Chapter IV.
INJURY TO THE WELL-BEING OF THE SLAVES.
It is presumed, that the great object contemplated by the British nation is to civilize the blacks living in our colonies. The crime of taking them from their own country is long past by; but it surely cannot be intended to compensate them for their former wrongs, by replunging them into barbarism. Yet it is to be feared that this is the consummation to result from compulsory manumission.
A free peasantry in the colonies is the desideratum sought by the framers of the measure. It is argued, that men are creatures of habit, and that if the negro, by voluntary industry, amass such a sum as will procure his ransom, the habit of working will have become firmly established, and he will continue to labour when he has obtained his freedom.
This argument has been entirely refuted by the simple question, What is themotivefor exertion in the two cases? Before the negro became free, he had the strongest of inducements perpetually present to his mind—the attainment of freedom, orthe privilege of enjoying himself uncontrolled. It was not for the money that he worked, but for that which the money would procure him. When he has, at length, attained his freedom, what motive has he to work further? Name one object, equivalent, in his estimation, to the irksomeness of labour; the one-inspiring aim is attained, the stimulus is gone.
But it is not enough for our purpose to show, that industry is eventually superseded. We can establish, that the very means held out are themselves the most efficacious in producing this pernicious result. It is said that men are creatures of habits, and do not speedily change them. We meet our opponents on this ground.
If you demand of a man, living in a country imperfectly civilised, for what reason he works, he will answer, that he may purchase food. But put the same question to a man in a state highly civilised, and he will reply, that besides the purchase of food, he requires good clothing, lodging, and other comforts which have becomehabitualto him, and in which custom would make it disreputable in him not to indulge.
Let us apply this to the negro in the West Indies. At present his artificial wants are extremely low; and if certain habits, such as above described, have to operate hereafter upon him as incentives to exertion, is it not requisite that they should now begin to be established? Suppose a negro, byrearing stock of various descriptions, can earn a dollar per week—should he not be taught to lay out that sum in the purchase of articles, for instance, of personal decoration for himself and family, or of additional conveniences in his hut, in the display of which he will henceforth take a pride?
By such means it must be, that, in the lapse of time, he will feel that he must work longer than is merely necessary to procure him food, because he has other wants to satisfy.
But compulsory manumission directly counteracts this process. It prompts him to the most sordid self-denial. Its language to him is—“Spend not your weekly dollar, but rather hoard it with the most scrupulous rigour; improve not the condition of your family:—in a word, confine your wants to the state of the savage.”
The necessary consequence will be, that when he attains to freedom, all his physical wants remain unchanged. And are these the boasted steps which have been taken to elevate the condition of the slaves? It is certainly a novel mode of establishing a free peasantry, to commence by divesting them of every stimulus to exertion.
It will not have escaped the observation of the intelligent reader, that if compulsory manumissionleads to self-depreciation, by directly suggesting and encouraging a suppression of dexterity and usefulness, the same end may be attained by debasing the moral character. Every species of debauchery is, in point of fact, encouraged, to constrain the proprietor to offer little impediment to the freedom of his slaves.
Good conduct frequently renders a negro more valuable even than skill, and it thus becomes a principal impediment to the attainment of his freedom. In the case of a drunken, worthless character on a plantation, the proprietor, instead of opposing his liberation, will be glad to get rid of him at a small amount, because he is continually giving trouble and setting a bad example.
If there be any truth in the maxim of moralists, that the road to vice is alluring in itself, what must be the result when men are urged upon it, by the strongest incentives which can be supposed to operate with them? The profligate slave may purchase his freedom within a year,—the virtuous has to wait for it ten years, and perhaps all his life, without success. What is this but to teach him, in the most emphatic manner, that if he were but profligate and worthless, he would find no such difficulties? Under the common operations of human nature, it is impossible, when the whole moral code is reversed—when virtue is punished and vice rewarded, that any number of men in a state like that of the negroes will continue virtuous.
We shall here be again reminded about the certificate of good character which is to be required. But if this question be to be discussed at all by men of business, it is surely time to dismiss this alleged safeguard of a certificate. It can never, as we have shown, be of the least avail in reference to skill; and as a real preventive it must equally prove nugatory in regard to moral conduct. Without intending any disrespect, it must be pronounced to savour a little of the ludicrous.
