And in high questions of society here is always the stumbling-block. All manners of men can get themselves into a room together without difficulty, and can behave themselves with moderate forbearance to each other when in it. But there are points on which ladies are harder than steel, stiffer than their brocaded silks, more obdurate than whalebone.
"He wishes me to meet Mrs. So-and-So," a lady said to me, speaking of her husband, "because Mr. So-and-So is a very respectable good sort of man. I have no objection whatever to Mr. So-and-So; but if I begin with her, I know there will be no end."
"Probably not," I said; "when you once commence, you will doubtless have to go on—in the good path." I confess that the last words were saidsotto voce. On that occasion the courage was wanting in me to speak out my mind. The lady was very pretty, and I could not endure to be among the unfavoured ones.
"That is just what I have said to Mr.——;but he never thinks about such things; he is so very imprudent. If I ask Mrs. So-and-So here, how can I keep out Mrs. Such-a-One? They are both very respectable, no doubt; but what were their grandmothers?"
Ah! if we were to think of their grandmothers, it would doubtless be a dark subject. But what, O lady, of their grandchildren? That may be the most important, and also most interesting side from whence to view the family.
"These people marry now," another lady said to me—a lady not old exactly, but old enough to allude to such a subject; and in the tone of her voice I thought I could catch an idea that she conceived them in doing so to be trenching on the privileges of their superiors. "But their mothers and grandmothers never thought of looking to that at all. Are we to associate with the children of such women, and teach our daughters that vice is not to be shunned?"
Ah! dear lady—not old, but sufficiently old—this statement of yours is only too true. Their mothers and grandmothers did not think much of matrimony—had but little opportunity of thinking much of it. But with whom did the fault chiefly lie? These very people of whom we are speaking, would they not be your cousins but for the lack of matrimony? Your uncle, your father, your cousins, your grandfather, nay, your very brother, are they not the true criminals in this matter—they who have lived in this unhallowed state with women of a lower race? For the sinners themselves of either sex I would not askyourpardon; but you might forgive the children's children.
The life of coloured women in Jamaica some years since was certainly too often immoral. They themselves were frequently illegitimate, and they were not unwilling that their children should be so also. To such a one it was preferable to be a white man's mistress than the wife of such as herself; and it did not bring on them the same disgrace, this kind of life, as it does on women in England, or even, I may say, on women in Europe, nor the same bitter punishment. Their master, though he might be stern enough and a tyrant, as the owner of slaves living on his own little principality might probably be, was kinder to her than to the other females around her, and in a rough sort of way was true to her. He did not turn her out of the house, and she found it to be promotion to be the mother of his children and the upper servant in his establishment. And in those days, days still so near to us, the coloured woman was a slave herself, unless specially manumitted either in her own generation or in that immediately above her. It is from such alliances as these that the coloured race of Jamaica has sprung.
But all this, if one cannot already boast that it is changed, is quickly changing. Matrimony is in vogue, and the coloured women know their rights, and are inclined to claim them.
Of course among them, as among us at home, and among all people, there are various ranks. There are but few white labourers in Jamaica, and but few negroes who are not labourers. But the coloured people are to be found in all ranks, from that of the Prime Minister—for they have a Prime Minister in Jamaica—down to the worker in the cane-fields. Among their women many are now highly educated, for they send their children to English schools. Perhaps if I were to say fashionably educated, I might be more strictly correct They love dearly to shine; to run over the piano with quick and loud fingers; to dance with skill, which they all do, for they have good figures and correct ears; to know and display the little tricks and graces of English ladies—such tricks and graces as are to be learned between fifteen and seventeen at Ealing, Clapham, and Homsey.
But the coloured girls of a class below these—perhaps I should say two classes below them—are the most amusing specimens of Jamaica ladies. I endeavoured to introduce my readers to one at Port Antonio. They cannot be called pretty, for the upper part of the face almost always recedes; but they have good figures and well-turned limbs. They are singularly free frommauvaise honte, and yet they are not impertinent or ill-mannered. They are gracious enough with the pale faces when treated graciously, but they can show a very high spirit if they fancy that any slight is shown to them. They delight to talk contemptuously of niggers. Those people are dirty niggers, and nasty niggers, and mere niggers. I have heard this done by one whom I had absolutely taken for a negro, and who was not using loud abusive language, but gently speaking of an inferior class.
With these, as indeed with coloured people of a higher grade, the great difficulty is with their language. They cannot acquire the natural English pronunciation. As far as I remember, I have never heard but two negroes who spoke unbroken English; and the lower classes of the coloured people, though they are not equally deficient, are still very incapable of plain English articulation. The "th" is to them, as to foreigners, an insuperable difficulty. Even Josephine, it may be remembered, was hardly perfect in this respect.
It seems to us natural that white men should hold ascendency over those who are black or coloured. Although we have emancipated our own slaves, and done so much to abolish slavery elsewhere, nevertheless we regard the negro as born to be a servant. We do not realize it to ourselves that it is his right to share with us the high places of the world, and that it should be an affair of individual merit whether we wait on his beck or he on ours. We have never yet brought ourselves so to think, and probably never shall. They still are to us a servile race. Philanthropical abolitionists will no doubt deny the truth of this; but I have no doubt that the conviction is strong with them—could they analyze their own convictions—as it is with others.
Where white men and black men are together, the white will order and the black will obey, with an obedience more or less implicit according to the terms on which they stand. When those terms are slavery, the white men order with austerity, and the black obey with alacrity. But such terms have been found to be prejudicial to both. Each is brutalized by the contact. The black man becomes brutal and passive as a beast of burden; the white man becomes brutal and ferocious as a beast of prey.
But there are various other terms on which they may stand as servants and masters. There are those well-understood terms which regulate employment in England and elsewhere, under which the poor man's time is his money, and the rich man's capital his certain means of obtaining labour. As far as we can see, these terms, if properly carried out, are the best which human wisdom can devise for the employment and maintenance of mankind. Here in England they are not always properly carried out. At an occasional spot or two things will run rusty for a while. There are strikes, and there are occasional gluts of labour, very distressing to the poor man; and occasional gluts of the thing laboured, very embarrassing to the rich man. But on the whole, seeing that after all the arrangement is only human, here in England it does work pretty well. We intended, no doubt, when we emancipated our slaves in Jamaica, that the affair should work in the same way there.
But the terms there at present are as far removed from the English system as they are from the Cuban, and are almost as abhorrent to justice as slavery itself—as abhorrent to justice, though certainly not so abhorrent to mercy and humanity.
What would a farmer say in England if his ploughman declined to work, and protested that he preferred going to his master's granary and feeding himself and his children on his master's corn? "Measter, noa; I beez a-tired thick day, and dunna mind to do no wark!" Then the poorhouse, my friend, the poorhouse! And hardly that; starvation first, and nakedness, and all manner of misery. In point of fact, our friend the ploughman must go and work, even though his o'erlaboured bones be tired, as no doubt they often are. He knows it, and does it, and in his way is not discontented. And is not this God's ordinance?
