Part 31

It may be doubted whether these doctrines, if admitted, would amount to a vindication of slavery. It does not appear to us quite certain that we are justified in compelling our fellow-creatures to engage in a particular employment, merely because that employment gives them exquisite pain. If a large portion of the human race be really placed in regions where rest and shade are the most delightful luxuries which they can enjoy, a benevolent man may perhaps be of opinion that they ought to be suffered to doze in their huts, except when necessity may drive them to employ an occasional hour in angling, gathering berries, or scattering a little rice in the marshes. We are entitled to demand that this point shall be saved to us; but we do not foresee that we shall need it. We assert, and will prove, that Major Moody has not established his theory; that he has not even raised a presumption in its favour; and that the tacts on which he relies are either such as have no relation to the question, or such as occur daily in every climate of the globe.

We will begin with the case with which Major Moody would have done well both to begin and end--the case of the liberated Africans who were placed in Tortola. We must premise, that no experiment was ever made under circumstances less favourable. The Negroes, when received from the holds of the slave ships, were in a state of extreme weakness and disease. Of six hundred and seventeen Blacks who were taken from the Venus and the Manuella, two hundred and twenty-two died before they could be settled as apprentices. (1) The constitutions of many who survived were completely broken. By the masters to whom they were apprenticed, they were frequently treated with inhumanity. The laws and institutions of Tortola, framed for

(1) Mr. Dougan’s Report, p. 7.

a {375}society made up of masters and slaves, were, as the Major himself states, by no means fitted for the regulation of such a class of persons as the apprenticed Africans. The poorer freemen of every colour felt an enmity towards people who were about to intrude themselves into those trades of which they possessed a monopoly. The planters were not inclined to look with favour on the first fruits of the abolition. Apprentices are, in every part of the world, noted for idleness. The degree of that idleness is in general proportioned to the length of the term for which they are bound to an unrequited service. The man who expects soon to be his own master, may exert himself to acquire skill in the business by which he is to subsist. He, on the other hand, who expects to waste half of his life in labour without remuneration, will generally do as little as he possibly can. The liberated Africans were most injudiciously apprenticed for fourteen years, and some even for a longer time. They had neither the motive of the freeman, nor that of the slave. They could not legally demand wages. They could not legally be subjected to the driver. Under these disadvantages was the trial made. And what was the result?

Major Moody examined into the conduct of sixty-one apprenticed negroes who had been rescued from the Manuella. The masters and mistresses were carefully interrogated. It appears from the schedules signed by the Major himself, that good characters were given to forty, and only appeared to be idle and disorderly. With respect to twelve, no decisive information was obtained. A similar inquiry took place respecting fifty-five apprentices who had formed a part of the cargo of the Venus. Good accounts were received of forty. Only six were described as idle and disorderly.

Among sixty-five negroes who had been taken from the Candelario, there was not a single instance of grossly bad conduct. Fifty-seven received fair characters for honesty and industry.

Lastly, of one hundred and ten negroes who had been on board of the Atrevido, only four are characterized as decidedly worthless. Nine may be considered as doubtful. A favourable report is given of the remaining ninety-seven.

These facts, as we have said, we find in the papers signed by the Major himself. He has not, it is true, thought it necessary {376}to give us the result of his inquiries in the Report so compendiously as we now exhibit it. He dwells at great length on particular cases which prove nothing. He fills page after page with the nonsense of planters who had no apprentices, who evidently knew nothing about the apprentices, and who, in general terms, proving nothing but their own malevolence, characterized the whole race as idle, disorderly, quarrelsome, drunken, greedy. But, from the beginning to the end of the Report, he has not been able to spare three lines for the simple fact, that four fifths of these vilified people receive excellent characters from their actual employers, from those who must have been best acquainted with their disposition, and who would have lost most by their idleness. Whoever wishes to know how Daniel Quabott broke his wife’s nose--how Penelope glum whipped a slave who had the yaws, how the Major, seventeen years ago, went without his supper in Guiana--how the arts and sciences proceeded northward from Carthage till they were stopped by the frozen zone, may find in the Report all this interesting information, and much more of the same kind. But those who wish to know that which Major Moody was commissioned to ascertain, and which it was his peculiar duty to state, must turn over three hundred folio pages of schedules. The Report does not, as far as we have been able to discover, give the most distant hint of the discoveries which they will make there.

