Page images
PDF
EPUB

a great curse abolition has been to the French This last act in this abolition tragedy now and negroes, we quote from p. 251, as follows: remains for us to perform. The other acts we "Since the expulsion of the French from the island, St. have scrupulously imitated, and it only remains Domingo has been nominally independent; but slavery for us to finish up the "afterpiece." The trahas been far indeed from being abolished, and the condi-gedians, prompters, supes and all are on the tion of the people anything but ameliorated by the change. Nominally free, the blacks have remained really enslaved. stage, playing to crowded houses. Compelled to labor, by the terrors of military discipline, for a small part of the produce of the soil, they have retained the severity, without the advantages of servitude; the industrious habits, the flourishing aspect of the island have disappeared; the surplus wealth, the agricultural opulence of the fields, have ceased; from being the greatest exporting island in the West Indies, it has ceased to raise any sugar; and the inhabitants, reduced to half their Republican task masters, have relapsed into the indolence and inactivity of savage life.

"The revolution of St. Domingo has demonstrated that the negroes can occasionally exert all the vigor and heroism which distinguish the European character: but there is, as yet, no reason to suppose that they are capable of the continued efforts, the sustained and persevering toil, requisite to erect the fabric of civilized freedom. An observation of Gibbon seems decisive on this subject: 'The inaction of the negroes does not seem to be the effect either of their virtue or of their pusillanimity. They indulge, like the rest of mankind, their passions and appetites, and the adjacent tribes are engaged in frequent acts of hostility. But this rude ignorance has never invented any effectual weapons of defense or destruction; they appear incapable of forming any extensive plans of government or conquest, and the obvious inferiority of their mental faculties has been discovered and abused by the nations of the temperate zone. Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked from the coast of Guinea but they embark in chains, never to return to their native country; and this constant emigration, which, in the space of two centuries, might have furnished armies to overrun the globe, accuses the guilt of Europe and the weakness of Africa.

"If the negroes are not inferior, either in vigor, courage, or intelligence to the European, how has it happened that for six thousand years, they have remained in the savage state? What has prevented mighty empires arising on the banks of the Niger, the Quarra, or the Congo, in the same way as on those of the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Nile? Heat of climate, intricacy of forests, extent of desert, will not solve the difficulty, for they exist to as great an extent in the plains of Mesopotamia or Hindostan as in Central Africa. It is vain to say the Europeans have retained the Africans in that degraded condition, by their violence, injustice and the slave trade.

"How has it happened that the inhabitants of that vast and fruitful region have not risen to the government of the globe, and inflicted on the savages of Europe the evils now set forth as the cause of their depression? Did not all nations start alike in the career of infant improvement? and was not Egypt, the cradle of civilization, nearer the Central Africa than the shores of Britain? In the earliest representations of nations in existence the paintings on the walls of the tombs of the Kings of Egypt, the distinct races of the Asiatics, the Jews, the Hottentots, aud Europeans are clearly marked; but the blue-eyed and white-haired sons of Japhet are represented in cowskins, with the hair turned outward, in the pristine state of pas

toral life, while the Hottentots are already clothed in the garb of civilized existence. What since has given so mighty an impulse to European civilization, and detained in a stationary or declining state the immediate neighbors of Egyptian and Carthagenian greatness? It is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion but that, in the qualities requsite to create and perpetuate civilization, the African is decidedly inferior to the European race; and if any doubt could exist on this subject, it would be removed by the subsequent history and present state of the Haytian Republic."See Mackenzie's St, Domingo, vol. ii, 260, 321, The following table contains the comparative wealth, produce, and trade of St. Domingo, before 1789, and in 1832, after forty years of nominal freedom.

ST. DOMINGO.

Population......

Sugar exported....

Coffee...

1789. .600,000 .672,0000,000 lbs. .86,789,000 lbs.

[blocks in formation]

Ships employed in trade...........1,680

1832. 280,000 None. 32,000,000 lbs

1 167 None. None.