His ordinance in England and elsewhere, but not so, apparently, in Jamaica. There we had a devil's ordinance in those days of slavery; and having rid ourselves of that, we have still a devil's ordinance of another sort. It is not perhaps very easy for men to change devil's work into heavenly work at once. The ordinance that at present we have existing there is thatfar nienteone of lying in the sun and eating yams—"of eating, not your own yams, you lazy, do-nothing, thieving darkee; but my yams; mine, who am being ruined, root and branch, stock and barrel, house and homestead, wife and bairns, because you won't come and work for me when I offer you due wages; you thieving, do-nothing, lazy nigger."
"Hush!" will say my angry philanthropist. "For the sake of humanity, hush! Will coarse abuse and the calling of names avail anything? Is he not a man and a brother?" No, my angry philanthropist; while he will not work and will only steal, he is neither the one nor the other, in my estimation. As for his being a brother, that we may say is—fudge; and I will call no professional idler a man.
But the abuse above given is not intended to be looked on as coming out of my own mouth, and I am not, therefore, to be held responsible for the wording of it. It is inserted there—with small inverted commas, as you see—to show the language with which our angry white friends in Jamaica speak of the extraordinary condition in which they have found themselves placed.
Slowly—with delay that has been awfully ruinous—they now bethink themselves of immigration—immigration from the coast of Africa, immigration from China, Coolie immigrants from Hindostan. When Trinidad and Guiana have helped themselves, then Jamaica bestirs itself. And what then? Then the negroes bestir themselves. "For heaven's sake let us be looked to! Are we not to be protected from competition? If labourers be brought here, will not these white people again cultivate their grounds? Shall we not be driven from our squatting patches? Shall we not starve; or, almost worse than that, shall we not again fall under Adam's curse? Shall we not again be slaves, in reality, if not in name? Shall we not have to work?"
The negro's idea of emancipation was and is emancipation not from slavery but from work. To lie in the sun and eat breadfruit and yams is his idea of being free. Such freedom as that has not been intended for man in this world; and I say that Jamaica, as it now exists, is still under a devil's ordinance.
One cannot wonder that the white man here should be vituperative in his wrath. First came emancipation. He bore that with manful courage; for it must be remembered that even in that he had much to bear. The price he got for his slave was nothing as compared with that slave's actual value. And slavery to him was not repugnant as it is to you and me. One's trade is never repugnant to one's feelings. But so much he did bear with manly courage. He could no longer make slave-grown sugar, but he would not at any rate be compelled to compete with those who could. The protective duties would save him there.
Then free trade became the fashion, and protective duties on sugar were abolished. I beg it may not be thought that I am an advocate for such protection. The West Indians were, I think, thrown over in a scurvy manner, because they were thrown over by their professed friends. But that was, we all know, the way with Sir Robert Peel. Well, free trade in sugar became the law of the land, and then the Jamaica planter found the burden too heavy for his back. The money which had flown in so freely came in such small driblets that he could make no improvement. Portions of his estate went out of cultivation, and then the negro who should have tilled the remainder squatted on it, and said, "No, massa, me no workee to-day."
And now, to complete the business, now that Jamaica is at length looking in earnest for immigration—for it has long been looking for immigration with listless dis-earnest—the planter is told that the labour of the black man must be protected. If he be vituperative, who can wonder at it? To speak the truth, he is somewhat vituperative.
The white planter of Jamaica is sore and vituperative and unconvinced. He feels that he has been ill used, and forced to go to the wall; and that now he is there, he is meanly spoken of, as though he were a bore and a nuisance—as one of whom the Colonial Office would gladly rid itself if it knew how. In his heart of hearts there dwells a feeling that after all slavery was not so vile an institution—that that devil as well as some others has been painted too black. In those old days the work was done, the sugar was made, the workmen were comfortably housed and fed, and perhaps on his father's estate were kindly treated. At any rate, such is his present memory. The money came in, things went on pleasantly, and he cannot remember that anybody was unhappy. Butnow—!Can it be wondered at that in his heart of hearts he should still have a sort of yearning after slavery?
In one sense, at any rate, he has been ill used. The turn in the wheel of Fortune has gone against him, as it went against the hand-loom weavers when machinery became the fashion. Circumstances rather than his own fault have brought him low. Well-disciplined energy in all the periods of his adversity might perhaps have saved him, as it has saved others; but there has been more against him than against others. As regards him himself, the old-fashioned Jamaica planter, the pure blooded white owner of the soil, I think that his day in Jamaica is done. The glory, I fear, has departed from his house. The hand-loom weavers have been swept into infinite space, and their children now poke the engine fires, or piece threads standing in a factory. The children of the old Jamaica planter must also push their fortunes elsewhere.
It is a thousand pities, for he was, I may still say is, the prince of planters—the true aristocrat of the West Indies. He is essentially different as a man from the somewhat purse-proud Barbadian, whose estate of two hundred acres has perhaps changed hands half a dozen times in the last fifty years, or the thoroughly mercantile sugar manufacturer of Guiana. He has so many of the characteristics of an English country gentleman that he does not strike an Englishman as a strange being. He has his pedigree, and his family house, and his domain around him. He shoots and fishes, and some few years since, in the good days, he even kept a pack of hounds. He is in the commission of the peace, and as such has much to do. A planter in Demerara may also be a magistrate,—probably is so; but the fact does not come forward as a prominent part of his life's history.
In Jamaica too there is scope for a country gentleman. They have their counties and their parishes; in Barbados they have nothing but their sugar estates. They have county society, local balls, and local race-meetings. They have local politics, local quarrels, and strong old-fashioned local friendships. In all these things one feels oneself to be much nearer to England in Jamaica than in any other of the West Indian islands.
All this is beyond measure pleasant, and it is a thousand pities that it should not last. I fear, however, that it will not last—that, indeed, it is not now lasting. That dear lady's unwillingness to obey her lord's behests, when he asked her to call on her brown neighbour, nay, the very fact of that lord's request, both go to prove that this is so. The lady felt that her neighbour was cutting the very ground from under her feet. The lord knew "that old times were changed, old manners gone." The game was almost up when he found himself compelled to make such a request.
At present, when the old planter sits on the magisterial bench, a coloured man sits beside him; one probably on each side of him. At road sessions he cannot carry out his little project because the coloured men out-vote him. There is a vacancy for his parish in the House of Assembly. The old planter scorns the House of Assembly, and will have nothing to do with it. A coloured man is therefore chosen, and votes away the white man's taxes; and then things worse and worse arise. Not only coloured men get into office, but black men also. What is our old aristocratic planter to do with a negro churchwarden on one side, and a negro coroner on another? "Fancy what our state is," a young planter said to me; "I dare not die, for fear I should be sat upon by a black man!"
I know that it will be thought by many, and probably said by some, that these are distinctions to which we ought not to allude. But without alluding to them in one's own mind it is impossible to understand the state of the country; and without alluding to them in speech it is impossible to explain the state of the country. The fact is, that in Jamaica, at the present day, the coloured people do stand on strong ground, and that they do not so stand with the goodwill of the old aristocracy of the country. They have forced their way up, and now loudly protest that they intend to keep it. I think that they will keep it, and that on the whole it will be well for us Anglo-Saxons to have created a race capable of living and working in the climate without inconvenience.
