(1) First Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 125.(2) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 20 and 21
or the philosopher may regret it, and however it may be beyond their power to remove it by legislative means.” (1) But, when it is desirable to prove the idleness of the free African, this omnipotent physical cause, this instinct against which the best and wisest men struggle in vain, which counteracts the attraction of sex, and defies the authority of law, sinks into a “mere prejudice against the colour of a man’s skin,” an idle fancy, which never could induce any body of people to remove able bodied men and women from their country, if those men and women were willing to work. Are all the free negroes of North America infirm, or are they all unwilling to work? They live in a temperate climate, and to them the Major’s theory does not apply. Yet the whites are subscribing to transport them to another country. Why should we suppose the planters of Tortola to be superior to feelings which some of the most respectable men in the world are disposed to gratify, by sending thousands of people, at a great expense, from a country greatly understocked with hands?
It is true that the apprenticed Africans were not employed in the cultivation of the soil. The cause is evident. They could not legally be so employed. The Older in Council under the authority of which they were put out to service, provided that no woman should be employed in tillage. The blank form of indenture sent out by the government contained a similar restriction with regard to the males.
We are, however, inclined to believe with the Major, that these people, if they had been left to take their own course, would not have employed themselves in agriculture. Those who have become masters of their time, rarely do so employ themselves. We will go further. We allow that very few of the free blacks in our West Indian Islands, will undergo the drudgery of cultivating the ground. Major Moody seems to think that, when this is grunted, all his principles follow of course. But we can by no means agree with him. In order to prove that the natives of tropical countries entertain a peculiar aversion to agricultural labour, it is by no means sufficient to show that certain freemen, living in the torrid zone, do not choose to engage in agricultural labour. It is, we humbly conceive, necessary also to show, that the wages of agricultural labour are, at the place and time in
(1) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 21.
question,at least as high as those which can be obtained by industry of another description. It by no means follows, that a man feels an insurmountable dislike to the business of setting canes, because he will not set eanes for sixpence a day, when he can earn a shilling by making baskets. We might as well say, that the English people dislike agricultural labour, because Major Moody prefers making systems to making ditches.
Obvious as these considerations are, it is perfectly clear that Major Moody has overlooked them. From the Appendix to his own Report it appears, that in every West Indian island the wages of the artisan are much greater than those of the cultivator. In Tortola, for example, a carpenter earns three shillings sterling a day, a cartwright or a cooper four shillings and sixpence, a sawyer six shillings; an ablebodied field negro, under the most advantageous circumstances, nine pounds a year, about seven pence a day, allowing for holidays. And because a free African prefers six shillings to seven pence, we are told that he has a natural and invincible aversion to agriculture!—because he prefers wealth to poverty, we are to conclude that he prefers repose to wealth. Such is the mode of reasoning which the Major designates as the philosophy of labour.
But, says the Major, all employments, excepting those of the cultivator and the domestic servant, are only occasional. There is little demand for the labour of the carpenter, the cooper, and the sawyer. Let us suppose the demand to be so incredibly small, that the carpenter can obtain work only one day in six, the cooper one day in nine, and the sawyer one day in twelve; still the amount of their earnings will be greater than if they broke clods almost daily through the whole year. Of two employments which yield equal wages, the inhabitants of all countries, both within and without the tropics, will choose that whieh requires the least labour Major Moody seems throughout his Report to imagine, that people in the temperate zone work for the sake of working; that they consider labour, not as an evil to be endured for the sake of a good produced by it, but as a blessing, from which the wages are a sort of drawback; that they would rather work three days for a shilling, than one day for half a crown. The case, he may be assured, is by no means such as he supposes. If he will make proper inquiries he willlearn, that, even where the thermometer stands at the lowest, no man will choose a laborious employment, when he can obtain equal remuneration with less trouble in another line. But it, is unnecessary to resort to this argument; for it is perfectly clear, on Major Moody’s own showing, that the demand for mechanical industry, though occasional and small, is still sufficient to render the business of an artisan much more lucrative than that of a field labourer.
“I have shown,” says he, “that the sugar-planter himself, obtaining 287 days labour on the very cheapest terms, could not have afforded to give more than about 9l. per annum for labourers, and therefore, that he never could hope to induce any liberated African to work steadily for such wages, when the liberated African could obtain from 15l. to 21l. per annum by the irregular labour of occasionally cutting firewood, grass, or catching fish, &c....
“This is the most favourable view of the case; for the fact is, the sugar-planter, on the very best soils in Tortola, could only a fiord to give 91. per annum; but in soils of average fertility, he could only afford 6l. 15s. per annum to the labourer, even if the planter gave up all profits on his stock, consisting of lands, buildings, and machinery. If the liberated Negro would not labour steadily for 9l. per annum, it is clear he would be less likely to work for 6l. 15s. per annum; but if he did not work for less than that sum, the planter in Tortola could obtain no profit on stock, and consequently could have no motive for employing any person to work for such wages. The white race, being unable to work, must in this, as in all similar cases, perish, or abandon their country and property to the blacks, who can work, but who, as I have shown, are not likely to make use of more voluntary steady exertion than will afford the means of subsistence in the lowlands of the torrid zone, where the pleasure of repose forms so great an ingredient in the happiness of mankind, whether whites, blacks, or Indians.”