[ocr errors]

CHAPTER II.

EFFECTS AND INCIDENTS OF AGITATION IN THE
WEST INDIES.

Agitation of the Slavery Question in England... Abolition of the Slave Trade... English Philanthropists Define their Position against immediate Emancipation...Abolition of Slavery in the British West Indies: Effects of such Emancipation... Testimony of Anti-Slavery men...Decline of Commerce... Destruction of Agriculture...The Negroes Tending to Heathenism... Valuable Statistics respecting Hayti...Indolence and Destitution of the Negroes... Present Condition of Hayti...Abolition Testimony...The Results of Emancipation in Jamaica... Census and Statistics... Great Falling Off in Products...Estates Going to Decay...The Negro Receding into a Savage State....The Public Debt Increasing....The "London Times" Owns Up...Dr. CHANNING'S Prophecy not Fulfilled...TROLLOP and the "London Times"....Negroes will not render Voluntary Labor...Testimony of numerous Abolitionists, showing the Effects of Emancipation in the West Indies...Effect in Mexico... Mr. LINCOLN'S Opinion...Statistics Applicable to the Question in the West Indies and the United States...General Conclusions, etc.

SLAVERY AGITATION IN ENGLAND.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

In England, for more than two centuries, the question of abolition was agitated, CANNING, CLARKSON, WILBERFORCE, BURKE and other humanitarians devoted their lives to the subject, and the world has given them credit for unambitious and human impulses, and while these philanthropists scorned to make political merchandise of their prejudices against slavery, their agitation of the subject, horde of demagogues, cheap philanthropists and as in Rome and France, brought to the surface a political agitators, who of course jostled from the stage an equal number of Statesmen. These agitators are indigious to all civilized countries, and are ever ready to mount the most popular hobby on which to ride into place and power, and herein we have a melancholy parallel in this country.

In 1798 Mr PITT introduced his bill in the slave trade, which finally became a law, and House of Commons for the abolition of the that inhuman traffic was no longer patronized by the British flag. But the system of slavery introduced under the ægis of that flag in America and in the British West Indies, had so fastened its fangs on the body politic, and so interwoven itself among all relations of life, that to attempt its sudden extirpation was considered by the wisest and best philanthropists of the day as an evil even greater than the system itself. PALEY, the great emancipationist. after a long agitation exclaimed, "The truth is, emancipation should be gradual, or the consequences may be terrible."

CANNING, the great English emancipation

ist, in his speech on the subject in Parliament, | she withholden from them? What production of any zone March 6th, 1824, said:

If I am asked whether I am for the permanent existance of slavery in our colonies, I say no; but if I am asked whether I am favorable to its immediate abolition, I say no; and if I am asked which I would prefer, permanent slavery or immediate abolition, I do not know whether under all the perplexing circumstances of the case, I should not prefer things remaining as they are.-Canning's Select Speeches, p. 414.

Here, we see the well grounded fears of a real philanthropist, who looked to remote consequences rather than to immediate political advantage.

It was not until 1833, thirty-five years after Pitt introduced his measure for the abolition of the slave trade, that England abolished slavery in her eighteen West Indian colonies, at a cost of $100,000,000, and it should be remembered that the home Government had no slaves, and hence nothing to fear, except to the pockets of her West Indian merchants, nor had she any constitutional barriers in the way But, although slavery has been abolished in the British West Indies for over thirty years, and the system of free labor and African freedom thoroughly tested, there is no historical dissent from the well known fact that both master and slave, in every material fact pertaining to their commercial prosperity, their physical, moral and religious condition, are immeasurably below the standard of their former condition. Let a few statistical and historical facts settle this point.