It is singular, however, how little all this is understood in England. There it is conceived that white men and coloured men, white ladies and coloured ladies, meet together and amalgamate without any difference. The Duchess of This and Lord That are very happy to have at their tables some intelligent dark gentleman, or even a well-dressed negro, though he may not perhaps be very intelligent. There is some little excitement in it, some change from the common; and perhaps also an easy opportunity of practising on a small scale those philanthropic views which they preach with so much eloquence. When one hobnobs over a glass of champagne with a dark gentleman, he is in some sort a man and a brother. But the duchess and the lord think that because the dark gentleman is to their taste, he must necessarily be as much to the taste of the neighbours among whom he has been born and bred; of those who have been accustomed to see him from his childhood.
There never was a greater mistake. A coloured man may be a fine prophet in London; but he will be no prophet in Jamaica, which is his own country; no prophet at any rate among his white neighbours.
I knew a case in which a very intelligent—nay, I believe, a highly-educated young coloured gentleman, was sent out by certain excellent philanthropic big-wigs to fill an official situation in Jamaica. He was a stranger to Jamaica, never having been there before. Now, when he was so sent out, the home big-wigs alluded to, intimated to certain other big-wigs in Jamaica that their dark protégé would be a great acquisition to the society of the place. I mention this to show the ignorance of those London big-wigs, not as to the capability of the young gentleman, which probably was not over-rated, but as to the manners and life of the place. I imagine that the gentleman has hardly once found himself in that society which it was supposed he would adorn. The time, however, will probably come when he and others of the same class will have sufficient society of their own.
I have said elsewhere that the coloured people in Jamaica have made their way into society; and in what I now say I may seem to contradict myself. Into what may perhaps be termed public society they have made their way. Those who have seen the details of colonial life will know that there is a public society to which people are admitted or not admitted, according to their acknowledged rights. Governor's parties, public balls, and certain meetings which are semi-official and semi-social, are of this nature. A Governor in Jamaica would, I imagine, not conceive himself to have the power of excluding coloured people from his table, even if he wished it. But in Barbados I doubt whether a Governor could, if he wished it, do the reverse.
So far coloured people in Jamaica have made their footing good; and they are gradually advancing beyond this. But not the less as a rule are they disliked by the old white aristocracy of the country; in a strong degree by the planters themselves, but in a much stronger by the planters' wives.
So much for my theory as to the races of men in Jamaica, and as to the social condition of the white and coloured people with reference to each other. Now I would say a word or two respecting the white man as he himself is, without reference either to his neighbour or to his prospects.
A better fellow cannot be found anywhere than a gentleman of Jamaica, or one with whom it is easier to live on pleasant terms. He is generally hospitable, affable, and generous; easy to know, and pleasant when known; not given perhaps to much deep erudition, but capable of talking with ease on most subjects of conversation; fond of society, and of pleasure, if you choose to call it so; but not generally addicted to low pleasures. He is often witty, and has a sharp side to his tongue if occasion be given him to use it. He is not generally, I think, a hard-working man. Had he been so, the country perhaps would not have been in its present condition. But he is bright and clever, and in spite of all that he has gone through, he is at all times good-humoured.
No men are fonder of the country to which they belong, or prouder of the name of Great Britain than these Jamaicans. It has been our policy—and, as regards our larger colonies, the policy I have no doubt has been beneficial—to leave our dependencies very much to themselves; to interfere in the way of governing as little as might be; and to withdraw as much as possible from any participation in their internal concerns. This policy is anything but popular with the white aristocracy of Jamaica. They would fain, if it were possible, dispense altogether with their legislature, and be governed altogether from home. In spite of what they have suffered, they are still willing to trust the statesmen of England, but are most unwilling to trust the statesmen of Jamaica.
Nothing is more peculiar than the way in which the word "home" is used in Jamaica, and indeed all through the West Indies, With the white people, it always signifies England, even though the person using the word has never been there. I could never trace the use of the word in Jamaica as applied by white men or white women to the home in which they lived, not even though that home had been the dwelling of their fathers as well as of themselves. The word "home" with them is sacred, and means something holier than a habitation in the tropics. It refers always to the old country.
In this respect, as in so many others, an Englishman differs greatly from a Frenchman. Though our English, as a rule, are much more given to colonize than they are; though we spread ourselves over the face of the globe, while they have established comparatively but few settlements in the outer world; nevertheless, when we leave our country, we almost always do so with some idea, be it ever so vague, that we shall return to it again, and again make it our home. But the Frenchman divests himself of any such idea. He also loves France, or at any rate loves Paris; but his object is to carry his Paris with him; to make a Paris for himself, whether it be in a sugar island among the Antilles, or in a trading town upon the Levant.
And in some respects the Frenchman is the wiser man. He never looks behind him with regret. He does his best to make his new house comfortable. The spot on which he fixes is his home, and so he calls it, and so regards it. But with an Englishman in the West Indies—even with an English Creole—England is always his home.
If the people in Jamaica have any prejudice, it is on the subject of heat. I suppose they have a general idea that their island is hotter than England; but they never reduce this to an individual idea respecting their own habitation.
"Come and dine with me," a man says to you; "I can give you a cool bed." The invitation at first sounded strange to me, but I soon got used to it; I soon even liked it, though I found too often that the promise was not kept. How could it be kept while the quicksilver was standing at eighty-five in the shade?
And each man boasts that his house is ten degrees cooler than that of his neighbours; and each man, if you contest the point, has a reason to prove why it must be so.
But a stranger, at any rate round Kingston, is apt to put the matter in a different light. One place may be hotter than another, but cool is a word which he never uses. On the whole, I think that the heat of Kingston, Jamaica, is more oppressive than that of any other place among the British West Indies. When one gets down to the Spanish coast, then, indeed, one can look back even to Kingston with regret.
That Jamaica was a land of wealth, rivalling the East in its means of riches, nay, excelling it as a market for capital, as a place in which money might be turned; and that it now is a spot on the earth almost more poverty-stricken than any other—so much is known almost to all men. That this change was brought about by the manumission of the slaves, which was completed in 1838, of that also the English world is generally aware. And there probably the usual knowledge about Jamaica ends. And we may also say that the solicitude of Englishmen at large goes no further. The families who are connected with Jamaica by ties of interest are becoming fewer and fewer. Property has been abandoned as good for nothing, and nearly forgotten; or has been sold for what wretched trifle it would fetch; or left to an overseer, who is hardly expected to send home proceeds—is merely ordered imperatively to apply for no subsidies. Fathers no longer send their younger sons to make their fortunes there. Young English girls no longer come out as brides. Dukes and earls do not now govern the rich gem of the west, spending their tens of thousands in royal magnificence, and laying by other tens of thousands for home consumption. In lieu of this, some governor by profession, unfortunate for the moment, takes Jamaica with a groan, as a stepping-stone to some better Barataria—New Zealand perhaps, or Frazer River; and by strict economy tries to save the price of his silver forks. Equerries, aides-de-camp, and private secretaries no longer flaunt it about Spanish Town. The flaunting about Spanish Town is now of a dull sort. Ichabod! The glory of that house is gone. The palmy days of that island are over.