We really stand aghast at the extravagance of a writer who supposes that the principle which leads a man to prefer light labour and twenty-one pounds, to hard labour and six Bounds fifteen shillings, is a principle of which the operation is confined to the torrid zone! But the matter may be put on a very short issue. Let Major Moody find any tropical country in which the inhabitants prefer mechanical trades to field labour when higher advantages are offered to the field labourer than to the mechanic. He will then have done what he has not done hitherto. He will have adduced one fact bearing on the question.
If the circumstances which we have been considering prove any thing, they appear to prove the inexpediency of thecoercive system. The effect of that system in the West Indies has been to produce a glut of agricultural labour, and a scarcity of mechanical dexterity. The discipline of a plantation may stimulate a sluggish body; but it has no tendency to stimulate a sluggish mind. It calls forth a certain quantity of muscular exertion; but it does not encourage that ingenuity which is necessary to the artisan. This is the only explanation which at present occurs to us of the enormous price which skilled labour fetches in a country in which the cultivator can barely obtain a subsistence. We offer it, however, with diffidence, as the result of a very hasty consideration of the subject. But it is with no feeling of diffidence that we pronounce the whole argument of the Major absurd. That he has convinced himself we do not doubt. Indeed he has given the best proof of sincerity: For he has acted up to his theory; and left us, we must confess, in some doubt whether to admire him more as an active or as a speculative politician.
Many of the African apprentices emigrated from Tortola to the Danish island of St. Thomas, some with the consent of their masters, and others without it. Why they did so, is evident from the account which the Major himself gives. The wages were higher in St. Thomas than in Tortola. But such theorists as the Major are subject to illusions as strange as those which haunted Don Quixote. To the visionary Knight every inn was a castle, every ass a charger, and every basin a helmet. To the Major every fact, though explicable on ten thousand obvious suppositions, is a confirmation of his darling hypothesis. He gives the following account of his opinions and of his consequent measures.
“The occupations followed by the apprentices in the Danish island of St. Thomas, on these occasions were generally the irregular and occasional industry of porters, servants on hoard vessels, &e., in which they often got comparatively high wages, which enabled them to work for money at one time in order to live, without working for a longer or shorter period; such a mode of existence being more agreeable to them than steady and regular industry affording employment during the whole year.
“From this irregular application to certain kinds of labour and dislike to that of agriculture, it was my wish to turn the attention of the African apprentices, and therefore I was anxious to prevent their running away to the Danish island of St. Thomas, or being sent there. His Excellency Governor Van Seholton afforded me every facility in removing them; but they soon returned again. It will also be seen that in St. Thomas they were liable to be taken up and sold as slaves, it was actually the case with one apprentice. It is not undeserving of remark, that not one of the apprentices who thus withdrew themselves from Tortola, everhired themselves to agricultural labor for any fixed period.”
“The occasional high wages in irregular kinds of industry, however uncertain, appear to have pleased them belter than the permanent rewards procured by an employment less exposed to uncertainty, but which required a steady exertion.”
What the permanent rewards of agricultural labour were in Tortola, we have seen. The planter would have found it ruinous on most estates to give more than six pounds fifteen shillings a year, or about fourpence a day. Unless, therefore, they were much higher in St. Thomas, it is surely not extraordinary that they did not induce these apprentices to quit the employments to which, not by their own choice, but by the orders of the Government, they had been trained, for a pursuit uncongenial to all their habits. How often is it that an Englishman, who has served his apprenticeship to an artisan, hires himself to agricultural labour when he can find work in his own line?
But we will pass by the absurdity of condemning people for preferring high wages with little labour, to low wages with severe labour. We have other objections to make. The Major has told us that the African apprentices could not legally be employed in agriculture on the island of Tortola. If so, we wish to know how their dislike of agricultural labour could be their motive for quitting Tortola, or how, by bringing them back to Tortola, he could improve their habits in that respect? To bring a man by main force from a residence which he likes, and to place him in the hands of an employer acknowledged to be cruel, for fear that he may possibly be made a slave, seems to us also a somewhat curious proceeding, and deserves notice, as being the only indication of zeal for liberty which the Major appears to have betrayed during the whole course of his mission.
The Major might perhaps be justified in exerting himself to recover those apprentices who had emigrated without the consent of their masters. But with regard to the rest, his conductappears to have been equally absurd and mischievous. He repeatedly tells us that Tortola is a poor island. It appears from the schedules, that he was in the habit of asking the masters and mistresses, whether their apprentices, after the term of service should have expired, would be able to support themselves. In the ease of some most respectable and industrious workmen, the answer was, that they possessed all the qualifications which would enable them to earn a livelihood; but that Tortola was too poor to afford them an adequate field: And this was evidently the cause which induced so many to transport themselves to St. Thomas. Of all the innumerable instances in which public, functionaries have exposed their ignorance by officiously meddling with matters of which individuals ought to be left to judge for themselves, we remember none more conspicuous than that which Major Moody has thus recorded against himself.