[blocks in formation]

says:

“It is extremely difficult to convey to one unacquainted

with the richness and variety of the island scenery of the tropics, a correct impression of its gorgeous scenery.Islands rising from a crystal sea, clothed with a vegetation of surpassing luxuriance and splendor, and of every variety, from the tall and graceful palm, the stately and spreading'mahogony, to the bright flowers that seem to have stolen their tints from the glowing sun above them. Birds, with colors as varied and gorgeous as the hues of the rainbow, flit amid the dark green foliage of the forests, and flamingoes, with their scarlet plumage, flash along the shore. Fish, of the same varied hues, glide through waters so clear that for fathoms below the surface they can be distinctly seen. Turn the eye where it will, on sea or land, some bright color flashes before it. Nature is here a queen indeed, and dressed for a gala day." To this gorgeous picture may be added the fact that all the lucious fruits of the tropics, oranges, lemons, citrons, mangoes, coffee, plantains, bananas, yams, maize, millet, pine apples, melons, grapes, &c., grow spontaneously. Such a paradise-such a garden of Edenought to secure wealth, prosperity and happiness to even the least deserving effort. A light 'draft' on Prof. HOLTON's work on New Greneda* will pay:

"What more could nature do for this people, or what has *NEW GRENADA: Twenty Months in the Andes. By Isaac F. Holton, M. A. Harper & Bros.

would be unattainable by patient industry, if they knew of such a virtue? But this valley seems to be encircled with the greatest fertility and the finest climate in the world, only to show the miraculous power of idleness and unthrift to keep land poor! Here, the family have sometimes omitted their dinner because there was nothing to eat in the house! Maize, cocoa and rice. when out of season, can hardly be had for love or money; so this valley (Cauca) a very Eden by nature, is filed with hunger and poverty !" A distinguished writer, commenting on the above, says:

"Now, there are over 2,000,000 of square miles essentially in the same position, degraded in morals, lazy in habits, and worthless in every respect. The improvements under the Spaniards are gone to decay and ruin, while the mongrel population do nothing, except insult the name of "God and Liberty" by indulging in pronunciamentos and revolutions.'

When God had made all things save man, He found there was no one to till the ground," so he made Adam. Thus, it seems that the Divine object in creating man was to "till the land"-to labor and earn his sustenance "by the sweat of his brow," and that people who will not labor, defy the purposes of God, and his curses must follow, as we shall see.

The result of French and British philanthropy has been emancipation from labor, and degradation. Misery and want is the result of that emancipation, because it is historically true that the Ethiopean will not labor unless compelled by the thrift of his Caucasian or Castilian superiors, and herein lies the secret of retrogression, pauperism and crime, under the fatal mistake of philanthropists that all men should be equal by human laws, when God by His laws peremptorily forbids it.

In 1800 there was imported from the West Indies cotton to the amount of 17,000,000 lbs., and from the United States 19,789,803 lbs. Thus, in 1800 they were about equally productive in that fabric. In 1840, under their freedom of from 10 to 45 years, the West Indies exported only 866,157 lbs. of cotton, while the United States exported 743,941,061 lbs. Garrison, Thompson, and other British agitators, had predicted that the West Indies, under the new system of freedom would outstrip the slavery accursed United States. But the above facts do not show it in this light.

THE HAYTIEN FREE REPUBLIC.

Hayti is divided into two grand divisions, the Western portion being the Haytien, or negro colony, and the Eastern the Dominican Republic. It is first in size to Cuba, is the most luxuriant and fertile of the Antilles, and contains 27,690 square miles, of which 17,599 are comprised in the Dominican Republic.The entire length of the Island is 406 miles by 163 broad. The population is estimated at from 550,000 to 650,000. The climate and this planet. Gold, silver, platina, sulphur, natual resources surpass any other locality on copper, tin, iron, rock salt, jasper, marble &c. &c, exist in abundance, and under the old system the mines and quarries were made to yield abundance of wealth, but these have long since ceased to be worked, as has the soil, and every department requiring labor.