Those who are failing and falling in the world excite but little interest; and so it is at present with Jamaica. From time to time we hear that properties which used to bring five thousand pounds a year are not now worth five hundred pounds in fee simple. We hear it, thank our stars that we have not been brought up in the Jamaica line, and there's an end of it. If we have young friends whom we wish to send forth into the world, we search the maps with them at our elbows; but we put our hands over the West Indies—over the first fruits of the courage and skill of Columbus—as a spot tabooed by Providence. Nay, if we could, we would fain forget Jamaica altogether.
But there it is; a spot on the earth not to be lost sight of or forgotten altogether, let us wish it ever so much. It belongs to us, and must be in some sort thought of and managed, and, if possible, governed. Though the utter sinking of Jamaica under the sea might not be regarded as a misfortune, it is not to be thought of that it should belong to others than Britain. How should we look at the English politician who would propose to sell it to the United States; or beg Spain to take it as an appendage to Cuba? It is one of the few sores in our huge and healthy carcase; and the sore has been now running so long, that we have almost given over asking whether it be curable.
This at any rate is certain—it will not sink into the sea, but will remain there, inhabited, if not by white men, then by coloured men or black; and must unfortunately be governed by us English.
We have indulged our antipathy to cruelty by abolishing slavery. We have made the peculiar institution an impossibility under the British crown. But in doing so we overthrew one particular interest; and, alas! we overthrew also, and necessarily so, the holders of that interest. As for the twenty millions which we gave to the slave-owners, it was at best but as though we had put down awls and lasts by Act of Parliament, and, giving the shoemakers the price of their tools, told them they might make shoes as they best could without them; failing any such possibility, that they might live on the price of their lost articles. Well; the shoemakers did their best, and continued their trade in shoes under much difficulty.
But then we have had another antipathy to indulge, and have indulged it—our antipathy to protection. We have abolished the duty on slave-grown sugar; and the shoemakers who have no awls and lasts have to compete sadly with their happy neighbours, possessed of these useful shoemaking utensils.
Make no more shoes, but make something in lieu of shoes, we say to them. The world wants not shoes only—make hats. Give up your sugar, and bring forth produce that does not require slave labour. Could the men of Jamaica with one voice speak out such words as the experience of the world might teach them, they would probably answer thus:—"Yes; in two hundred years or so we will do so. So long it will take to alter the settled trade and habit of a community. In the mean time, for ourselves, our living selves, our late luxurious homes, our idle, softly-nurtured Creole wives, our children coming and to come—for ourselves—what immediate compensation do you intend to offer us, Mr. Bull?"
Mr. Bull, with sufficient anger at such importunity; with sufficient remembrance of his late twenty millions of pounds sterling; with some plain allusions to that payment, buttons up his breeches-pocket and growls angrily.
Abolition of slavery is good, and free trade is good. Such little insight as a plain man may have into the affairs around him seems to me to suffice for the expression of such opinion. Nor will I presume to say that those who proposed either the one law or the other were premature. To get a good law passed and out of hand is always desirable. There are from day to day so many new impediments! But the law having been passed, we should think somewhat of the sufferers.
Planters in Jamaica assert that when the abolition of slavery was hurried on by the termination of the apprentice system before the time first stipulated, they were promised by the government at home that their interests should be protected by high duties on slave-grown sugar. That such pledge was ever absolutely made, I do not credit. But that, if made, it could be worth anything, no man looking to the history of England could imagine. What minister can pledge his successors? In Jamaica it is said that the pledge was given and broken by the same man—by Sir Robert Peel. But when did Sir Robert Peel's pledge in one year bind even his own conduct in the next?
The fact perhaps is this, that no one interest can ever be allowed to stand in the way of national progress. We could not stop machinery for the sake of the hand-loom weavers. The poor hand-loom weavers felt themselves aggrieved; knew that the very bread was taken from their mouths, their hard-earned cup from their lips. They felt, poor weavers! that they could not take themselves in middle life to poking fires and greasing wheels. Time, the eater of things, has now pretty well eaten the hand-loom weavers—them and their miseries. Must it not be so also with the Jamaica planters?
In the mean time the sight, as regards the white man, is a sad one to see; and almost the sadder in that the last three or four years have been in a slight degree prosperous to the Jamaica sugar-grower; so that this question of producing sugar in that island at a rate that will pay for itself is not quite answered. The drowning man still clings by a rope's end, though it be but by half an inch, and that held between his teeth. Let go, thou unhappy one, and drown thyself out of the way! Is it not thus that Great Britain, speaking to him from the high places in Exeter Hall, shouts to him in his death struggles?
Are Englishmen in general aware that half the sugar estates in Jamaica, and I believe more than half the coffee plantations, have gone back into a state of bush?—that all this land, rich with the richest produce only some thirty years since, has now fallen back into wilderness?—that the world has hereabouts so retrograded?—that chaos and darkness have reswallowed so vast an extent of the most bountiful land that civilization had ever mastered, and that too beneath the British government?
And of those who are now growing canes in Jamaica a great portion are gentlemen who have lately bought their estates for the value of the copper in the sugar-boilers, and of the metal in the rum-stills. If to this has been added anything like a fair value for wheels in the machinery, the estate has not been badly sold.
Some estates there are, and they are not many, which are still worked by the agents—attorneys is the proper word—of rich proprietors in England; of men so rich that they have been able to bear the continual drain of properties that for years have been always losing—of men who have had wealth and spirit to endure this. It is hardly necessary to say that they are few; and that many whose spirit has been high, but wealth insufficient, have gone grievously to the wall in the attempt.
And there are still some who, living on the spot, have hitherto pulled through it all; who have watched houses falling and the wilderness progressing, and have still stuck to their homes and their work; men whose properties for ten years, counting from the discontinuance of protection, have gradually grown less and less beneath their eyes, till utter want has been close to them. And yet they have held on. In the good times they may have made five hundred hogsheads of sugar every year. It has come to that with them that in some years they have made but thirty. But they have made that thirty and still held on. All honour at least to them! For their sake, if for that of no others, we would be tempted to pray that these few years of their prosperity may be prolonged and grow somewhat fatter.
The exported produce of Jamaica consists chiefly of sugar and rum. The article next in importance is coffee. Then they export also logwood, arrowroot, pimento, and ginger; but not in quantities to make them of much national value. Mahogany is also cut here, and fustic. But sugar and rum are still the staples of the island. Now all the world knows that rum and sugar are made from the same plant.