We have no idea of charging the Major with intentional unfairness. But his prejudices really seem to have blinded him as to the effect of the evidence which he had himself collected. He hints that his colleague had privately prepared the apprentices for the examination. Of the justice of this charge we shall be better able to judge when the answer of Mr. Dougan shall make its appearance. But be it well founded or not, it cannot affect _our_ argument. The Major does not pretend to insinuate, that any arts were practised with _the masters_, and it is on the testimony of the masters alone that we are willing to rest onr case. Indeed, the evidence which was collected by the Major in the absence of his colleague, and which we must therefore suppose to be perfectly pure, tends to the same effect, and would alone be sufficient to show, that the apprentices have, as a body, conducted themselves in a manner which, under any circumstances, would have been most satisfactory.

It {377}is perfectly true, that a knot of slave-owners, forming the legislature of Tortola, petitioned the Government to remove these apprentices from the island. From internal evidence, from the peculiar cant in which the petition abounds, and from the sprinkling of bad grammar which adorns it, we are half inclined to suspect that it is the Major’s own handywork. At all events, it is curious to see how he reasons on it. It is curious to see how the Major reasons on this fact:--

“_Doubtless, the legislature of Tortola may be mistaken in their opinions; but the mere fact of their agreeing to sign such a petition, shows they really did think, that the labour of the African apprentices, when free, would not be useful to them or the colonists generally.

“And this fact alone, my Lord, is calculated to excite important reflections, as to the character of the free Africans, for industry in West Indian agriculture.

“Is it probable, that mere prejudice against the colour of a man’s skin could ever induce anybody of people, like the Tortola petitioners, to make a request so apparently absurd, as that of removing from their colony a numerous body of Africans, consisting of able bodied men and women, If they were as willing as they were capable of working, and increasing the value of the land now given to pasturage, for want of cultivators to be employed therein._” (1)

We earnestly request our readers to observe the consistency of Major Moody. When his object is to prove, that whites and blacks cannot amalgamate on equal terms, in one political society, he exaggerates every circumstance which tends to keep them asunder. The physical differences between the races, he tells us, practically defeat benevolent laws. No Act of Parliament, no order in Council, can surmount the difficulty. (2) Where these differences exist, the principles of republican equality are forgotten by the strongest republican. Marriage becomes an unnatural prostitution. The Haytian refuses to admit the white to possess property within the sphere of negro domination. The most humane and enlightened citizen of the United States, can discover no means of benefiting the free African, but by sending him to a distance from men of European blood. “I should ill-perform my duty,” says the Major, “if I suppressed all mention of a physical cause like this, which in practice is found to have an effect so powerful, however the philanthropist

(1) First Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 125.

(2) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 20 and 21

{378}or the philosopher may regret it, and however it may be beyond their power to remove it by legislative means.” (1) But, when it is desirable to prove the idleness of the free African, this omnipotent physical cause, this instinct against which the best and wisest men struggle in vain, which counteracts the attraction of sex, and defies the authority of law, sinks into a “mere prejudice against the colour of a man’s skin,” an idle fancy, which never could induce any body of people to remove able bodied men and women from their country, if those men and women were willing to work. Are all the free negroes of North America infirm, or are they all unwilling to work? They live in a temperate climate, and to them the Major’s theory does not apply. Yet the whites are subscribing to transport them to another country. Why should we suppose the planters of Tortola to be superior to feelings which some of the most respectable men in the world are disposed to gratify, by sending thousands of people, at a great expense, from a country greatly understocked with hands?