But it seems the industry of these emigrants, and indeed of the free Blacks generally, is not regular or steady. These are words of which Major Moody is particularly fond, and which he generally honours with Italics. We have, throughout this article, taken the facts as he states them, and contented ourselves with exposing the absurdity of his inferences. We shall do so now. We will grant that the free blacks do not work so steadily as the slaves, or as the labourers in many other countries. But how does Major Moody connect this unsteadiness with the climate? To us it appears to be the universal effect of an advance in wages, an effeet not confined to tropical countries, but daily and hourly witnessed in England by every man who attends to the habits of the lower orders. Let us suppose, that an English manufacturer can provide himself with those indulgences which use has rendered necessary to his comfort for ten shillings a week, and that he ean earn ten shillings a week by working steadily twelve hours a day. In that case, he will probably work twelve hours a day. But let us suppose that the wages of his labour rise to thirty shillings. Will he still continue to work twelve hours a day, for the purpose of trebling his present enjoyments, or of laying up a hoard against bad tunes? Notoriously not. He will perhaps work four days in the week, and thus earn twenty shillings, a sum larger than that whieh he formerly obtained, but less than that which he might obtain if he chose to labour as he formerly laboured.
Whenthe wages of the workman rise, he Everywhere takes out, if we may so express ourselves, some portion of the rise in the form of repose. This is the real explanation of that unsteadiness on which Major Moody dwells so much—an unsteadiness which cannot surprise any person who has ever talked with an English manufacturer, or ever heard the name of Saint Monday. It appears by his own report, that a negro slave works from Monday morning to Saturday night on the sugar grounds of Tortola, and receives what is equivalent to something less than half-a-crown in return, then he ceases to be a slave, and becomes his own master; and then he finds that by cutting firewood, an employment which requires no great skill, he can earn eight shillings and fourpence a week. By working every other day he can procure better food and better clothes than ever he had before. In no country from the Pole to the Equator, would a labourer under such circumstances work steadily. The Major considers it as a strange phenomenon, peculiar to the torrid zone, that these people lay up little against seasons of sickness and distress—as if this were not almost universally the case among the far more intelligent population of England—as if we did not regularly see our artisans thronging to the alehouse when wages are high, and to the pawnbroker’s shop when they are low—as if we were not annually raising millions, in order to save the working classes from the misery which otherwise would be the consequence of their own improvidence.
We are not the advocates of idleness and imprudence. The question before us is, not whether it be desirable that men all over the world should labour more steadily than they now do; but whether the laws which regulate labour within the tropics differ from those which are in operation elsewhere. This is a question which never can be settled, merely by comparing the quantity of work done in different places. By pursuing such a course, we should establish a separate law of labour for every country, and for every trade in every country. The free African does not work so steadily as the Englishman. But the wild Indian, by the Major’s own account, works still less steadily than the African. The Chinese labourer, on the other hand, works more steadily than the Englishman. In this island, the industry of the porter or the waterman, is less steady than the industryof the ploughman. But the great general principle is the same in all. All will work extremely hard rather than miss the comforts to which they have been habituated; and all, when they find it possible to obtain their accustomed comforts with less than their accustomed labour, will not work so hard as they formerly worked, merely to increase them. The real point to be ascertained, therefore, is, whether the free African is content to miss his usual enjoyments, not whether he works steadily or not; for the Chinese peasant would work as irregularly as the Englishman, and the Englishman as irregularly as the negro, if this could be done without any diminution of comforts. Now, it does not appear from any passage in the v hole Report, that the free blacks are retrograding in their mode of living. It appears on the contrary, that their work, however irregular, does in fact enable them to live more comfortably than they ever did as slaves. The unsteadiness, therefore, of which they are accused, if it be an argument for coercing them, is equally an argument for coercing the spinners of Manchester and the grinders of Sheffield.
The next ease which we shall notice is, that of the native Indians within the tropics. That these savages have a great aversion to steady labour, and that they have made scarcely any advances toward civilization we readily admit. Major Moody speaks on this subject with authority; for it seems that, when he visited one of their tribes, they forgot to boil the pot for him, and put him off with a speech, which he has reported at length, instead of a meal.1 He, as usual, attributes their habits to the heat of the climate. But let us consider that the Indians of North America, with much greater advantages, live in the same manner. A most enlightened and prosperous community has arisen in their vicinity. Many benevolent men have attempted to correct their roving propensities, and to inspire them with a taste for those comforts which industry alone can procure. They still obstinately adhere to their old mode of life. The independence, the strong excitement, the occasional periods of intense exertion, the long intervals of repose, have become delightful and almost necessary to them. It is well known that Europeans, who have lived among them for any length of time, are strangely fascinated by the pleasures of that stateof society, and even by its sufferings and hazards. Among ourselves, the Gypsey race, one of the most beautiful and intelligent on the face of the earth, has lived for centuries in a similar manner. Those singular outcasts have been surrounded on every side by the great works of human labour. The advantage’s of industry were forced upon their notice. The roads on which they travelled, the hedges under which they rested, the hen-roosts which furnished their repast, the silver which crossed their palms—all must have constantly reminded them of the conveniences and luxuries which are to be obtained by steady exertion. They were persecuted under a thousand pretexts, whipped for vagrants, imprisoned for poachers, ducked for witches. The severest laws were enacted against them. To consort with them was long a capital offence. Yet a remnant of the race still preserves its peculiar language and manners—still prefers a tattered tent and a chance-meal of carrion to a warm house and a comfortable dinner. If the habits of the Indians of Guiana prove that slavery is necessary within the tropics, the habits of the Mohawks and Gypsies will equally prove, that it is necessary in the temperate zone. The heat cannot be the cause of that which is found alike in the coldest and in the hottest countries.