And yet every one will tell you that the cane can hardly be got to thrive in Jamaica without slave labour; will tell you, also, that the land of Jamaica is so generous that it will give forth many of the most wonderful fruits of the world, almost without labour. Putting these two things together, would not any simple man advise them to abandon sugar? Ah! he would be very simple if he were to do so with a voice that could make itself well heard, and should dare to do so in Jamaica.
Men there are generally tolerant of opinion on most matters, and submit to be talked to on their own shortcomings and colonial mismanagement with a decent grace. You may advise them to do this, and counsel them to do that, referring to their own immediate concerns, without receiving that rebuke which your interference might probably deserve. But do not try their complaisance too far. Do not advise them to give over making sugar. If you give such advice in a voice loud enough to be heard, the island will soon be too hot to hold you. Sugar is loved there, whether wisely loved or not. If not wisely, then too well.
When I hear a Jamaica planter talking of sugar, I cannot but think of Burns, and his muse that had made him poor and kept him so. And the planter is just as ready to give up his canes as the poet was to abandon his song.
The production of sugar and the necessary concomitant production of rum—for in Jamaica the two do necessarily go together—is not, one would say, an alluring occupation. I do not here intend to indulge my readers with a detailed description of the whole progress, from the planting or ratooning of the cane till the sugar and the rum are shipped. Books there are, no doubt, much wiser than mine in which the whole process is developed. But I would wish this much to be understood, that the sugar planter, as things at present are, must attend to and be master of, and practically carry out three several trades. He must be an agriculturist, and grow his cane; and like all agriculturists must take his crop from the ground and have it ready for use; as the wheat grower does in England, and the cotton grower in America. But then he must also be a manufacturer, and that in a branch of manufacture which requires complicated machinery. The wheat grower does not grind his wheat and make it into bread. Nor does the cotton grower fabricate calico. But the grower of canes must make sugar. He must have his boiling-houses and trash-houses; his water power and his steam power; he must dabble in machinery, and, in fact, be a Manchester manufacturer as well as a Kent farmer. And then, over and beyond this, he must be a distiller. The sugar leaves him fit for your puddings, and the rum fit for your punch—always excepting the slight article of adulteration which you are good enough to add afterwards yourselves. Such a complication of trades would not be thought very alluring to a gentleman farmer in England.
And yet the Jamaica proprietor holds faithfully by his sugar-canes.
It has been said that sugar is an article which for its proper production requires slave labour. That this is absolutely so is certainly not the fact, for very good sugar is made in Jamaica without it. That thousands of pounds could be made with slaves where only hundreds are made—or, as the case may be, are lost—without it, I do not doubt. The complaint generally resolves itself to this, that free labour in Jamaica cannot be commanded; that it cannot be had always, and up to a certain given quantity at a certain moment; that labour is scarce, and therefore high priced, and that labour being high priced, a negro can live on half a day's wages, and will not therefore work the whole day—will not always work any part of the day at all, seeing that his yams, his breadfruit, and his plantains are ready to his hands. But the slaves!—Oh! those were the good times!
I have in another chapter said a few words about the negroes as at present existing in Jamaica, I also shall say a few words as to slavery elsewhere; and I will endeavour not to repeat myself. This much, however, is at least clear to all men, that you cannot eat your cake and have it. You cannot abolish slavery to the infinite good of your souls, your minds, and intellects, and yet retain it for the good of your pockets. Seeing that these men are free, it is worse than useless to begrudge them the use of their freedom. If I have means to lie in the sun and meditate idle, why, O my worthy taskmaster! should you expect me to pull out at thy behest long reels of cotton, long reels of law jargon, long reels of official verbosity, long reels of gossamer literature—Why, indeed? Not having means so to lie, I do pull out the reels, taking such wages as I can get, and am thankful. But my friend and brother over there, my skin-polished, shining, oil-fat negro, is a richer man than I. He lies under his mango-tree, and eats the luscious fruit in the sun; he sends his black urchin up for a breadfruit, and behold the family table is spread. He pierces a cocoa-nut, and, lo! there is his beverage. He lies on the grass surrounded by oranges, bananas, and pine-apples. Oh, my hard taskmaster of the sugar-mill, is he not better off than thou? why should he work at thy order? "No, massa, me weak in me belly; me no workee to-day; me no like workee just 'em little moment." Yes, Sambo has learned to have his own way; though hardly learned to claim his right without lying.
That this is all bad—bad nearly as bad can be—bad perhaps as anything short of slavery, all men will allow. It will be quite as bad in the long run for the negro as for the white man—worse, indeed; for the white man will by degrees wash his hands of the whole concern. But as matters are, one cannot wonder that the black man will not work. The question stands thus: cannot he be made to do so? Can it not be contrived that he shall be free, free as is the Englishman, and yet compelled, as is the Englishman, to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow?
I utterly disbelieve in statistics as a science, and am never myself guided by any long-winded statement of figures from a Chancellor of the Exchequer or such like big-wig. To my mind it is an hallucination. Such statements are "ignes fatui." Figures, when they go beyond six in number, represent to me not facts, but dreams, or sometimes worse than dreams. I have therefore no right myself to offer statistics to the reader. But it was stated in the census taken in 1844 that there were sixteen thousand white people in the island, and about three hundred thousand blacks. There were also about seventy thousand coloured people. Putting aside for the moment the latter as a middle class, and regarding the black as the free servants of the white, one would say that labour should not be so deficient But what, if your free servants don't work; unfortunately know how to live without working?
The political question that presses upon me in viewing Jamaica, is certainly this—Will the growth of sugar pay in Jamaica, or will it not? I have already stated my conviction that a change is now taking place in the very blood and nature of the men who are destined to be the dominant classes in these western tropical latitudes. That the white man, the white Englishman, or white English Creole, will ever again be a thoroughly successful sugar grower in Jamaica I do not believe. That the brown man may be so is very probable; but great changes must first be made in the countries around him.
While the "peculiar institution" exists in Cuba, Brazil, Porto Rico, and the Southern States, it cannot, I think, come to pass. A plentiful crop in Cuba may in any year bring sugar to a price which will give no return whatever to the Jamaica grower. A spare crop in Jamaica itself will have the same result; and there are many causes for spare crops; drought, for instance, and floods, and abounding rats, and want of capital to renew and manure the plants. At present the trade will only give in good years a fair profit to those who have purchased their land almost for nothing. A trade that cannot stand many misfortunes can hardly exist prosperously. This trade has stood very many; but I doubt whether it can stand more.
The "peculiar institution," however, will not live for ever. The time must come when abolition will be popular even in Louisiana. And when it is law there, it will be the law in Cuba also. If that day shall have arrived before the last sugar-mill in the island shall have been stopped, Jamaica may then compete with other free countries. The world will not do without sugar, let it be produced by slaves or free men.
But though a man may venture to foretell the abolition of slavery in the States, and yet call himself no prophet, he must be a wiser man than I who can foretell the time. It will hardly be to-morrow; nor yet the next day. It will scarcely come so that we may see it. Before it does come it may easily be that the last sugar-mill in poor Jamaica will in truth have stopped.
