Read Ebook: The Slave Trade Domestic and Foreign Why It Exists and How It May Be Extinguished by Carey Henry Charles

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Having thus ascertained, as far as possible, the ratio of increase subsequent to the first census, we may now proceed to an examination of the course of affairs in the period which had preceded it.

In 1714, the number of blacks was 58,850, and they were dispersed throughout the provinces from New Hampshire to Carolina, engaged, to a large extent, in labours similar to those in which were engaged the whites by whom they were owned. One-half of them may have been imported. Starting from this point, and taking the natural increase of each decennial period at 25 per cent., as shown to have since been the case, we should obtain, for 1750, about 130,000. The actual quantity was 220,000; and the difference, 90,000, may be set down to importation. Adding, now, 25 percent, to 220,000, we obtain, for 1760, 275,000; whereas the actual number was 310,000, which Would give 35,000 for importation. Pursuing the same course with the following periods, we obtain the following results:--

For a large portion of the period from 1770 to 1790, there must have been a very small importation; for during nearly half the time the trade with foreign countries was almost altogether suspended by the war of the revolution.

If we add together the quantities thus obtained, we shall obtain a tolerable approximation to the number of slaves imported into the territory now constituting the Union, as follows:--

The number now in the Union exceeds 3,800,000; and even if we estimate the import as high as 380,000, we then have more than ten for one; whereas in the British Islands we can find not more than two for five, and perhaps even not more than one for three. Had the slaves of the latter been as well fed, clothed, lodged, and otherwise cared for, as were those of these provinces and States, their numbers would have reached seventeen or twenty millions. Had the blacks among the people of these States experienced the same treatment as did their fellows of the islands, we should now have among us less than one hundred and fifty thousand slaves.

The prices paid by the British Government averaged ?25 per head. Had the number in the colonies been allowed to increase as they increased here, it would have required, even at that price, the enormous sum of................................ ?500,000,000

Had the numbers in this country been reduced by the same process there practised, emancipation could now be carried out at cost of less than.. ?4,000,000

To emancipate them now, paying for them at the same rate, would require nearly................ ?100,000,000

or almost five hundred millions of dollars. The same course, however, that has increased their numbers, has largely increased their value to the owners and to themselves. Men, when well fed, well clothed, well lodged, and otherwise well cared for, always increase rapidly in numbers, and in such cases labour always increases rapidly in value; and hence it is that the average price of the negro slave of this country is probably four times greater than that which the planters of the West Indies were compelled to receive. Such being the case, it would follow that to pay for their full value would require probably four hundred millions of pounds sterling, or nearly two thousand millions of dollars.

