The planters all agree that emancipation has been an entire success. The only drawback is a somewhat singular one, and illustrates the dependent habits which slavery generates. Under their masters, the slaves were always provided with sufficient medical attendance; but when free, they had not the means or were not prudent enough to secure this, and the consequence has been a great mortality of children, so that the births now scarcely exceed the deaths.
An intelligent English traveller, writing on “Antigua and the Antiguans” in 1844, says in regard to the question, whether the freed negro will work, that he has often observed, when a piece of land was to be holed for sugar-cane by task-work, the negroes rising by one or two o’clock in the morning during moonlight, going to the field and accomplishing a usual day’s work (300 cane-holes) by five or six o’clock in the forenoon; then, after resting a short time, they were prepared for another task, which they completed; and still had some hours left for their own provision-grounds. When the heat is considered, and the labor of digging one cane-hole, (a trench three or four feet square and one foot deep,) we may imagine what the work of opening 600 in a day must be. The same author states that plantations which could not find a purchaser before emancipation are now worth £10,000. Another writer, quoted by Cochin, says in 1845, with reference to the efficiency of labor of the Antiguan negroes, and their employment of machinery, “The colony has made this year, with a field-force of less than 10,000, a harvest almost equal to that which has employed 30,000 laborers in Barbadoes.”
Of the other Leeward Islands, Sewell says, (p. 164,) “The condition of the free peasant rises infinitely above that of the slave. In all, the people are more happy and contented; in all, they are more civilized; in all, there are more provisions grown for home-consumption than ever were raised in the most flourishing days of slavery; in all, the imports have largely increased; in all, a very important trade has sprung up with the United States; from all, there is an exportation of minor articles which were not cultivated twenty years ago, and which, in estimating the industry of a people under a free system, are often most unjustly overlooked. These are considerations from which the planter turns with contemptuous indifference. Sugar, and sugar alone, is his dream, his argument, his faith.” Yet the following table of exports of sugar shows that even in that free labor has been successful.
| Islands. | Annual average from 1820 to 1832. | Exports in 1858. | ||
| Antigua, | 28,580,000 | lbs. | 26,174,000 | lbs. |
| Dominica, | 6,000,000 | 6,263,000 | ||
| Nevis, | 5,000,000 | 4,400,000 | ||
| Montserrat, | 1,840,000 | 1,308,000 | ||
| St. Kitt's, | 12,000,000 | 10,000,000 | ||
| Total, | 45,420,000 | lbs. | 48,145,000 | lbs. |
| Islands. | Annual average from 1820 to 1832. | Value of imports in 1858. | |
| Antigua, | £130,000 | £266,364 | |
| Dominica, | 62,000 | 84,906 | |
| Nevis, | 28,000 | 36,721 | |
| Montserrat, | 18,000 | 17,844 | |
| St. Kitt's, | 60,000 | 109,000 | |
| Total, | £298,000 | £514,835 | lbs. |
Excess of sugar exportations under free labor, 2,725,000 lbs.
Excess of imports with free labor, £216,835
Of Guiana, a resident writes,—“The portion of the native population which in other countries constitutes the working class is estimated here at 70,000 souls. They present the singular spectacle, which we can contemplate in no other part of the world, of a people hardly escaped from slavery, enjoying already properties in land and houses for which they have paid nearly £100,000.”
In a single county, (Berbice,) says Cochin, there had been built in 1843, since emancipation, 1184 houses, and 7,000 additional acres had been put under cultivation. In the whole colony there were 15,906 landed proprietors among the negroes who had become such since 1834. The imports, according to Lord Stanley, during the last six years of slavery, were about $13,915,000; during apprenticeship, about $17,890,000; in the first year of liberty, over $20,000,000; in the second year, about $17,463,670.
We have given, perhaps, a rather dry account of the effects of emancipation on a portion of the British West Indies. But it should be remembered that this question, as it now stands before the world, is mainly a question of figures. The great and damning argument against emancipation is the supposed experience of the West Indies, that the negro will not work except under slavery. The evidences of labor are in part given by figures: the number of freeholds, the price of land, the amount of the productions, the quantity consumed, and the quantity exported. The amount of imports, too, shows the desire and the means of the people to procure foreign commodities. By these plain and irrefutable evidences, we have proved that free labor in the Windward Islands, Trinidad, the Leeward Islands, and Guiana has “paid” much better than slave labor.