We all remember the day when Mr. Smith landed at Newhaven and took up his abode quietly at the inn there. Poor Mr. Smith! In the ripeness of time he has betaken himself a stage further on his long journey, travelling now probably without disguise, either that of a citizen King or of a citizen Smith.
And now, following his illustrious example, the ex-Emperor Soulouque has sought the safety always to be found on English territories by sovereigns out of place. In January, 1859, his Highness landed at Kingston, Jamaica, having made his town of Port au Prince and his kingdom of Hayti somewhat too hot to hold him.
All the world probably knows that King Soulouque is a black man. One blacker never endured the meridian heat of a tropical sun.
The island, which was christened Hispaniola by Columbus, has resumed its ancient name of Hayti. It is, however, divided into two kingdoms—two republics one may now say. That to the east is generally called St. Domingo, having borrowed the name given by Columbus to a town. This is by far the larger, but at the same time the poorer division of the island. That to the west is now called Hayti, and over this territory Soulouque reigned as emperor. He reigned as emperor, and was so styled, having been elected as President; in which little change in his state he has been imitated by a neighbour of ours with a success almost equal to his own.
For some dozen years the success of Soulouque was very considerable. He has had a dominion which has been almost despotic; and has, so rumour says, invested some three or four hundred thousand pounds in European funds. In this latter point his imitator has, I fear, hardly equalled him.
But a higher ambition fired the bosom of Soulouque, and he sighed after the territories of his neighbours—not generously to bestow them on other kings, but that he might keep them on his own behoof. Soulouque desired to be emperor of the whole island, and he sounded his trumpet and prepared his arms. He called together his army, and put on the boots of Bombastes. He put on the boots of Bombastes and bade his men meet him—at the Barleymow or elsewhere.
But it seems that his men were slow in coming to the rendezvous. Nothing that Soulouque could say, nothing that he could do, no admonitions through his sternest government ministers, no reading of the mutiny act by his commanders and generals, would induce them actually to make an assault at arms. Then Soulouque was angry, and in his anger he maltreated his army. He put his men into pits, and kept them there without food; left them to be eaten by vermin—to be fed upon while they could not feed; and played, upon the whole, such a melodrama of autocratic tricks and fantasies as might have done honour to a white Nero. Then at last black human nature could endure no more, and Soulouque, dreading a pit for his own majesty, was forced to run.
In one respect he was more fortunate than Mr. Smith. In his dire necessity an English troop-ship was found to be at hand. The 'Melbourne' was steaming home from Jamaica, and the officer in command having been appealed to for assistance, consented to return to Kingston with the royal suite. This she did, and on the 22nd of January, Soulouque, with his wife and daughter, his prime minister, and certain coal-black maids of honour, was landed at the quays.
When under the ægis of British protection, the ex-emperor was of course safe. But he had not exactly chosen a bed of roses for himself in coming to Jamaica. It might be probable that a bed of roses was not easily to be found at the moment. At Kingston there were collected many Haytians, who had either been banished by Soulouque in the plenitude of his power, or had run from him as he was now running from his subjects. There were many whose brothers and fathers had been destroyed in Hayti, whose friends had perished under the hands of the tyrant's executioner, for whom pits would have been prepared had they not vanished speedily. These refugees had sought safety also in Jamaica, and for them a day of triumph had now arrived. They were not the men to allow an opportunity for triumph to pass without enjoying it.
These were mostly brown men—men of a mixed race; men, and indeed women also. With Soulouque and his government such had found no favour. He had been glad to welcome white residents in his kingdom, and of course had rejoiced in having black men as his subjects. But of the coloured people he had endeavoured in every way to rid himself. He had done so to a great extent, and many of them were now ready to welcome him at Kingston.
Kingston does not rejoice in public equipages of much pretensions; nor are there to be hired many carriages fit for the conveyance of royalty, even in its decadence. Two small, wretched vehicles were however procured, such as ply in the streets there, and carry passengers to the Spanish Town railway at sixpence a head. In one of these sat Soulouque and his wife, with a British officer on the box beside the driver, and with two black policemen hanging behind. In another, similarly guarded, were packed the Countess Olive—that being the name of the ex-emperor's daughter—and her attendants. And thus travelling by different streets they made their way to their hotel.
One would certainly have wished, in despite of those wretched pits, that they had been allowed to do so without annoyance; but such was not the case. The banished Haytians had it not in their philosophy to abstain from triumphing on a fallen enemy. They surrounded the carriages with a dusky cloud, and received the fugitives with howls of self-congratulation at their abasement. Nor was this all. When the royal party was duly lodged at the Date-Tree tavern, the ex-Haytians lodged themselves opposite. There they held a dignity ball in token of their joy; and for three days maintained their position in order that poor Soulouque might witness their rejoicings.
"They have said a mass over him, the wretched being!" said the landlady of my hotel to me, triumphantly.
"Said a mass over him?"
"Yes, the black nigger—king, indeed! said a mass over him 'cause he's down. Thank God for that! And pray God keep him so. Him king indeed, the black nigger!" All which could not have been comfortable for poor Soulouque.
The royal party had endeavoured in the first instance to take up their quarters at this lady's hotel, or lodging-house, as they are usually called. But the patriotic sister of Mrs. Seacole would listen to no such proposition. "I won't keep a house for black men," she said to me. "As for kings, I would despise myself to have a black king. As for that black beast and his black women—Bah!" Now this was certainly magnanimous, for Soulouque would have been prepared to pay well for his accommodation. But the ordinary contempt which the coloured people have for negroes was heightened in this case by the presumption of black royalty—perhaps also by loyalty. "Queen Victoria is my king," said Mrs. Seacole's sister.
I must confess that I endeavoured to excite her loyalty rather than her compassion. A few friends were to dine with me that day; and where would have been my turtle soup had Soulouque and his suite taken possession of the house?
The deposed tyrant, when he left Hayti, published a short manifesto, in which he set forth that he, Faustin the First, having been elected by the free suffrages of his fellow countrymen, had endeavoured to govern them well, actuated by a pure love of his country; that he had remained at his post as long as his doing so had been pleasing to his countrymen; but that now, having discovered by sure symptoms that his countrymen desired to see him no longer on the throne, he voluntarily and immediately abdicated his seat. From henceforth he could only wish well to the prosperity of Hayti.
Free suffrages of his people! Ah, me! Such farces strike us but as farces when Hayti and such like lands are concerned. But when they come nearer to us they are very sad.
Soulouque is a stout, hale man, apparently of sixty-five or sixty-eight years of age. It is difficult to judge of the expression of a black man's face unless it be very plainly seen; but it appeared to me to be by no means repulsive. He has been, I believe, some twelve years Emperor of Hayti, and as he has escaped with wealth he cannot be said to have been unfortunate.
Queen, Lords, and Commons, with the full paraphernalia of triple readings, adjournments of the house, and counting out, prevails in Jamaica as it does in Great Britain.