Major Moody gives a long account of the Maroon settlements near Surinam. These settlements were first formed by slaves, who fled from the plantations on the coast, about the year 1667. The society was, during the following century, augmented from time to time by fresh reinforcements of fugitive negroes. This supply, however, has now been for many years stopped. It is perfectly true, that these people were long contented with a bare subsistence, and that little of steady agricultural industry has ever existed amongst them. The Major again recurs to physical causes, and the heat of the sun. A better explanation may be given in one word, insecurity. During about one hundred years, the Maroons were absolutely run down like mad dogs. It appears from the work of Captain Stedman, to which the Major himself alludes, that those who fell into the hands of the whites were hung up by hooks thrust into their ribs, torn to pieces on the rack, or roasted on slow fires. They attempted to avoid the danger, by frequently changing, and carefully concealing their residence. The accidental crowing of a cock,had brought destruction on a whole tribe. That a people thus situated should labour to acquire property which they could not enjoy—that they should engage in employments which would necessarily attach them to a particular spot, was not to be expected. Their habits necessarily became irregular and ferocious. They plundered the colony—they plundered each other—they lived by hunting and fishing. The only productions of the earth which they cultivated, were such as could be speedily reared, and easily concealed. But during the last fifty years, these tribes have enjoyed a greater degree of security; and from the statement of Major Moody, who has himself visited that country, and who, though a wretched logician, is an unexceptionable witness, it appears, that they are rapidly advancing in civilization; that they have acquired a sense of new wants, and a relish for new pleasures; that agriculture has taken a more regular form; and that the vices and miseries of savage life are disappearing together.
“The young men among the Maroons acknowledged, that the conduct of the chiefs had become much better, in respect of not interfering with the wives of others, and that everybody now could have his own wife.”.......
“I observed, that they had adopted the system of sometimes domesticating wild animals, and rearing those already domesticated for food; that instead of always boucaning their meats, like the Indians, they now often used salt when they could get it; and, finally, that instead of depending on the forests for fruits, or cultivating roots which were soon reaped, and conld easily be concealed, they had generally adopted the banana and plantain as a food, which requires about twelve months to produce its fruits, and the tree obtains a considerable height.”....
“I also found, that a certain degree of occasional industry had taken place among the Maroons. Some of these young men had devoted a few days in the year to cutting down trees which nature had planted. From such occasional labour they were enabled to procure finery for a favourite female, a better, gun, or a new axe.”
Surely this statement is most encouraging. No sooner was security given to these Maroons, than improvement commenced. A single generation has sufficed to change these hunters into cultivators of the earth, to teach them the use of domestic animals, to awaken among them a taste for the luxuries and distinctions of polished societies. That their labour is still only occasional, we grant. But this, we cannot too often repeat, is not the question. If occasional labourwill supply the inhabitant of the temperate zone with comforts greater than those to which he is accustomed, he will labour only occasionally. These negroes are not only willing to work rather than forego their usual comforts, but are also willing to make some addition to their labour, for the sake of some addition to their comforts. Nothing more can be said for the labourers of any country. The principle which has made England and Holland what they are, is evidently at work in the thickets of Surinam.