It will now be seen that the course of things in the two countries has been entirely different. In the islands the slave trade had been cherished as a source of profit. Here, it had been made the subject of repeated protests on the part of several of the provinces, and had been by all but two prohibited at the earliest moment at which they possessed the power so to do. In the islands it was held to be cheaper to buy slaves than to raise them, and the sexes were out of all proportion to each other. Here, importation was small, and almost the whole increase, large as it has been, has resulted from the excess of births over deaths. In the islands, the slave was generally a barbarian, speaking an unknown tongue, and working with men like himself, in gangs, with scarcely a chance for improvement. Here, he was generally a being born on the soil, speaking the same language with his owner; and often working in the field with him, with many advantages for the development of his faculties. In the islands, the land-owners clung to slavery as the sheet-anchor of their hopes. Here, on the contrary, slavery had gradually been abolished in all the States north of Mason & Dixon's line, and Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky were all, at the date of emancipation in the islands, preparing for the early adoption of measures looking to its entire abolition. In the islands, the connection with Africa had been cherished as a means of obtaining cheap labour, to be obtained by fomenting discord among the natives. Here, on the contrary, had originated a grand scheme for carrying civilization into the heart of Africa by means of the gradual transplantation of some of the already civilized blacks. In the islands, it has been deemed desirable to carry out "the European policy," of preventing the Africans "from arriving at perfection" in the art of preparing their cotton, sugar, indigo, or other articles, "from a fear of interfering with established branches of commerce elsewhere." Here, on the contrary, efforts had been made for disseminating among them the knowledge required for perfecting themselves in the modes of preparation and manufacture. In the islands, every thing looked toward the permanency of slavery. Here, every thing looked toward the gradual and gentle civilization and emancipation of the negro throughout the world. In the islands, however, by a prompt measure forced on the people by a distant government, slavery was abolished, and the planters, or their representatives in England, received twenty millions of pounds sterling as compensation in full for the services of the few who remained in existence out of the large number that had been imported. Here, the planters are now urged to adopt for themselves measures of a similar kind. The whole course of proceeding in the two countries in reference to the negro having been so widely different, there are, however, difficulties in the way that seem to be almost insuperable. The power to purchase the slaves of the British colonies was a consequence of the fact that their numbers had not been permitted to increase. The difficulty of purchasing them here is great, because of their having been well fed, well clothed, and otherwise well provided for, and having therefore increased so rapidly. If, nevertheless, it can be shown that by abandoning the system under which the negro race has steadily increased in numbers and advanced towards civilization, and adopting that of a nation under whose rule there has been a steady decline of numbers, and but little, if any, tendency toward civilization, we shall benefit the race, it will become our duty to make the effort, however great may be the cost. With a view to ascertain how far duty may be regarded as calling upon us now to follow in the footsteps of that nation, it is proposed to examine into the working of the act by which the whole negro population of the British colonies was, almost at once and without preparation, invested with the right to determine for whom they would work and what should be their wages--or were, in other words, declared to be free.

OF EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH COLONIES.

The harmony of the universe is the result of a contest between equal and opposing powers. The earth is attracted to the sun and from the sun; and were either of these forces to be diminished or destroyed, chaos would be the inevitable result. So is it everywhere on the earth. The apple falls toward the centre of the earth, but in its passage it encounters resistance; and the harmony of every thing we see around us is dependent on the equal balance of these opposing forces. So is it among men. The man who has food to sell wishes to have a high price for it, whereas, he who needs to buy desires to have it cheaply; and the selling price depends on the relation between the necessity to buy on one hand, or to sell on the other. Diminish suddenly and largely the competition for the purchase of food, and the farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. Increase it suddenly and largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the anvil, and both farmer and mechanic prosper together, because the competition for purchase and the competition for sale grow together and balance each other. So, too, with labour. Wages are dependent upon the relation between the number of those who desire to buy and to sell labour. Diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to sell it, and the farmer may be ruined. Diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to buy it, and the labourer may become the slave of the farmer.

How it operated in Southern Africa, where the slave was most at home, is shown by the following extracts from the work of a recent traveller and settler in that colony:--

"The chain was broken, and the people of England hurraed to their heart's content. And the slave! What, in the meanwhile, became of him? If he was young and vicious, away he went--he was his own master. He was at liberty to walk to and fro upon the earth, 'seeking whom he might devour.' He was free: he had the world before him where to choose, though, squatted beside the Kaffir's fire, probably thinking his meal of parched corn but poor stuff after the palatable dishes he had been permitted to cook for himself in the Boer's or tradesman's kitchen. But he was fain to like it--he could get nothing else--and this was earned at the expense of his own soul; for it was given him as an inducement to teach the Kaffir the easiest mode of plundering his ancient master. If inclined to work, he had no certain prospect of employment; and the Dutch, losing so much by the sudden Emancipation Act, resolved on working for themselves. So the virtuous, redeemed slave, had too many temptations to remain virtuous: he was hungry--so was his wife--so were his children; and he must feed them. How? No matter."

These people will work at times, but they must have wages that will enable them to play much of their time.