Let us suppose some measure introduced into one of the counties of England, affecting its population as vitally as compulsory manumission affects the slaves in our colonies, and what would be thought of any person who should gravely propose, that a public officer, amid other multifarious duties, should certify minutely as to the individual character of every man in the county? If we were to circumscribe his jurisdiction to a few square miles, or even to a few streets of one town, the thing must plainly be impossible.
Dissimulation, hypocrisy, and craft, are often described as the parents of crime, and they will be inevitably resorted to, to screen the vices of the slave. His maxim will be, Let me become a vicious subject, to lower my value with my master, and let me become an adept in cunning to deceive the protector.
The higher his intellectual attainments, the easier will it be for him to practise this deception withsuccess; and while, as has been shown in the preceding section, the beneficial attributes of future civilisation are checked, the slave is habituated to its corruptions.
None of the palliators of the measure can get over this conclusion, that if flagrant crime be not openly encouraged, it cannot be denied that it is fostered secretly. How many will be the plans laid for stealing in the dark; and for this evil there is no cure. If the delinquent be detected, it depreciates his character, and, consequently, his value; and, if undiscovered, it swells the fund which is to make him free.
If we wish to infuse a higher sense of moral feeling among the slaves, it is indispensable to elevate their ideas in regard to the virtuous union of the sexes. There is no one of the measures of amelioration which has attracted more attention, or which is more desired by the British community.
We often hear that there is too great a temptation to immorality in this particular among the colonists. It may undoubtedly be true; but still illicit connexions are materially checked by the dread of bringing into existence an offspring whose lot by birth would be slavery.
If compulsory manumission be enforced, thissalutary barrier is removed, because the freedom of any female slave could be purchased by the person desirous of cohabiting with her, and her offspring would be free. Thus, on the parties colluding to take advantage of the new measure, the greatest mischiefs would accrue to the community.
If this practice once obtained, and were found easy of accomplishment, the female slaves would have a powerful inducement to court illicit connexion with the whites, in preference to marriage with men of their own condition. One of the chief objects of amelioration would thus be frustrated, and the offspring of these connexions become liable to be left destitute in case of the sickness, absence, or death of the father, and consequently thrown upon the casual charity of the public.
Besides the immorality thus in the first instance produced, how fruitful a source of future crime is presented!
When we examine the measure as it will more immediately affect the domestic government of each plantation, we find objections equally forcible with those already stated.
In none of Mr. Canning’s orations on the subject has he been so eloquent as when he described the effect of abolishing impending coercion, upon thefeelings of the slave. He depicted in the most powerful manner the beautiful effects that would ensue when the slave performed his work with alacrity, and his condition assimilated to that of the voluntary labourer. It was here that he expatiated upon the wisdom of allowing benefits to the slave to flow from the master, since it would incite them to work without the necessity for coercion. The system of task-work would be introduced, which perhaps is the greatest practical improvement in the condition of slavery.
It is quite evident that this system can only exist with the agreement and reciprocal feeling of both parties. The slave knows well that his master can return to the old system at his will, and this reflection is the chief cause for establishing the improvement. The master knows well, that the law empowers him to keep his slaves at work till six in the evening; but he considers that, if he can elicit their spontaneous skill and assiduity, they will get through an equal quantity of work by an earlier hour, and will pursue their labour cheerfully. He is therefore disposed to approve of task-work wherever it is practicable, both under the influence of that more humane spirit which pervades the colonies, and from the desire to save himself the trouble and expense of superintendence in the field.
Under this beneficial regulation, the negroes arefound to complete their day’s work by as early an hour as three or four o’clock, having then the remainder of the day at their own disposal, to earn money for themselves. The master never thinks of objecting to such earnings, which benefit his people without injuring himself. On the contrary, it is to his advantage, by increasing their contentment, the salutary operation of which we have described in a preceding section.
But let compulsory manumission be insisted on, and how differently will he then contemplate the earnings of his slaves! At present their little funds are spent in harmless amusements—in adorning their persons, and giving Christmas and other holiday entertainments, in which it is their delight to mimic the manners of the whites. But change the scene, and let them employ their earnings to procure their freedom, and what will be the master’s course? He will be constrained, in self-defence to stop their means of earning. He will discontinue task-work, and keep his negroes working until six o’clock, as the law allows him.