That the habits of the fugitives were altogether idle and irregular till within the last fifty years, is nothing to the purpose. How much of regular industry was formerly to be found among the outlawed moss-troopers of our Border, or in the proscribed elan of the Macgregors? Down to a very late period, a large part of the Scotch people were as averse to steady industry as any tribe of Maroons. In the year 1698, Fletcher of Saltonn called the attention of the Scottish Parliament to this horrible evil. “This country,” says he, “has always swarmed with such numbers of idle vagabonds as no laws could ever restrain. There are at this day in Scotland two hundred thousand people begging from door to door, living without any regard or subjection to the laws of the land, or to even those of God and nature. No magistrate could ever discover or be informed which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptised.” He advises the Government to set them to work; but he strongly represents the difficulty of such an undertaking. That sort of people is so desperately wicked, such enemies of all work and labour, and, which is yet more amazing, so proud in esteeming their own condition above that which they will be sure to call slavery, that, unless prevented by the utmost industry and diligence, upon the first publication of any orders for putting in execution such a design, they will rather die with hunger in caves and dens, and murder their young children. Fletcher was a brave, honest, and sensible man. He had fought and suffered for liberty. Yet the circumstances of his country shook his faith in the true principles of government. He looked with dismay on the mountains occupied by lawless chiefs and their gangs, and the lowlands cursed by the depredations of some plunderers and the protection of others. Everywhere he saw swarms of robbers and beggars. He contrasted this desolate prospectwith the spectacle which Holland presented, the miracles which human industry had there achieved, a country rescued from the ocean, vast and splendid cities, ports crowded with ships, meadows cultivated to the highest point, canals along which hundreds of boats were constantly passing, mercantile houses of which the daily payments exceeded the whole rental of the Highlands, an immense population whose habits were sober and laborious, and who acquired their comforts, not by injuring, but by benefiting their neighbours. He did not sufficiently consider that this state of things sprung from the wisdom and vigour of a government, which insured to every man the fruits of his exertions, and protected equally the pleasures of every class, from the pipe of the mechanic to the picture-gallery and the tulip-garden of the Burgomaster;—that in Scotland, on the contrary, the police was feeble, and the gentry rich in men and destitute of money; that robbery was in consequence common; that people will not build barns to be burned, or rear cattle to be lifted; that insecurity produced idleness, and idleness crimes, that these crimes again augmented the insecurity from which they had sprung. He overlooked these circumstances, and attributed the evil to the want of coercion. He censured the wreak humanity of those fathers of the church who had represented slavery as inconsistent with Christianity. He cited those texts with which the controversies of our own times have rendered us so familiar. Finally, he proposed to convert the lower classes into domestic bondsmen. His arguments were at least as plausible as those of Major Moody. But how signally has the event refuted them! Slavery was not established in Scotland. On the contrary, the changes which have taken place there have been favourable to personal liberty. The power of the chiefs has been destroyed. Security has been given to the capitalist and to the labourer. Could Fletcher now revisit Scotland, he would find a country which might well bear a comparison with his favourite Holland.
The History of the Maroons of Surinam appears to us strictly analogous to that of the Scottish peasantry. In both cases insecurity produced idleness. In both security produces industry. The African community indeed, in the middle of the last century was far more barbarous than any part of the Scotch nation has ever been since the dawn of authentichistory. Not one of the fugitives had ever been taught to read and write. The traces of civilization which they brought from the colony were very slight, and were soon effaced by the habits of a lawless and perilous life. Of late, however, their progress has been rapid. Judging of the future by the past, we entertain a strong hope that they will soon form a flourishing and respectable society. At all events, we are sure that their condition affords no ground for believing that the labourer, within the tropics, acts on principles different from those which regulate his conduct elsewhere.
We now come to the case of Hayti, a ease on which Major Moody and his disciples place the strongest reliance. The report tells us, that Toussaint, Christophe and Boyer, have all found it necessary to compel the free negroes of that island to employ themselves in agriculture—that exportation has diminished—that the quantity of coffee now produced is much smaller than that which was grown under the French government—that the cultivation of sugar is abandoned—that the Haytians have not only ceased to export that article, but have begun to import it—that the men indulge themselves in repose, and force the women to work for them; and, finally, that this dislike of labour can be explained only by the heat of the climate, and can be subdued only by coercion.
Now we have to say, in the first place, that the proofs which the Major brings refute each other. If, as he states, the Haytians are coerced, and have been coerced during the la>t thirty years, their idleness maybe an excellent argument against slavery, but can be no argument against liberty. If it be said that the coercion employed in Hayti is not sufficiently severe, we answer thus:—We never denied, that of two kinds of coercion, the more severe is likely to be the more efficient. Men can be induced to work only by two motives, hope and fear; the former is the motive of the free labourer, the latter of the slave. We hold that, in the long run, hope will answer best. But we are perfectly ready to admit, that a strong fear will stimulate industry more powerfully than a weak fear. The case of llayti, therefore, can at most only prove that severe slavery answers its purpose better than lenient slavery. It can prove nothing for slavery against freedom. But the Major is not entitled to use two contradictoryarguments. One or the other he must abandon. It’ he chooses to reason on the decrees of Toussaint and Christophe, he has no right to talk of the decrease of production. If, on the other hand, he insists on the idleness of the Haytians, he must admit their liberty. If they are not free, their idleness can be no argument against freedom.
But we will do more than expose the inconsistency of the Major. We will take both suppositions successively, and show that neither of them can affect the present question.
First, then, let it be supposed that a coercive system is established in Hayti. Major Moody seems to think that this fact, if admitted, is sufficient to decide the controversy.
“The annexed regulations,” says he, “of Toussaint, Desformomi, and Christophe, as well as those of President Boyer, intended for people in circumstances similar to those of the liberated Africans, appear to prove practically that some such measures are necessary as those which I have submitted as the result of my own personal observation ami experience, in the control of human labour in different climes, and under various circumstances.”