[ocr errors]

In 1790 Hayti was in the heyday of its pros- | in his work just published, entitled The West perity. "At that time," says a distinguished Indies-their Moral and Social Condition. Mr. writer, it supplied half of Europe with sugar. U. was sent out by the Baptist Missionary SoIt was a French colony and contained a popu- ciety of London, and is an Abolitionist of unlation of 500,000, of which 38,360 were whites doubted orthodoxy. In his description of his and 28,370 free negroes, mostly mulattos, the journey to Port au Prince, he says: rest were slaves." This was the error of the great French revolution, when BRISSOT was agitating the abolition of slavery in the French colonies, on the basis of "liberty, equality and fraternity." In 1793 the freedom of Hayti was decreed, and the 'grand experiment" was entered upon. Let us put in juxtaposition a few statistics that exhibit the result of this humane course. In 1790, three years before emancipation, the exports from Hayti were $27,828,000. The following being the principal productions that entered into the exporting manifests. We compare them below for three periods, ranging from 1790 to 1849, the latest dates which furnish any reliable statisics:

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Here is the result of three periods, the first three years before emancipation, the second thirty-three years after, and the third fifty-six years after. It will be seen that the article of coffee is the only article that has kept up to even an approximation to the original standard, the reason is, though flourishing under good cultivation, yields moderately well under spontaneous growth, and can be procured without agricultural labor, while sugar, indigo, and cotton cannot. Here is a striking evidence of the worthless indolence of the negro when left to himself. The above statistics are taken from the United States Commercial Relations, vol. 1, pp. 561-2, officially reported to Congress and published by its order.

"We passed by many, or through many abandoned plantations, the buildings in ruins, the sugar mills decayed, and the iron pans strewing the road side, cracked and broken But for the law that forbids, on pain of confiscation, foreign merchants. Only once in this long ride did we port of all metals, they would long ago been sold to come upon a mill in use. It was grinding canes, in order to manufacture the syrup from which tafia is made, a kind of inferior rum, the intoxicating drink of the country. The mill was worked by a large overshot or water wheel, the water being brought by an aqueduct from a very considerable distance. With the exception of a few banana

gardens, or smal, patches of maize around the cottages, nowhere did this magnificent and fertile plain show signs

of cultivation.

"In the time of the French occupation, before the Revolution of 1798, thousands of hogsheads of sugar were produced, now not one! All is decay and desolation! The pastures are deserted, and the prickly pear covers the land once laughing with the bright hues of the sugar cane.

"The hydraulic works erected at vast expense, for irrigation, have crumbled to dust. The plow is an unknown implement of culture, although so eminently adapted to the great plains and deep soil of Hayti.

therefore for the enrichment of its people, besides coffee,
"A country so capable of producing for export, and
sugar, cotton, tobacco, cacao, spices-every tropical fruit,
cultivated and desolate! Its rich mines are neither ex-
and many of the fruits of Europe, lies unoccupated, un-
plored nor worked, and its beautiful woods rot in the soil
where they grow.
where they grow. A little logwood is exported, but ebo
ny, mahogony and the finest building timber, rarely fall
The present inhabitants despise all servile labor, and are
before the woodman's axe, and then only for local use.
for the most part content with the spontaneous productions
of the soil and forest."

NIGROES RELAPSING INTO BARBARISM.

As showing the tendency of the negro to relapse into the barbarism of his African progenitors, we copy Mr. UNDERHILL's description of what is known as the Vaudoux religion or serpent worship:

"In collonial times, when the soil was cultivated by "It is a native African superstition, and proves beyond all forced labor, this same country (Hayti) produced for ex- question the rapid return of the Hayti negroes to the port five or six times the amounts now exported."-Ap-original savageism of their African ancestors. pleton's New American Cyclopedia.

"The public revenue is derived chiefly from customs, navigation dues, monopolies, &c, and averages about $1,000,000 a year, The expenditures exceed this amount, and hence the public debt has been constantly increasing." Ibid.

