We have had an opportunity of receiving but too decisive a proof of the bad effects of suffering the opposite system to go on without restraint. Even twenty-six years ago they had exhibited a display of ruin, which was scarcely equalled by the effects of any regular and permanent cause of evil, in any other age or country. It would scarcely have appeared credible, if it were not established by the records of a public court, that in twenty years, from 1760 to 1780, the executions on estates in the Sheriff’s court amounted in number to above 80,000, and were to the amount in value of £.32,500,000 currency, or about £.22,500,000 sterling. Again; of all the sugar estates in the island at the beginning of the same period of twenty years, nearly one half were, at the end of it, either thrown up as not worth cultivating, or were in the hands of creditors, or mortgagees, or had been sold for their benefit.[[45]]
This was many years before the abolition of the Slave Trade had ever been proposed; and one would have conceived, that the consequences of the system which had been so long pursued, might alone have produced a disrelish for it, and have predisposed the Colonists to adopt another which was recommended by the highest authorities. Prejudice, however, and party spirit, were too powerful for reason and sound policy, as well as for humanity and justice. And what has been the result? The affairs of the colonies have gone on from bad to worse, until the distress being extremely aggravated by another cause, to be presently noticed, the great island of Jamaica is represented, by its own legislature, in a state, to use the compendious terms of a very able and experienced West Indian proprietor, of general distress and foreclosure of property.
During all this time a debt to the mother country, before prodigious, has been gradually accumulating; or rather, perhaps, to say the truth, the merchants of London have for the most part become the real proprietors of colonial estates; while the resident, and even sometimes the absentee planters, have been little more in reality than their stewards and agents.
You will naturally be astonished at the facts which have been here stated; you will naturally ask, what temptations can have been sufficiently strong to prompt men to go on in such a continued course, with speculations which have proved in the main so unprofitable? It is really difficult to account satisfactorily for the phœnomenon. Much is certainly to be ascribed to the operation of that principle in our nature, the gambling principle as it may be termed, the existence and effects of which have been so well explained by Dr. Adam Smith; the disposition to overrate our probable success, and to assign too little weight to contingencies which may disappoint our expectations. However, in the present instance, besides this general cause, we may discover several specific causes of sure and highly powerful operation.
The West Indies are a very wide field, and some few instances of great and rapid success attract more notice than the far more numerous cases which terminate in ruin. The British merchant’s profit from consignments ensures a somewhat ready disposition to assist adventurers in planting. When also, as often happens, there is a glut of Slaves in the West Indian market, as they are an expensive article while they remain unsold, the planter can buy them on a proportionably longer credit. Two and even three years are not seldom allowed; the Planter therefore is tempted to purchase Slaves even if he does not greatly want them, in the hope, that before the time of payment arrives, they will have more than worked out their cost, by the sugars which their labour will have brought to market. In like manner the British merchant trusts, that before the bills drawn on him shall become due, the sugars in his hands will meet them. Thus encouraged, the planter buys. Meanwhile the Slaves must be set to work; and the inadequate funds of their master, the same cause which curtails their food and abridges their other comforts, causes them to be worked the harder. They sicken and drop off, and perish in what is called the seasoning, a mode of death sufficiently important and notorious to have obtained this epithet; a somewhat singular one, considering that the climate of the West Indies and Africa are so much the same. Yet this is a system, which, ruinous as it is, has a natural tendency to increase; which may grow even to an indefinite extent. The evils of it, however, though too long unacknowledged, are now at least felt by all who are not blinded by interest or passion. An immense mass of the national capital has thus been invested, I had almost said has been sunk, in our Trans-Atlantic Empire. In one respect it may be said, that, in accordance with the principles so clearly developed by the great political Economist who has been already named, our commercial accumulations have found their way to the land, and have become an agricultural capital. But it is to land many thousand miles removed from the mother country.
Excessive accumulation of capital in the West Indies.
I admit all the advantages, to their utmost extent, which we derive, considered as a maritime nation, from these distant possessions. But there are peculiar circumstances in their situation, which must make every considerate politician acknowledge how much more it would have been for the benefit of this country if a part of that capital had been employed at home. What is expended in the improvement of our own soil is so much permanently added to the wealth, resources, and population of Great Britain. It is well digested, and well assimilated nutriment; and it adds proportionably to our muscular strength. It is inseparably a part of ourselves; it must share our fortunes; and in all times and circumstances contribute to our benefit. Even the wealth which is acquired by British subjects in the East Indies is brought home to be spent in our own country. It improves our land, or it increases the funds to be employed in commercial or manufacturing enterprizes.
How differently circumstanced is that part of our national capital, which is invested in the West Indies. It is in a situation where it is peculiarly open to seizure; and where, in consequence, it often invites the attack of an enemy, while at the same time it is defended at an immense expence of the lives of our fellow subjects. From a fatal principle of internal weakness, it may at once be dissipated by the explosion of an insurrection, or it may be separated from us by other events which no one can call impossible. Not only would our gain, from a large part at least of this capital, have been greater in amount, if it had been invested within our own island; but still more, the gain, whatever it might have been, would have been held by a less precarious tenure. Of West Indian, even more truly than of any other riches, it may be affirmed, that they are apt to make themselves wings and fly away.
But notwithstanding the decisive proofs which have been adduced, of the ruinous consequences of the existing system; notwithstanding the tried efficiency, and salutary operation, of those great principles, to which, in the event of the abolition, we look for the advancing safety, happiness, and greatness of our Western Colonies; notwithstanding, still more, the acknowledged authority of that great man, whose opinion of the tendency of the abolition to promote the solid and permanent prosperity, as well as security, of the West Indies, was so repeatedly declared—I am yet aware that the statement of the contrary opinion by the Colonists themselves, and by their agents and correspondents in this country, greatly biasses the judgment of many considerate and respectable men.
Probable causes of the opposition to abolition.