We must altogether dissent from this doctrine. It does not appear to us quite self-evident, that every law which every government may choose to make is necessarily a wise law. We have sometimes been inclined to suspect that, even in this enlightened country, legislators have interfered in matters which should have been left to take their own course. An English Parliament formerly thought fit to limit the wages of labour. This proceeding does not perfectly satisfy us, that wages had previously been higher than they should have been. Elizabeth, unquestionably the greatest sovereign that ever governed England, passed those laws for the support of the poor, which, though in seeming and intention most humane, have produced more evil than all the cruelties of Aero and Maximin. We have just seen that, at the close of the seventeenth century, a most respectable and enlightened Scotch gentleman thought slavery the only cure for the maladies of his country. Christophe was not destitute of talent:-. Toussaint was a man of great genius and unblemished integrity, a brave soldier, and in many respects a wise statesman. But both these men had been slaves. Both were ignorant of history and political economy. That idlenessand disorders should follow a general civil war, was perfectly natural. That rulers, accustomed to a system of compulsory labour, should think such a system the only cure for those evils, is equally natural. But what inference can be drawn from such circumstances?
The negligence with which Major Moody has arranged his Appendix, is most extraordinary. He has, with strange inconsistency, given us no copy of the decree of Toussaint in the original, and no translation of the decree of Christophe. The decree of Boyer, the most important of the three, he has not thought fit to publish at all; though he repeatedly mentions it in terms which seem to imply that he has seen it. Our readers are probably aware, that the decree of Toussaint, or rather the Major’s translation of it, was retouched by some of the statesmen of Jamaica, docked of the first and last paragraphs, which would at once have betrayed its date, and sent over by the Assembly to England, as a new law of President Boyer. This forgery, the silliest and most impudent that has been attempted within our remembrance, was at once exposed. The real decree, if there be such a decree, is not yet before the public.
The decree of Toussaint was issued in a time of such extreme confusion, that even if we were to admit its expediency, which we are very far from doing, we should not be bound to draw any general conclusion from it. All the reasonings which Major Moody founds on the decree of Christophe, maybe refuted by this simple answer—that decree lays at least as many restraints on the capitalist as on the labourer. It directs him to provide machinery and mills. It limits the amount of Ins live-stock. It prescribes the circumstances under which he may form new plantations of coffee. It enjoins the manner in which he is to press his canes and to clean his cotton. The Major reasons: Christophe compelled the field-negroes to work. Hence it follows, that men who live in hot climates will not cultivate the soil steadily without compulsion. We may surely say, with equal justice, Christophe prescribed the manner in which the proprietor was to employ his capital, it is, therefore, to be inferred, that a capitalist in a hot climate cannot judge of his own interests, and that the government ought to take the management of his concerns out of his hands. If the Major will not adopt this conclusion, he must abandonhis own. All our readers will admit, that a Prince who could lay the capitalists under such restrictions as those which we have mentioned, must have been ignorant of political science, and prone to interfere in cases where legislative interference is foolish and pernicious. What conclusion, then, can be justly drawn from the restraints imposed by such a ruler on the freedom of the peasant?
We have thus disposed of the first hypothesis, namely, that the Haytians are coerced. We will proceed to the second. Let it be supposed, that the Haytians are not coerced. In that case we say, that if they do not export as much as formerly, it will not necessarily follow that they do not work as much as formerly; and that, if they do not work as much as formerly, it still will not follow that their idleness proceeds from physical causes, or forms any exception to the general principles which regulate labour.
The first great cause which depresses the industry of the Haytians, is the necessity of keeping up large and costly establishments. All who, since the expulsion of the French, have governed that country, have wisely and honourably sacrificed every other consideration to the preservation of independence. Large armies have been kept up. A considerable part of the population has consequently been supported in an unproductive employment; and a heavy burden has been laid on the industry of the rest. Major Moody quotes the following passage from the narrative of a most respectable and benevolent American, Mr. Dewey:—
“Throughout the island the women perform the principal part of the labour in the field and in the house.... I was often moved with pity for their lot, though I rejoiced that the burden was now voluntary, and admired the spirit of women who could so readily perform the work of the men, that the men may be employed in the defence and preservation of their liberties.”
The Major pounces on the fact stated by Mr. Dewey; but, with the amiable condescension of a superior nature, gently corrects his inferences.
“That Mr. Dewey, and pious persons like him, do state the facts which he observed correctly, I am quite convinced: but when he, and those who reason in his manner, assign causes as solely producing the effect, it is then that error glides into their statements.”
We are not so completely convinced as the Major seems tobe, that all pious persons state correctly such facts as Mr. Dewey has observed: but we are sure, that Mr. Dewey must be the most ungrateful of men, if he is not grateful for such compliments. Indeed, the style which the Major always adopts towards philanthropists reminds us of Dogberry patting Verges on the back:—“A good old man. Sir! he will be talking. Well said, i’faith, neighbour. An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind. An honest soid, i’faith, as ever broke bread. But God is to be worshipped. All men are not alike.” But we must go on with the argument of our philosophical commissioner.
“Any person who has travelled among people in a backward state of knowledge and social civilization, people who never experienced what slavery was, must have observed, as I have done, that the burden of agricultural labour is generally imposed on the females, by the arbitrary power exercised over them by the males....”
