. There were four or five hundred slaves. True, there was little expended for their food; but their masters had to supply them with so many yards of cloth a year, and several other small articles. That was one item of expense. Then, to superintend the labor of these slaves, there must be four bookkeepers, as they were called; one to superintend the still, another the boiling-house, another the cattle on the estate, and another, sometimes two or three others, to superintend the people in the field. All these had to be fed and salaried. Then there was the overseer, with his harem, living at considerable expense out of the estate, and at a high salary. Over all these was the attorney, who took his commission out of every thing the estate produced, and lived in the great house with his servants and harem. Then there was the proprietor living with his family in princely style, in France or England. All this was to be drawn out of the produce of one estate! I should like to know whether there is any property that would not be brought to ruin, with so many living upon it, and out of it."

Everybody knows how property is cared for, when there are none but hirelings to look after it. All accounts of the West Indies abound with the complaints of proprietors concerning the neglect, wastefulness, and fraud of their subordinates. Accumulation of salaries being the principal object in view, one manager often superintended many estates. Dr. Davy, in his work on the West Indies, speaks of twenty-three estates in Montserrat, managed by one agent. He reports nineteen of them as "imperfectly cultivated," or "abandoned;" which is by no means surprising, under the circumstances. Mr. Bigelow met in Jamaica, a gentleman who had come from England to ascertain why he was always sinking more and more money upon his estate. Upon inquiry, he discovered that his manager lived sixty miles from the property, and had never seen it.

With such drains upon their income, the proprietors were, of course, obliged to borrow money continually. Year after year, a gambling game was carried on between them and the merchants of London. The merchant would advance money to the planter, on condition that all the produce of the estate should be consigned to his house, and that whatever was needed on the estate, in his line of business, should be bought of him. The merchant charged what price he pleased for his own articles, and took what commission he pleased for selling the produce. "Thus," says Mr. Bigelow, "the planter's candle was burning at both ends." If there was a hurricane, or a severe drought, or an insurrection of the slaves, which caused a failure of the crops, the proprietor was obliged to mortgage his lands to get the necessary supply of money. Thus a great many of the estates passed into the hands of British merchants, and had a heavy interest to pay in addition to other expenses.

Such was the state of things, when the British people, ignorant of this financial chaos, and actuated solely by motives of justice and humanity, started the idea of abolishing slavery. When the planters became aware that the measure might be carried, they met it with a furious storm of opposition. They characterized it as an "impertinent interference with their rights," and threatened to withdraw from the British government, unless the project were relinquished. Still they petitioned for relief; any kind of relief, except from the destructive system, which had brought them to the verge of ruin. To that they swore they never would submit. Missionaries, who went to the West Indies to impart religious instruction to the slaves, were assaulted with brickbats and imprisoned on false pretences. Their houses were attacked, and their chapels demolished. A Colonial Union was formed, the object of which was to drive away every instructor of the negroes. Those in England, who sought to help on the cause of emancipation, were hated with inconceivable intensity. Women in the West Indies expressed a wish to get hold of Wilberforce "that they might pull his heart out." With these wrathful vociferations were mingled every form of lamentable prediction concerning the ruin "fanatical philanthropists" were bringing on the Colonies. They said if their mad designs were carried into execution, the masters would all have their throats cut, and their houses burned. What they seemed especially concerned about was that "the negroes could not possibly take care of themselves." They were too lazy to work without the whip. They would abscond to the woods, and live there like animals. The few, who might be willing to work, would be robbed by the others; that would lead to continual fighting, and there would be prodigious slaughter. Thousands also would die of disease, from want of the fostering care of their masters. In short, blacks and whites would all be swallowed up in one great gulf of swift destruction.

The Colonial press was, of course, on the side of slavery. There was all manner of suppression of truth, and propagation of every sort of falsehood on the subject. But through all these obstacles, the work of reform went slowly and steadily on. It took twenty years of hard labor and violent agitation to abolish the slave-trade; then eleven years, still more stormy, to abolish the system. But, at last, the Act of Emancipation was passed, and went into effect in 1834. The slaves received nothing from the British government for centuries of unrequited toil. But £20,000,000 ($96,900,000) were paid to the masters, for ceasing to extort labor by the lash. That was called Compensation. With the idea of preparing the bondmen for freedom, the Act of Emancipation was unfortunately clogged with an Apprenticeship System, by which it was ordained that the emancipated laborers were to work six years for their masters, without wages, as before. But they were to work nine hours a day, instead of twelve; and were to have half of Friday, and the whole of Saturday, for themselves. The power of punishing was also taken from masters, and transferred to magistrates. Household slaves were to become entirely free in 1838, and field slaves in 1840.