But we are not left wholly to statistics. A foreign resident at the Haytien capital writes:

[ocr errors]

This country has made, since its emancipation, no progress whatever. The population principally live upon the produce of the grown wild coffee plantations; remnants of the French dominion. Properly speaking, plantations of the model of the English in Jamaica, or the Spanish in Cuba, do not exist here. Hayti is the most fertile and the most beautiful of the Antilles, it has more mountains than Cuba, and more space than Jamaica. No where the coffee tree coud better thrive than here, as it especially likes a mountainous soil, but the indolence of the negro has brought the once splendid plantations to decay. They now gather coffee from the grown wild tree. The cultivation of the sugar cane has entirely disappeared, and the Island that once supplied the one half of Europe with sugar now supplies its own wants from Jamaica and the United States."

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF HAYTI.

The present condition of Hayti is more graphically depicted by Mr. E. B. UNDERHILL

Mr. UNDERHILL gives a full description of this disgusting, heathenish rite, from which we select the chorus. The object of which is a small green snake, to worship which the negro naturally has a predisposition, but is repressed by control of the whites. Of late it has been heathenish exercises: revived in Hayti, and we give the chorus of the

[blocks in formation]

Mr. Underhill further describes this heathenish rite:

"The Vaudoux meet in a retired spot, designated at a primary meeting. On entering, they take off their shoes, and bind about their bodies handkerchiefs, in which a red color predominates. The king is known by the scarlet band around his head, worn like a crown, and a scarf of the same color distinguishes the queen. The object of adoration, the serpent, is placed on a stand.It is then worshipped; after which the box is placed on the ground, the queen mounts upon it, is seized with violent tremblings, and gives utterances, to oracles, in re

sponse to the prayers of the worshippers. A dance closes the ceremony. The king puts his hand on the box; a tremor seizes him, which is communicated to the circle. A delirious whirl or dance ensues, heightened by the free use of tafia. The weakest fall as dead, on the spot. The bacchanalian revelers, always dancing and turning about, are borne away into a place close at hand, where sometimes, under the tripple excitement of promiscuous intercourse, drunkenness and darkness, scenes are enacted, enough to make the impassable gcds of Africa itself gnash their teeth with horror."

Can it be possible that the advocates of emancipation find in such lamentable evidences of retrogression, encouragement for continued zeal in a cause that suffers debasement without a remedy? And yet we are told, "only give the negro a chance, and he will become equal to the whites!" Mr. Webley, a missionary, in writing to the London Missionary Herald, Missionary Herald, in 1850, says:

"These Vaudoux almost deluge the Haytien part of the island. They practice witchcraft and mysticism, to an almost indefinite extent. They are singular adepts at poisoning a person rarely escapes them when he has been fixed upon as a victim.'

Such are the sickening orgies of a race we are being called upon to make equally free, at the expense of millions of treasure and the best Caucasian blood in our nation. History furnishes us no example on this planet where the negro race, with every advantage at their command, have shown their ability for colonization and self-government, even approxiapproximating that of the white race.

THE RESULT IN JAMAICA.

Jamaica is the most extensive of all the British West Indies It is longitudinally 150 miles in extent, and 50 miles broad, containing near 6,500 square miles. The census of 1844 showed the following population:

Whites

Mulattoes.
Negroes

Total....

15,779 68,529 293,128

[blocks in formation]

Upon which the author of Results of Emancipation in the North and West India Islands, remarks:

"The only crop that had increased was that of Pimento or all-spice,' the increase of which, instead of being an evidence of the industry of the negro, is the reverse. The Pimento tree grows wild in Jamaica, and rapidly spreads over land formerly under cultivation. As the plantations were abandoned, they were overrun with this tree, and the negro women and children pick the berries without the trouble of cultivation. The coffee tree to a certain extent is like the Pimento, and grows wild in many places, hence the production of coffee has not fallen off in the same proportion as that of sugar, which can only be produced by careful cultivation. The coffee crop of Jamaica, however, in 1813, before the overthrow of slave labor, was 34,045,585 13,816 | Ibs, but the average crop for the past ten years has not been 81,065 over 5,000,000 lbs., while the sugar crop had fallen in 1853 346,374 as low as 20,000 hhds. These facts and statistics demonstrate the downhill progress of Jamaica, and show what. 441,255 may be expected wherever the experiment of free negroism is attempted.