“Whilst an examination into the actual population of Hayti, and the real number of the males actually withdrawn from agricultural pursuits for those of military service, at the time Mr. Dewey made his observations, would show, that, though the cause assigned by him might have some effect, that, in point of fact, a more powerful influence would probably be found in the action of causes springing from a different source than that assigned by him as the true cause; and whilst these other powerful causes are left in action, little practical good is effected by the removal of a minor influence.” (1)
We have not time to notice the innumerable beauties of this headless and endless sentence, in which a double allowance of thats compensates for the absence of a nominative case and a verb:—those who study the works of the Major must take such grammar as they can get, and be thankful. But, does be advance any reason, or the shadow of tiny reason, for dissenting from the opinion formed by a man whose honesty he acknowledges, on a point on which it is scarcely possible to be mistaken? No man of common sense can live three days in a country without finding out, whether it is by idleness, or by military duties, that the males are prevented from working. But Major Moody reasons thus—Savages, from their propensity to indolence, make their women work for them. The Haytians make their women work for them; therefore the Haytians are indolent savages;—an exquisite specimen of syllogistic reasoning! Horses are quadrupeds: but a pig is a quadruped; therefore a pig is a horse. The
(1) Ibid. p. 39.
dullestof the gravediggers in Hamlet would have been ashamed of such an argal.
The Major surely does not mean to deny, that, in civilized and industrious nations, circumstances similar to those which exist in Hayti, have compelled the women to engage in agricultural labour. History abounds with such instances. When, fourteen years ago, the Prussians rose against the French, almost the whole harvest of Silesia and Upper Saxony was gathered in by females. The conscriptions of Buonaparte frequently produced the same effect. The Major says, indeed, or rather we, endowing his purposes with Syntax, say for him, that if the numbers of the Haytian people and of the Haytian army were ascertained, the causes assigned by Mr. Dewey would be found to have produced only part of the effect. But what evidence does he offer? Where are his facts, and his reasonings on these facts? Does he know what the population of Hayti may be? Does he know how large its army may be? If he knows, why does he not tell us? If he does not know, how can he tell what might be the result of an examination into those particulars? It is something too much that a writer, who, when he tries to demonstrate, never demonstrates any thing but his own ignorance of the art of reasoning, should expect to be implicitly believed, when he merely dogmatizes.
We grant, that the Haytians do not rear any great quantity of sugar. But can this circumstance be explained only by supposing that they are averse to the labour necessary for that purpose? When capital is withdrawn from a particular trade, a political economist is commonly inclined to suspect that the profits are smaller than those which may be obtained in other lines of business. Now, it is a notorious fact, that the profits which the cultivation of sugar yields are, in all our West Indian islands, extremely low; that the business is carried on only because a large quantity of capital has already been fixed in forms useless for every other purpose; and that, if this fixed capital were to be suddenly destroyed, no fresh investment would take place. A man who has purchased a costly apparatus for the purpose of carrying on a particular manufacture, will not necessarily change his business because he finds that his gains are smaller than those which he might obtain elsewhere, he will generally prefer a small profit to a dead loss, and rather take two per cent uponhis first investment than let that investment perish altogether, suffer his machinery to be idle, and turn the remains of his fortune to a pursuit in which he might make five per cent. This, we believe, is the only cause which keeps up the cultivation of sugar in Jamaica and Antigua.
In Hayti this cause has ceased to operate. Most of the fixed capital necessary for the sugar-trade was destroyed by the war which followed the liberation of the negroes. The machinery which remained was employed as formerly. But it was not replaced as it fell to decay. This at once explains the gradual decrease of production. A similar decrease, from similar causes, is taking place in our oldest colonies. But let us even suppose that the cultivation of sugar was likely, under ordinary circumstances, to flourish in Hayti, it still remains to be considered what security capital invested in that business would have enjoyed. A short time back it seemed by no means improbable that France would assert her rights to the sovereignty of the island by arms. In the year 1814, the strongest apprehensions were entertained. A murderous and devastating war, a war in which quarter would neither have been given or taken, was to be expected. The plan of defence which the rulers of ti contemplated was suited to so terrible a crisis. It was intended to turn the coast into a desert, to set fire to the buildings, to tall back on the interior fastnesses of the country, and by constant skirmishes, by hunger, and by the effects of a climate so fatal to Europeans, to wear out the invading army. This design was avowed by the Government in publications which have found their way to England. It was justified by circumstances, and it could scarcely have failed of success. But it is evident that the remotest prospect of such an emergency would alone have deterred any capitalist from sinking his property in the extensive and valuable machinery necessary to a sugar-planter.
It is true that there is a diminution in the quantity of coffee exported from Hayti. But the cause of the diminution is obvious. The taxes on that article are exorbitantly high. The territorial impost raised on the plantation, and the customs which must be paid previous to exportation, make up a duty of sixty per cent, on the prime cost. If the Haytians are to be free, they must have an army. If they are to have an army, they must raise money; and this may possiblybe the best way of raising it. But it is evidently impossible that a commodity thus burdened can maintain a competition with the produce of countries where no taxes exist.
We therefore think it by no means improbable that the Haytians may have abandoned the cultivation of sugar and coffee, not from idleness, but from prudence; that they may have been as industriously employed as their enslaved ancestors, though in a different manner. All the testimony which we have ever been able to procure tends to prove that they are at least industrious enough to live comfortably, and multiply rapidly under the weight of a very heavy taxation.