"When we read of the distress of our own country, and of the wretched earnings of our mechanics, we are disgusted at the idea of these same Fingoes striking work at Waterloo Bay, being dissatisfied with the pay of 2s. a day. As their services are necessary in landing cargo, their demand of 3s. a day has been acceded to, and they have consented to work when it suits them!--for they take occasional holidays, for dancing and eating. At Algoa Bay, the Fingoes are often paid 6s. a day for working as Coolies."

These men have all the habits of the savage. They leave to the women the tilling of the ground, the hoeing of the corn, the carrying of water, and all the heavy work; and to the boys and old men the tending of the cattle, while they themselves spend the year in hunting, dancing, eating, and robbing their neighbours--except when occasionally they deem it expedient to do a few days' work at such wages as they may think proper to dictate.

How it has operated in the West Indies we may next inquire, and with that view will take Jamaica, one of the oldest, and, until lately, one of the most prosperous of the colonies. That island embraces about four millions of acres of land, "of which," says Mr. Bigelow,--

"There are not, probably, any ten lying adjacent to each other which are not susceptible of the highest cultivation, while not more than 500,000 acres have ever been reclaimed, or even appropriated."

"It is traversed by over two hundred streams, forty of which are from twenty-five to one hundred feet in breadth; and, it deserves to be mentioned, furnish water-power sufficient to manufacture every thing produced by the soil, or consumed by the inhabitants. Far less expense than is usually incurred on the same surface in the United States for manure, would irrigate all the dry lands of the island, and enable them to defy the most protracted droughts by which it is ever visited."

The productiveness of the soil is immense. Fruits of every variety abound; vegetables of every kind for the table, and Indian corn, grow abundantly. The island is rich in dyestuffs, drugs, and spices of the greatest value; and the forests furnish the most celebrated woods in the greatest variety. In addition to this, it possesses copper-mines inferior to none in the world, and coal will probably be mined extensively before many years. "Such," says Mr. Bigelow,--

"Are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are miserably poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper into the utter helplessness of abject want.

"'Magnas inter opes inops.'

"Shipping has deserted her ports; her magnificent plantations of sugar and coffee are running to weeds; her private dwellings are falling to decay; the comforts and luxuries which belong to industrial prosperity have been cut off, one by one, from her inhabitants; and the day, I think, is at hand when there will be none left to represent the wealth, intelligence, and hospitality for which the Jamaica planter was once so distinguished."

The cause of all this, say the planters, is that wages are too high for the price of sugar. This Mr. Bigelow denies--not conceding that a shilling a day is high wages; but all the facts he adduces tend to show that the labourer gives very little labour for the money he receives; and that, as compared with the work done, wages are really far higher than in any part of the Union. Like the Fingo of Southern Africa, he can obtain from a little patch of land all that is indispensably necessary for his subsistence, and he will do little more work than is needed for accomplishing that object. The consequence of this is that potatoes sell for six cents a pound, eggs from three to five cents each, milk at eighteen cents a quart, and corn-meal at twelve or fourteen dollars a barrel; and yet there are now more than a hundred thousand of these small proprietors, being almost one for every three people on the island. All cultivators, they yet produce little to sell, and the consequence of this is seen in the fact that the mass of the flour, rice, corn, peas, butter, lard, herrings, &c. needed for consumption requires to be imported, as well as all the lumber, although millions of acres of timber are to be found among the unappropriated lands of the island.

"The number of sugar-estates on the island that have been totally abandoned amounts to one hundred and sixty-eight, and the number partially abandoned to sixty-three; the value of which two hundred and thirty-one estates was assessed, in 1841, at ?1,655,140, or nearly eight millions and a half of dollars. Within the same period, two hundred and twenty-three coffee-plantations have been totally, and twenty partially abandoned, the assessed value of which was, in 1841, ?500,000, or two millions and a half of dollars; and of cattle-pens, one hundred and twenty-two have been totally, and ten partially abandoned, the value of which was a million and a half of dollars. The aggregate value of these six hundred and six estates, which have been thus ruined and abandoned in the island of Jamaica, within the last seven or eight years, amounted by the regular assessments, ten years since, to the sum of nearly two and a half millions of pounds sterling, or twelve and a half million of dollars."