...377,436 The census of 1861, and the last one taken, shows the following:

Whites
Mulattoes
Negroes

Total........

It

Of this number, after twenty-eight years of freedom, only 50,726 could read or write. It will be seen also, that the white population decreases, while the negro and mulatto portion rapidly increased, thus showing that in time the white race must be merged and lost in the black race-a not very flattering aspect for the pride of blood.

Jamaica, like the other West Indies. abounds in all the rich minerals, woods and The Island has been untropical vegetation der the paw of the British lion ever since the halcyon days of Cromwell, and flourished with

stint till 1838, the expiration of the apprentice system, under the emancipation act. Since that time the progress of the Island, has been positively downward in all that constitutes

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"The rapidity with which estates have been abandoned in Jamaica, and the decrease in the taxable property of the Island, is also astounding. The movable and the immovable property of Jamaica was estimated at £50,000,000, or nearly $250,000,000. In 1850 the assessed valuation had fallen to £11,500,000. In 1857 it was reduced to £9,500,000, and Mr. WESTMORELAND in a speech in the Jamaica House of Assembly, stated it was believed that the falling off would be £2,000,000 more in 1852. From a report made to the House of Assembly, of the number and extent of the plantations abandoned, during the years 1848, '49, '50, '51 and '52, we gather the following facts: Sugar estates abandoned,. partially abandoned, Coffee plantations abandoned,.....

[ocr errors]

....

partially abandoned,

[ocr errors]

.128

71

96

66

The total number of acres thus thrown out of cultivation, in five years, were 391,187. This is only a sample, for the same process has been going on ever since emancipation. "In the five years immediately succeeding emancipation the abandoned estates stood as follows:

[blocks in formation]

"These plantations employed 39,383 laborers, whose industry was therefore at once lost to the world, and the articles they had raised were just so much extracted from consumption. The price of these articles-sugar and coffee, was increased, on account of diminished production, and that increased cost represented the tax which the world paid for the privilege of allowing Sambo to loll in idleness. The Cyclopedia of Commerce says:

“The negro is rapidly receding into a savage state, and that unless there is a large and immediate supply of emigrants, all society will come to a speedy end, and the Island become a second Hayti!"".

PUBLIC DEBT OF JAMAICA INCREASING.

Appleton's New American Cyclopedia says that the public debt of Jamaica has increased from £529,856 in 1847, to £913,618 in | 1857," or an increase of $191,880 per annum.

TESTIMONY OF THE LONDON TIMES.

The London Times, the court organ of the British government, is forced to acknowledge the bad results of emancipation. Such a candid admission from such a source is worth a thousand theoretical, sentimental and fanatical sermons and speeches, that seek to arouse the prejudices, without stopping to consider results or offer remedies. The Times says:

"There is no blinking the truth. Years of bitter experience-years of hope deferred, of self devotion unrequited, of prayers unanswered, of sufferings divided, of insults unresented, of contumely patiently endured, have convinced us of the truth. It must be spoken out boldly and energetically, despite the wild mockings of howling cant. The freed West India slave will not till the soil for wages. The free son of the ex-slave is as obstinate as his sire.

He will not cultivate lands which he has not bought for his own. Yams, mangoes and plantains-these satisfy his wants. He cares not for your cotton. Sugar, coffee and tobacco, he cares but little for, and what matters it to him that the Englishman has sunk his thousands and tens of thousands on mills, machinery and plantations, which now totter on the languishing estates that for years has only returned him to beggery and debt? He eats his yams and sniggers at 'Buckra." We know not why this should be, but so it is! The negro has been bought with a price--the price of English taxation and English toil. He has been redeemed from bondage by the sweat and travail of some millions of hard working Englishmen! Twenty millions of pounds sterling-$100,000,000-have been distilled from the brains and muscles of the free English laborer, of every degree, to fashion the West India negro into a “free, independent laborer.' 'Free and independent' enough he has bacome, God knows, but laborer, he is not, and so far as we can see, never will be. He will sing hymns and quote texts, but honest, steady industry he not only detests, but despises!"