By this it will be understood that there is a Governor, representing the Crown, whose sanction or veto is of course given, as regards important measures, in accordance with instructions from the Colonial Office. The Governor has an Executive Committee, which tallies with our Cabinet. It consists at present of three members, one of whom belongs to the upper House and two to the lower. The Governor may appoint a fourth member if it so please him. These gentlemen are paid for their services, and preside over different departments, as do our Secretaries of State, &c. And there is a Most Honourable Privy Council, just as we have at home. Of this latter, the members may or may not support the Governor, seeing that they are elected for life.
The House of Lords is represented by the Legislative Council. This quasi-peerage is of course not hereditary, but the members sit for life, and are nominated by the Governor. They are seventeen in number. The Legislative Council can of course put a veto on any bill.
The House of Assembly stands in the place of the House of Commons. It consists of forty-seven members, two being elected by nineteen parishes, and three each by three other parishes, those, namely, which contain the towns of Kingston, Spanish Town, and Port Royal.
In one respect this House of Commons falls short of the privileges and powers of our House at home. It cannot suggest money bills. No honourable member can make a proposition that so much a year shall be paid for such a purpose. The government did not wish to be driven to exercise the invidious power of putting repeated vetos on repeated suggestions for semi-public expenditure; and therefore this power has been taken away. But any honourable member can bring before the House a motion to the effect that the Governor be recommended himself to propose, by one of the Executive Committee, such or such a money bill; and then if the Governor decline, the House can refuse to pass his supplies, and can play the "red devil" with his Excellency. So that it seems to come pretty nearly to the same thing.
At home in England, Crown, Lords, and Commons really seem to do very well. Some may think that the system wants a little shove this way, some the other. Reform may, or may not be, more or less needed. But on the whole we are governed honestly, liberally, and successfully; with at least a greater share of honesty, liberality, and success than has fallen to the lot of most other people. Each of the three estates enjoys the respect of the people at large, and a seat, either among the Lords or the Commons, is an object of high ambition. The system may therefore be said to be successful.
But it does not follow that because it answers in England it should answer in Jamaica; that institutions which suit the country which is perhaps in the whole world the furthest advanced in civilization, wealth, and public honesty, should suit equally well an island which is unfortunately very far from being advanced in those good qualities; whose civilization, as regards the bulk of the population, is hardly above that of savages, whose wealth has vanished, and of whose public honesty—I will say nothing. Of that I myself will say nothing, but the Jamaicans speak of it in terms which are not flattering to their own land.
I do not think that the system does answer in Jamaica. In the first place, it must be remembered that it is carried on there in a manner very different from that exercised in our other West-Indian colonies. In Jamaica any man may vote who pays either tax or rent; but by a late law he must put in his claim to vote on a ten shilling stamp. There are in round numbers three hundred thousand blacks, seventy thousand coloured people, and fifteen thousand white; it may therefore easily be seen in what hands the power of electing must rest. Now in Barbados no coloured man votes at all. A coloured man or negro is doubtless qualified to vote if he own a freehold; but then, care is taken that such shall not own freeholds. In Trinidad, the legislative power is almost entirely in the hands of the Crown. In Guiana, which I look upon as the best governed of them all, this is very much the case.
It is not that I would begrudge the black man the right of voting because he is black, or that I would say that he is and must be unfit to vote, or unfit even to sit in a house of assembly; but the amalgamation as at present existing is bad. The objects sought after by a free and open representation of the people are not gained unless those men are as a rule returned who are most respected in the commonwealth, so that the body of which they are the units may be respected also. This object is not achieved in Jamaica, and consequently the House of Assembly is not respected. It does not contain the men of most weight and condition in the island, and is contemptuously spoken of even in Jamaica itself, and even by its own members.
Some there are, some few, who have gotten themselves to be elected, in order that things which are already bad may not, if such can be avoided, become worse. They, no doubt, are they who best do their duty by the country in which their lot lies. But, for the most part, those who should represent Jamaica will not condescend to take part in the debates, nor will they solicit the votes of the negroes.
It would appear from these observations as though I thought that the absolute ascendency of the white man should still be maintained in Jamaica. By no means. Let him be ascendant who can—in Jamaica or elsewhere—who honestly can. I doubt whether such ascendency, the ascendency of Europeans and white Creoles, can be longer maintained in this island. It is not even now maintained; and for that reason chiefly I hold that this system of Lords and Commons is not compatible with the present genius of the place. Let coloured men fill the public offices, and enjoy the sweets of official pickings. I would by no means wish to interfere with any good things which fortune may be giving them in this respect. But I think there would be greater probability of their advancing in their new profession honestly and usefully, if they could be made to look more to the Colonial Office at home, and less to the native legislature.
At home, no member of the House of Commons can hold a government contract. The members of the House of Assembly in Jamaica have no such prejudicial embargo attached to the honour of their seats. They can hold the government contracts; and it is astonishing how many of them are in their hands.
The great point which strikes a stranger is this, that the House of Assembly is not respected in the island. Jamaicans themselves have no confidence in it. If the white men could be polled, the majority I think would prefer to be rid of it altogether, and to be governed, as Trinidad is governed, by a Governor with a council; of course with due power of reference to the Colonial Office.
Let any man fancy what England would be if the House of Commons were ludicrous in the eyes of Englishmen; if men ridiculed or were ashamed of all their debates. Such is the case as regards the Jamaica House of Commons.
In truth, there is not room for a machinery so complicated in this island. The handful of white men can no longer have it all their own way; and as for the negroes—let any warmest advocate of the "man and brother" position say whether he has come across three or four of the class who are fit to enact laws for their own guidance and the guidance of others.
It pains me to write words which may seem to be opposed to humanity and a wide philanthropy; but a spade is a spade, and it is worse than useless to say that it is something else.
The proof of the truth of what I say with reference to this system of Lords and Commons is to be found in the eating of the pudding. It may not perhaps be fair to adduce the prosperity of Barbados, and to compare it with the adversity of Jamaica, seeing that local circumstances were advantageous to Barbados at the times of emancipation and equalization of the sugar duties. Barbados was always able to command a plentiful supply of labour. But it is quite fair to compare Jamaica with Guiana or Trinidad. In both these colonies the negro was as well able to shirk his work as in Jamaica.
And in these two colonies the negro did shirk his work, just as he did in Jamaica; and does still to a great extent. The limits of these colonies are as extensive as Jamaica is, and the negro can squat. They are as fertile as Jamaica is, and the negro can procure his food almost without trouble. But not the less is it a fact that the exportation of sugar from Guiana and Trinidad now exceeds the amount exported in the time of slavery, while the exportation from Jamaica is almost as nothing.
But in Trinidad and Guiana they have no House of Commons, with Mr. Speaker, three readings, motions for adjournment, and unlimited powers of speech. In those colonies the governments—acting with such assistance as was necessary—have succeeded in getting foreign labour. In Jamaica they have as yet but succeeded in talking about it. In Guiana and Trinidad they make much sugar, and boast loudly of making more. In Jamaica they make but very little, and have not self-confidence enough left with them to make any boast whatsoever.