As a necessary consequence of this, "there is little heard of," says Dr. King, "but ruin." "In many districts," he adds--

"The marks of decay abound. Neglected fields, crumbling houses, fragmentary fences, noiseless machinery--these are common sights, and soon become familiar to observation. I sometimes rode for miles in succession over fertile ground which used to be cultivated, and which is now lying waste. So rapidly has cultivation retrograded, and the wild luxuriance of nature replaced the conveniences of art, that parties still inhabiting these desolated districts, have sometimes, in the strong language of a speaker at Kingston, 'to seek about the bush to find the entrance into their houses.'

"The towns present a spectacle not less gloomy. A great part of Kingston was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at all diminished. The explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing, and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge in the abodes of others, where some means of subsistence are still left: and in the absence of any discernible trade or occupation, the lives of crowded thousands appear to be preserved from day to day by a species of miracle. The most busy thoroughfares of former times have now almost the quietude of a Sabbath."

"The finest land in the world," says Mr. Bigelow, "may be had at any price, and almost for the asking." Labour, he adds, "receives no compensation, and the product of labour does not seem to know how to find the way to market." Properties which were formerly valued at ?40,000 would not now command ?4000, and others, after having been sold at six, eight, or ten per cent. of their former value, have been finally abandoned.

The following is from a report made in 1849 and signed by various missionaries:--

Population gradually diminishes, furnishing another evidence that the tendency of every thing is adverse to the progress of civilization. In 1841, the island contained a little short of 400,000 persons. In 1844, the census returns gave about 380,000; and a recent journal states that of those no less than forty thousand have in the last two years been carried off by cholera, and that small-pox, which has succeeded that disease, is now sweeping away thousands whom that disease had spared. Increase of crime, it adds, keeps pace with the spread of misery throughout the island.

The following extracts from a Report of a Commission appointed in 1850 to inquire into the state and prosperity of Guiana, are furnished by Lord Stanley in his second letter to Mr. Gladstone,

Of Guiana generally they say--

"'It would be but a melancholy task to dwell upon the misery and ruin which so alarming a change must have occasioned to the proprietary body; but your Commissioners feel themselves called upon to notice the effects which this wholesale abandonment of property has produced upon the colony at large. Where whole districts are fast relapsing into bush, and occasional patches of provisions around the huts of village settlers are all that remain to tell of once flourishing estates, it is not to be wondered at that the most ordinary marks of civilization are rapidly disappearing, and that in many districts of the colony all travelling communication by land will soon become utterly impracticable.'

"Of the Abary district--

"'Your Commissioners find that the line of road is nearly impassable, and that a long succession of formerly cultivated estates presents now a series of pestilent swamps, overrun with bush, and productive of malignant fevers.'

"Nor are matters," says Lord Stanley, "much better farther south--

"'Proceeding still lower down, your Commissioners find that the public roads and bridges are in such a condition, that the few estates still remaining on the upper west bank of Mahaica Creek are completely cut off, save in the very dry season; and that with regard to the whole district, unless something be done very shortly, travelling by land will entirely cease. In such a state of things it cannot be wondered at that the herdsman has a formidable enemy to encounter in the jaguar and other beasts of prey, and that the keeping of cattle is attended with considerable loss, from the depredations committed by these animals.

"It may be worth noticing," continues Lord Stanley, "that this district, now overrun with wild beasts of the forest; was formerly the very garden of the colony. The estates touched one another along the whole line of the road, leaving no interval of uncleared land.

"The east coast, which is next mentioned by the Commissioners, is better off. Properties once of immense value had there been bought at nominal prices, and the one railroad of Guiana passing through that tract, a comparatively industrious population, composed of former labourers on the line, enabled the planters still to work these to some profit. Even of this favoured spot, however, they report that it 'feels most severely the want of continuous labour.' The Commissioners next visit the east bank of the Demerara river, thus described:--

"'Proceeding up the east bank of the river Demerary, the generally prevailing features of ruin and distress are everywhere perceptible. Roads and bridges almost impassable are fearfully significant exponents of the condition of the plantations which they traverse; and Canal No. 3, once covered with plantains and coffee, presents now a scene of almost total desolation.'

