The West Indies and the Spanish Main. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE, Author of "Barchester Towers," "Doctor Thorne," "The Bertrams," etc. London. 1859. 8vo. pp. 395.
This entertaining volume has already reached a second edition in England. It is made up, in great part, of a series of lively sketches of the West Indies, British Guiana, and some parts of Central America, taken on a hasty tour during the winter and spring of last year. Its style is by no means so good as that of which Mr. Trollope has shown himself the master in his popular novels; it is disfigured by Carlylisms, and other inelegancies, and bears many marks of negligence and haste. With a little pains, Mr. Trollope might have made his book much better, and of much more permanent value. In spite of a sense of real humor, he sometimes falls into heavy attempts at smartness and fun; and although he has a quick eye for the essential traits of character, he not infrequently runs into trivial details. In travelling with him, one is not quite certain whether his companion is a gentleman. Breakfasts, lunches, and dinners hold a great place in his thoughts. He gives far too much attention to rum-and-water, brandy-and-water, and the varieties of drinking and eating in general. He has neither the ease nor the self-restraint which mark the thoroughly well-bred man of the world; but he is, nevertheless, good-natured, amusing, and likable. The chief merit of his book arises from the fact that he has seen much and many parts of the world, has been a student of life and manners, and thus has acquired skill in observation and facility of comparison. The conclusions which he draws from what he sees may be right or wrong; but he knows well how to state what has come to his notice, and his readers may get from his pictures many valuable indications in regard to men and to social conditions, whether they accept his conclusions or not.
The state of the British West Indies is one of peculiar interest at the present day, both in a social and an economical point of view. The great questions opened by the emancipation of the slaves in these islands, in 1834, are not yet settled; and upon the solution of the problems now being worked out there depends not only their own future, but also, in great measure, the future of all the countries in which slavery still exists. If the results of emancipation prove, on the whole, advantageous both to masters and slaves, the question of the universal and comparatively speedy abolition of slavery would be virtually decided. If, however, it should be shown that the results, in the long run, are disastrous both to whites and blacks, or to either of these classes, then, although no one can doubt that slavery must sooner or later be done away with, wherever it now exists, the time of its abolition may be indefinitely postponed, and other means of accomplishing it must be devised and adopted, than those which the example of the West Indies will have proved injurious.
As in regard to all matters which have been vehemently discussed, the accounts in regard to the effects of emancipation in the West Indies differ widely; but the weight of authority tends to show, that, putting aside for the moment all moral considerations, the scale inclines towards the side of good. Mr. Trollope, who writes without prejudice, may be taken as a fair witness, so far as his opportunities for observation extended; and as his views will not satisfy the warm partisans of either side, it may perhaps be assumed that they are in the main correct. In his chapter on the Black Men in Jamaica, he says: "I shall be asked, having said so much, whether I think that emancipation was wrong. By no means. I think that emancipation was clearly right; but I think that we expected far too great and far too quick a result from emancipation. These people [the negroes] are a servile race, fitted by nature for the hardest physical work, and apparently at present fitted for little else. Some thirty years since, they were in a state where such work was their lot; but their tasks were exacted from them in a condition of bondage abhorrent to the feelings of the age, and opposed to the religion which we practised. For us, thinking as we did, slavery was a sin. From that sin we have cleansed ourselves. But the mere fact of doing so has not freed us from our difficulties. Nor was it to be expected that it should. The discontinuance of a sin is always the commencement of a struggle."
This is well said. The negroes, freed from the bondage of labor, suddenly becoming masters of themselves, with simple and easily satisfied wants, with abundant means of subsistence, to be procured at the expense of the least possible effort, exposed to no competition from the pressure of population, and endowed by nature with indolent temperaments, naturally took to leading idle and easy lives, and refused to work except at their own pleasure. They had, as a class, no desire of regular and continued occupation, and little sense of the worth of work in itself. There was nothing surprising in this, and the blacks were little to be blamed for it. But the world will not advance, unless men work; and any country where there is not a sufficient stimulus for labor is in the course of decline. The inevitable results followed in the West Indies from the difficulty of obtaining labor. In Jamaica, the largest and most important of these British islands, other and widely different causes—mistakes in legislation, previous financial embarrassment, and especially the unwillingness or inability of the planters to recognize the necessities of their altered position—contributed to bring about a condition of wretched adversity. Estates went out of cultivation, expensive establishments failed, roads were disused, and the island was full of the signs of decay. The negroes, indeed, were happy; a few days' work in the course of the year secured them subsistence; and irregular labor for wages, on the plantations of their old masters, gave them the means of gratifying their liking for dress and finery.
A full generation has not yet passed since the act of emancipation, but there are already indications that this transitional condition is drawing to an end. A portion, at least, of the negroes are beginning to recognize the responsibilities as well as the privileges of liberty, to seek employment for the sake of raising themselves and their children in the social scale, and to accumulate property. They are not merely free, but are becoming independent. Still the number of those who live from hand to mouth, in the indolent and useless possession of freedom, is very great. In Mr. Trollope's opinion, little is to be expected from the blacks. "To lie in the sun and eat bread-fruit and yams is the negro's idea of being free. Such freedom as that has not been intended for man in this world; and I say that Jamaica, as it now exists, is still under a devil's ordinance." Education is a slow process with the blacks.
But in Jamaica, as elsewhere, where slavery exists, there is a race neither black nor white, but of mixed blood, important in numbers, and important also from possessing a mingling of the qualities of its progenitors, which seems to fit it peculiarly for the prosperous occupation of the tropics. Supposing this colored race to have the power of continuing itself through successive generations, a problem which is as yet unsolved, it would seem as if the future of these islands were mainly in its hands. Of pure whites, there are not more than fifteen thousand in Jamaica; of the mixed race, there are said to be seventy thousand. Before the abolition of slavery, their position was one of degradation; since the abolition, it has greatly improved. They are still looked upon with ill-concealed disdain by their white brothers and sisters; but they are forcing themselves into social recognition and equality. "These people marry now," said a lady to Mr. Trollope; "but their mothers and grandmothers never thought of looking to that at all." There is matter for reflection, as well as for satisfaction, in that sentence.
But as yet the condition of Jamaica is such as may well excite doubt as to the possibility of its recovery from the misfortunes under which it has suffered,—misfortunes due quite as much to the evils of preëxisting slavery, as to the blow given to its prosperity by the act of emancipation. "Are Englishmen in general aware," asks Mr. Trollope, "that half the sugar-estates in Jamaica, and I believe more than half the coffee-plantations, have gone back into a state of bush?—that all this land, rich with the richest produce only some thirty years since, has now fallen back into wilderness?"
Still, if the experiment of emancipation be considered doubtful or disastrous, so far as Jamaica is concerned, it cannot be esteemed so in regard to the chief remaining, islands. In Barbadoes, for instance, there was no squatting-ground for the blacks. The negro was obliged to work or starve. Labor was consequently abundant,—and "there is not a rood of waste land" in the island. Even here, "numerous as are the negroes, they certainly live an easier life than that of an English laborer, earn their money with more facility, and are more independent of their masters." In the report made by the governor of the island, in 1853, he states,—"So far, the success of cultivation by free labor in Barbadoes is unquestionable."[1]
Trinidad, of which but a comparatively small part has been cultivated, and where the negroes have displayed the same indisposition to labor as in Jamaica, is, however, flourishing. Its prosperity seems to be due to the fact, that, during the last few years, some ten or twelve thousand Coolies have been brought from the East Indies, and have supplied the demand for labor.