With all the love that an Englishman should have for a popular parliamentary representation, I cannot think it adapted to a small colony, even were that colony not from circumstances so peculiarly ill fitted for it as is Jamaica. In Canada and Australia it is no doubt very well; the spirit of a fresh and energetic people struggling on into the world's eminence will produce men fit for debating, men who can stand on their legs without making a house of legislature ridiculous. But what could Lords and Commons do in Malta, or in Jersey? What would they do in the Scilly Islands? What have they been doing in the Ionian Islands? And, alas! what have they done in Jamaica?
Her roads are almost impassable, her bridges are broken down, her coffee plantations have gone back to bush, her sugar estates have been sold for the value of the sugar-boilers. Kingston as a town is the most deplorable that man ever visited, unless it be that Spanish Town is worse. And yet they have Lords and Commons with all but unlimited powers of making motions! It has availed them nothing, and I fear will avail them nothing.
This I know may be said, that be the Lords and Commons there for good or evil, they are to be moved neither by men nor gods. It is I imagine true, that no power known to the British empire could deprive Jamaica of her constitution. It has had some kind of a house of assembly since the time of Charles II.; nay, I believe, since the days of Cromwell; which by successive doctoring has grown to be such a parody, as it now is, on our home mode of doing business. How all this may now be altered and brought back to reason, perhaps no man can say. Probably it cannot be altered till some further smash shall come; but it is not on that account the less objectionable.
The House of Assembly and the Chamber of the Legislative Council are both situated in the same square with the Governor's mansion in Spanish Town. The desolateness of this place I have attempted to describe elsewhere, and yet, when I was there, Parliament was sitting! What must the place be during the nine months when Parliament does not sit? They are yellow buildings, erected at considerable expense, and not without some pretence. But nevertheless, they are ugly—ugly from their colour, ugly from the heat, and ugly from a certain heaviness which seems natural to them and to the place.
The house itself in which the forty-seven members sit is comfortable enough, and not badly adapted for its purposes. The Speaker sits at one end all in full fig, with a clerk at the table below; opposite to him, two-thirds down the room, a low bar, about four feet high, runs across it. As far as this the public are always admitted; and when any subject of special interest is under discussion twelve or fifteen persons may be seen there assembled. Then there is a side room opening from the house, into which members take their friends. Indeed it is, I believe, generally open to any one wearing a decent coat. There is the Bellamy of the establishment, in which honourable members take such refreshment as the warmth of the debate may render necessary. Their tastes seemed to me to be simple, and to addict themselves chiefly to rum and water.
I was throwing away my cigar as I entered the precincts of the house. "Oh, you can smoke," said my friend to me; "only, when you stand at the doorway, don't let the Speaker's eye catch the light; but it won't much matter." So I walked on, and stood at the side door, smoking my cigar indeed, but conscious that I was desecrating the place.
I saw five or six coloured gentlemen in the house, and two negroes—sitting in the house as members. As far as the two latter men were concerned, I could not but be gratified to see them in the fair enjoyment of the objects of a fair ambition. Had they not by efforts of their own made themselves greatly superior to others of their race, they would not have been there. I say this, fearing that it may be thought that I begrudge a black man such a position. I begrudge the black men nothing that they can honestly lay hands on; but I think that we shall benefit neither them nor ourselves by attempting with a false philanthropy to make them out to be other than they are.
The subject under debate was a railway bill. The railway system is not very extended in the island; but there is a railway, and the talk was of prolonging it. Indeed, the house I believe had on some previous occasion decided that it should be prolonged, and the present fight was as to some particular detail. What that detail was I did not learn, for the business being performed was a continual series of motions for adjournment carried on by a victorious minority of three.
It was clear that the conquered majority of—say thirty—was very angry. For some reason, appertaining probably to the tactics of the house, these thirty were exceedingly anxious to have some special point carried and put out of the way that night, but the three were inexorable. Two of the three spoke continually, and ended every speech with a motion for adjournment.
And then there was a disagreement among the thirty. Some declared all this to be "bosh," proposed to leave the house without any adjournment, play whist, and let the three victors enjoy their barren triumph. Others, made of sterner stuff, would not thus give way. One after another they made impetuous little speeches, then two at a time, and at last three. They thumped the table, and called each other pretty names, walked about furiously, and devoted the three victors to the infernal gods.
And then one of the black gentlemen arose, and made a calm, deliberate little oration. The words he spoke were about the wisest which were spoken that night, and yet they were not very wise. He offered to the house a few platitudes on the general benefit of railways, which would have applied to any railway under the sun, saying that eggs and fowls would be taken to market; and then he sat down. On his behalf I must declare that there were no other words of such wisdom spoken that night. But this relief lasted only for three minutes.
After a while two members coming to the door declared that it was becoming unbearable, and carried me away to play whist. "My place is close by," said one, "and if the row becomes hot we shall hear it. It is dreadful to stay there with such an object, and with the certainty of missing one's object after all." As I was inclined to agree with him, I went away and played whist.
But soon a storm of voices reached our ears round the card-table. "They are hard at it now," said one honourable member. "That's So-and-So, by the screech." The yell might have been heard at Kingston, and no doubt was.
"By heavens they are at it," said another. "Ha, ha, ha! A nice house of assembly, isn't it?"
"Will they pitch into one another?" I asked, thinking of scenes of which I had read of in another country; and thinking also, I must confess, that an absolute bodily scrimmage on the floor of the house might be worth seeing.
"They don't often do that," said my friend. "They trust chiefly to their voices; but there's no knowing."
The temptation was too much for me, so I threw down my cards and rushed back to the Assembly. When I arrived the louder portion of the noise was being made by one gentleman who was walking round and round the chamber, swearing in a loud voice that he would resign the very moment the Speaker was seated in the chair; for at that time the house was in committee. The louder portion of the noise, I say, for two other honourable members were speaking, and the rest were discussing the matter in small parties.
"Shameful, abominable, scandalous, rascally!" shouted the angry gentleman over and over again, as he paced round and round the chamber. "I'll not sit in such a house; no man should sit in such a house. ByG——,I'll resign as soon as I see the Speaker in that chair. Sir, come and have a drink of rum and water."
In his angry wanderings his steps had brought him to the door at which I was standing, and these last words were addressed to me. "Come and have a drink of rum and water," and he seized me with a hospitable violence by the arm. I did not dare to deny so angry a legislator, and I drank the rum and water. Then I returned to my cards.
It may be said that nearly the same thing does sometimes occur in our own House of Commons—always omitting the threats of resignation and the drink. With us at home a small minority may impede the business of the house by adjournments, and members sometimes become loud and angry. But in Jamaica the storm raged in so small a teapot! The railway extension was to be but for a mile or two, and I fear would hardly benefit more than the eggs and fowls for which the dark gentleman pleaded.
In heading this chapter I have spoken of the government, and it may be objected to me that in writing it I have written only of the legislature, and not at all of the mode of governing. But in truth the mode of government depends entirely on the mode of legislature.
As regards the Governor himself and his ministers, I do not doubt that they do their best; but I think that their best might be much better if their hands were not so closely tied by this teapot system of Queen, Lords, and Commons.