We have shown that the decrease in the exports of Hayti does not necessarily prove a decrease in the industry of the people. But we also maintain, that, even if we were to admit that the Haytians work less steadily than formerly, Major Moody has no right to attribute that circumstance to the influence of climate. His error in this and in many other parts of his work proceeds from an utter ignorance of the habits of labourers in the temperate zone. What those habits are, we have already stated. If an English labourer, who lias hitherto been unable to obtain the enjoyments to which he is accustomed without working three hundred days a year, should find himself able to obtain those enjoyments by working a hundred days a year, he will not continue to work three hundred days a year. He will make some addition to his pleasures, but he will abate largely of his exertions. He will probably work only on the alternate days. The ease of the Haytian is the same. As a slave he worked twelve months in the year, and received perhaps as much as he would have been able to raise in one month, if he had worked on his own account. He was liberated—he found that, by working for two months, he could procure luxuries of which he had never dreamed. If he worked unsteadily, he did only what an Englishman, in the same circumstances, would have done. In order to prove that labour in Hayti follows a law different from that which is in operation among ourselves, it is necessary to prove, not merely that the Haytian works unsteadily, but that he will forego comforts to which he is accustomed, rather than work steadily.
This Major Moody has not even asserted of the Haytians, orof any other class of tropical labourers. He has, therefore, altogether failed to show, that the natives of the torrid zone cannot be safely left to the influence of those principles which have most effectually promoted civilization in Europe. If the law of labour be everywhere the same, and he has said nothing which induces us to doubt that it is so, that unsteadiness of which he speaks will, at least in its extreme degree, last only for a time, which, compared with the life of a nation, is but as a day in the life of man. The luxuries of one generation will become the necessaries of the next. As new desires are awakened, greater exertions will be necessary. This cause, cooperating with that increase of population of which the Major himself admits the effect, will, in less than a century, make the llayti an labourer what the English labourer now is.
The last case which we shall consider is, that of the free negroes who emigrated from North America to llayti. They were in number about six thousand. President Boyer undertook to defray the whole expense of their passage, and to support them for four months after their arrival—a clear proof that the people of Hayti are industrious enough to place at the disposal of the Government funds more than sufficient to defray its ordinary charges. We give the sixth and seventh articles of Boyer’s instruction to the agent employed by him on this occasion, as Major Moody states them. It is on these that his whole argument turns.
“Article VI.—To regulate better the interests of the emigrants, it will be proper to let them know in detail, what the government of the republic is disposed to do, to assure their future well-being and that of their children, on the sole condition of their being good and industrious citizens. You are authorized, in concert with the agents of the different societies, and before civil authority, to make arrangements with heads of families, or other emigrants who can unite twelve people able to work, and also to stipulate that the government will give them a portion of land sufficient to employ twelve persons, and on which may be raised coffee, cotton, maize, peas and other vegetables and provisions; and after they have well improved the said quantity of land which will not be less than thirty-six acres in extent, government will give a perpetual title to the said land to these twelve people, their heirs, and assigns.
“Article VII.—Those of the emigrants who prefer applying themselves individually to the culture of the earth, either by renting lands already improved, which they will till, or by working in the field to share the produce with the proprietor, must also engage themselves by a legal act that, on arriving in llayti, they will make the above mentionedarrangements; and this they must do before judges of the peace; so that, on their arrival here, they will be obliged to apply themselves to agriculture, and not be liable to become vagrants.” (1)
On these passages the Major reasons thus—
“In Hayti, even at present, tinder the judicious government of President Boyer, we find the free and intelligent American Blacks receiving land for nothing, having their expenses paid, and the produce of the land to be for their own advantage, obliged, by a legal act, to apply themselves to a kind of labour which is manifestly and clearly intended to better their condition.
“Why should a free man be thus obliged to act in a manner which the most ignorant person might discover was a duty incumbent on him, and that the result would be for his advantage? The legal act and its penalties, after such a grant of land, would appear pre-eminently absurd in England.” (2)
We, for our own parts, can conceive nothing more preeminently absurd, than for a man to quote and comment on what he has never read. This is clearly the case with the Major. The emigrants who were to be obliged by a legal act to apply themselves to labour, were not those who were to receive land for nothing, but those who were to rent it, or to hire themselves out as labourers under others.. The Major has applied the provisions of the Seventh Article to the class mentioned in the Sixth. So disgraceful an instance of carelessness we never saw in any official document.
Whether the President acted well or ill, is not the question. The principle on which he proceeded cannot be mistaken. He was about to advance a considerable sum for the purpose of transporting these people to Hayti. He appears, as far as we can judge from these instructions, to have exacted no security from the higher and most respectable class. But he thought it probable, we suppose, that many of those idle and profligate persons who abound in all great cities, and who are peculiarly likely to abound in a degraded caste, beggars and thieves, the refuse of the North American bridewells, might accept his proposals, merely that they might live for some months at free costs, and then return to their old habits. He therefore naturally required some assurance that the poorer emigrants intended to support themselves by their industry before he would agree to advance their subsistence.