Such is the candid admission of the official organ of the British Government, uttered about the time-some two or three years agowhen a British Lord submitted a serious proposition in Parliament to return to slavery in the West Indies, under the name and guise of cooley indentures. We have forgotten the noWe have forgotten the noble Lord's name, but recollect quite well the general comments it encountered, both in Great Britain and this country.

ÁBOLITION PROPHECIES THIRTY YEARS AGO.

Let emancipationists look on the above picture, and then on the following by that great champion of abolition, as a prophesy, in 1833

-the Rev. Dr. CHANNING:

from emancipation. This change would make them richer rather than poorer. One would think, indeed, from the common language on the subject, that the negroes were to be annihilated by being set free; that the whole labor of the South was to be destroyed by a single blow. But the colored man, when freed, will not vanish from the soil; he will stand there with the same muscles as before, only strung anew by liberty; with the same limbs to toil, and with stronger motives to toil than before. He will work from hope, not fear; will work for himself, not others; and unless all the principles of human nature are reversed under a black skin, he will work better than before.

"We believe that agriculture will revive, our worn out soils will be renewed, and the whole country assume a brighter aspect under free labo..

[ocr errors]

TROLLOP AND THE LONDON TIMES.

This has been the syren song of the abolitionists for centuries, but in no case does it tally with historical or physical facts. Mr. Anthony Trollop, an Englishman, who has written a book on Jamaica, seems to take the other view of the matter, from actual observation, and not from theory, and the London Times thus disposes of the case:

"A sərvile race, peculiarly fitted by nature for the hardest physical work in a burning climate. The negro has no desire for property strong enough to induce him to labor with sustained power. He lives from hand to mouth. In order that he may have his dinner and some small finery, he will work a little, but after that he is content to lie in the sun. This, in Jamaica, he can very easily do, for emancipation and free trade have combined to throw enormous tracts of land out of cultivation, and on these the negro squats, getting all that he wants, with very little trouble, and sinking in the most resolute fashion to the savage state. Lying under his cotton tree, he refuses to work after 10 o'clock in the morning. 'No, tank 'ee, massa, me tired, now; me no want more money.' Or by the way of variety, he may say: 'No, workee no more; money no nuff; workee no pay.' planter must see his cane foul with weeds, because he And so the cannot prevail on Sambo to earn a second shilling by going into the corn-fields. He calls him a lazy nigger, and threatens him with starvation. His answer is: No, massa; no starvee now; God send plenty yam. These yams, be it observed, on which Sambo lives, and on the strength of which he declines to work, are grown on the planter's own ground, and probably planted at his own

expense.

[ocr errors]

There lies the shiny, oily, odorous negro under his mango-tree, eating the lucious fruit in the sun. He sends his black urchin up for a bread fruit, and behold, the family table is spread. He pierces a cocoanut, and lo! there is his beverage. He lies on the ground surrounded by oranges, bananas and pine apples. Why should he work? Let Sambo himself reply; No, Massa, me weak in me belly; me no workee to-day; me no like workee just um little moment.' This is a graphic description of the negro character where the climate gives him a chance to show out his real nature. The same author says that 'one-half fee-plantations have gone back into a state of bush.” of the sugar-estates, and more than one-half of the cof

FREE NEGROES WON'T WORK IN AFRICA.

Negroes seldom ever go voluntarily into the field to work. Of all the negros in the North how many do we see in the fields, the workshops or at the forge? Those who do labor, as a general rule, are to be found in the capacity of servants in the towns and cities, or retailing fruits and nuts at a corner stand MUNGO PARK, many years ago, writing of his travels in Africa, said:

"Paid servants-persons of free condition, volunta

working for pay-are unknown here."

Such is the universal testimony of all travel"The planters in general would suffer little, if at all, lers who allude to the subject.

« PreviousContinue »