Let us banish Utopian views from our thoughts, and consider, as practical men, is it ever to be expected—is it reasonable, that colonial proprietors would act otherwise? You drive them to it. They have vested their property on the express declaration of the law, that they are entitled to the labour of their slaves untilsix o’clock. You cannot change this hour for an earlier one, without infringing therights of property, in a manner which could never possibly be contemplated by any legislature. There is therefore no regulation which can obviate the evil. Task-work, consisting of a multiplicity of details, cannot in its very nature be commanded or enforced by any other authority than that of the master. Its beneficial effects upon the slaves consist in the master’s entering into their feelings, and giving them encouragement precisely in the degree that personal trouble in management is removed.
When property in slaves is made but a precarious interest, dependent upon the slaves themselves, it is no more than the truth to assert, that a rigorous system of coercion, such as prevailed in the colonies some twenty years ago, would return.
If it be argued, that this involves a contradiction in reference to thecontentment, described as being the proprietor’s chief object to establish, let it be recollected that he is now in a dilemma. If he allows his slaves to accumulate earnings, they may be employed to his owntotal ruin; he has therefore to get, as speedily as possible, the utmost degree of work from his labourers that the law allows him.
Several of His Majesty’s ministers, in various declarations and speeches, have alluded to the institution of slavery in ancient times; and availingthemselves of the great experience thus presented for guidance and direction, have affirmed that the same measures of amelioration should be introduced to mitigate slavery in the West India colonies, which had in times past mitigated slavery in Europe. By obvious analogy, if the experience of times past be the true guide in measures relating to amelioration, the same experience should be the guide for measures relating to emancipation.
Let us examine, then, if this be the case.
In all ages and records of history, and in every nation on the globe in which slavery has existed, the difficulties of manumission have become less and less as civilisation advanced. But by the mode of operation laid down by Lord Bathurst, the difficulties in the present case must gradually increase. In a gang of one hundred negroes, the first man applying for freedom would have his relative utility to the plantation estimated at a small sum, the loss of the services of an individual not materially impeding its cultivation. But if thirty or forty men were to be abstracted from the estate, the sum to be assessed as relative utility must rise in a rapidly increased ratio, the remaining hands being wholly incompetent to render the fixed capital productive.
Supposing, then, the measure to possess an executory principle: in the first year, according to its projectors, a man might procure his freedom at 100l.At the end of the second year, a man of preciselythe same capabilities and abstract value would find the price of manumission risen to 150l.At the end of the third year it might rise to 200l.; and so on, progressively, until it mounted to 500l., or a still higher sum.
This is the operation consequent on the terms employed by Earl Bathurst, and subsequently, indeed, explicitly avowed by him, to illustrate the measure.
It has been considered, and repeatedly declared by His Majesty’s ministers, that a progressive amelioration in the condition of the slaves, the diffusion of moral instruction, the just appreciation of the blessings of a pure religion, and a gradual reformation in manners and opinions, should continue to exercise their salutary influence, until slavery insensibly glided into freedom.
Yet compulsory manumission proceeds in express contradiction to this principle. It teaches the slave, that the sooner he demands his freedom the easier it will be for him to succeed. It discourages the idea of delaying till the morals be improved by instruction, and it urges him to rush forward at once by the most expeditious course, by teaching him, that those only who delay incur the danger of disappointment.
The public at large have been harangued about thegradual operationof the measure. What will be their surprise when they understand, that the meaning of such gradual operation simply is, thatthe difficulties in attaining the object sought should become greater by degrees instead of less? It is, indeed, a notable specimen of legislation, to announceto the slaves,—Now that you are ignorant, you may procure your freedom for 100l.; but some years hence, when you have improved by instruction, you will have to pay five times as much.
Under such excitements, a measure which works on the predominant passions of men, awakening in them mutual feelings of envy and distrust, prompting each to take advantage of his fellow, and universally forestalling the fruits of civilisation, must be utterly incompatible with the well-being of the slave.
Who, therefore, can maintain, all the circumstances enumerated in the foregoing sections taken in conjunction, that compulsory manumission is in conformity with the Resolution of Parliament?