"Crossing to the west side, they find prospects somewhat brighter: 'a few estates' are still 'keeping up a cultivation worthy of better times.' But this prosperous neighbourhood is not extensive, and the next picture presented to our notice is less agreeable:--

"'Ascending the river still higher, your Commissioners learn that the district between Hobaboe Creek and 'Stricken Heuvel' contained, in 1829, eight sugar and five coffee and plantain estates, and now there remain but three in sugar and four partially cultivated with plantains by petty settlers: while the roads, with one or two exceptions, are in a state of utter abandonment. Here, as on the opposite bank of the river, hordes of squatters have located themselves, who avoid all communication with Europeans, and have seemingly given themselves up altogether to the rude pleasures of a completely savage life.'

"'If the present state of the county of Demerara affords cause for deep apprehension, your Commissioners find that Essequebo has retrograded to a still more alarming extent. In fact, unless a large and speedy supply of labour be obtained to cultivate the deserted fields of this once-flourishing district, there is great reason to fear that it will relapse into total abandonment.'"

Describing another portion of the colony--

"They say of one district, 'unless a fresh supply of labour be very soon obtained, there is every reason to fear that it will become completely abandoned.' Of a second, 'speedy immigration alone can save this island from total ruin.' 'The prostrate condition of this once beautiful part of the coast,' are the words which begin another paragraph, describing another tract of country. Of a fourth, 'the proprietors on this coast seem to be keeping up a hopeless struggle against approaching ruin. Again, 'the once famous Arabian coast, so long the boast of the colony, presents now but a mournful picture of departed prosperity. Here were formerly situated some of the finest estates in the country, and a large resident body of proprietors lived in the district, and freely expended their incomes on the spot whence they derived them.' Once more, the lower part of the coast, after passing Devonshire Castle to the river Pomeroon, presents a scene of almost total desolation.' Such is Essequebo!"

"Berbice," says Lord Stanley, "has fared no better: its rural population amounts to 18,000. Of these, 12,000 have withdrawn from the estates, and mostly from the neighbourhood of the white man, to enjoy a savage freedom of ignorance and idleness, beyond the reach of example and sometimes of control. But, on the condition of the negro I shall dwell more at length hereafter; at present it is the state of property with which I have to do. What are the districts which together form the county of Berbice? The Corentyne coast--the Canje Creek--East and West banks of the Berbice River--and the West coast, where, however, cotton was formerly the chief article produced. To each of these respectively the following passages, quoted in order, apply:--

"'The abandoned plantations on this coast, which if capital and labour could be procured, might easily be made very productive, are either wholly deserted or else appropriated by hordes of squatters, who of course are unable to keep up at their own expense the public roads and bridges, and consequently all communication by land between the Corentyne and New Amsterdam is nearly at an end. The roads are impassable for horses or carriages, while for foot-passengers they are extremely dangerous. The number of villagers in this deserted region must be upward of 2500, and as the country abounds with fish and game, they have no difficulty in making a subsistence; in fact, the Corentyne coast is fast relapsing into a state of nature.'

"'Canje Creek was formerly considered a flourishing district of the county, and numbered on its east bank seven sugar and three coffee estates, and on its west bank eight estates, of which two were in sugar and six in coffee, making a total of eighteen plantations. The coffee cultivation has long since been entirely abandoned, and of the sugar estates but eight still now remain. They are suffering severely for want of labour, and being supported principally by African and Coolie immigrants, it is much to be feared that if the latter leave and claim their return passages to India, a great part of the district will become abandoned.'

"'Under present circumstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs here, that the two gentlemen whom your Commissioners have examined with respect to this district, both concur in predicting "its slow but sure approximation to the condition in which civilized man first found it.'"

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