It is true that the apprenticed Africans were not employed in the cultivation of the soil. The cause is evident. They could not legally be so employed. The Older in Council under the authority of which they were put out to service, provided that no woman should be employed in tillage. The blank form of indenture sent out by the government contained a similar restriction with regard to the males.

We are, however, inclined to believe with the Major, that these people, if they had been left to take their own course, would not have employed themselves in agriculture. Those who have become masters of their time, rarely do so employ themselves. We will go further. We allow that very few of the free blacks in our West Indian Islands, will undergo the drudgery of cultivating the ground. Major Moody seems to think that, when this is grunted, all his principles follow of course. But we can by no means agree with him. In order to prove that the natives of tropical countries entertain a peculiar aversion to agricultural labour, it is by no means sufficient to show that certain freemen, living in the torrid zone, do not choose to engage in agricultural labour. It is, we humbly conceive, necessary also to show, that the wages of agricultural labour are, at the place and time in

(1) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 21.

question, {379}at least as high as those which can be obtained by industry of another description. It by no means follows, that a man feels an insurmountable dislike to the business of setting canes, because he will not set eanes for sixpence a day, when he can earn a shilling by making baskets. We might as well say, that the English people dislike agricultural labour, because Major Moody prefers making systems to making ditches.

Obvious as these considerations are, it is perfectly clear that Major Moody has overlooked them. From the Appendix to his own Report it appears, that in every West Indian island the wages of the artisan are much greater than those of the cultivator. In Tortola, for example, a carpenter earns three shillings sterling a day, a cartwright or a cooper four shillings and sixpence, a sawyer six shillings; an ablebodied field negro, under the most advantageous circumstances, nine pounds a year, about seven pence a day, allowing for holidays. And because a free African prefers six shillings to seven pence, we are told that he has a natural and invincible aversion to agriculture!--because he prefers wealth to poverty, we are to conclude that he prefers repose to wealth. Such is the mode of reasoning which the Major designates as the philosophy of labour.

But, says the Major, all employments, excepting those of the cultivator and the domestic servant, are only occasional. There is little demand for the labour of the carpenter, the cooper, and the sawyer. Let us suppose the demand to be so incredibly small, that the carpenter can obtain work only one day in six, the cooper one day in nine, and the sawyer one day in twelve; still the amount of their earnings will be greater than if they broke clods almost daily through the whole year. Of two employments which yield equal wages, the inhabitants of all countries, both within and without the tropics, will choose that whieh requires the least labour Major Moody seems throughout his Report to imagine, that people in the temperate zone work for the sake of working; that they consider labour, not as an evil to be endured for the sake of a good produced by it, but as a blessing, from which the wages are a sort of drawback; that they would rather work three days for a shilling, than one day for half a crown. The case, he may be assured, is by no means such as he supposes. If he will make proper inquiries he will {380}learn, that, even where the thermometer stands at the lowest, no man will choose a laborious employment, when he can obtain equal remuneration with less trouble in another line. But it, is unnecessary to resort to this argument; for it is perfectly clear, on Major Moody’s own showing, that the demand for mechanical industry, though occasional and small, is still sufficient to render the business of an artisan much more lucrative than that of a field labourer.

“I have shown,” says he, “that the sugar-planter himself, obtaining 287 days labour on the very cheapest terms, could not have afforded to give more than about 9l. per annum for labourers, and therefore, that he never could hope to induce any liberated African to work steadily for such wages, when the liberated African could obtain from 15l. to 21l. per annum by the irregular labour of occasionally cutting firewood, grass, or catching fish, &c....

“This is the most favourable view of the case; for the fact is, the sugar-planter, on the very best soils in Tortola, could only a fiord to give 91. per annum; but in soils of average fertility, he could only afford 6l. 15s. per annum to the labourer, even if the planter gave up all profits on his stock, consisting of lands, buildings, and machinery. If the liberated Negro would not labour steadily for 9l. per annum, it is clear he would be less likely to work for 6l. 15s. per annum; but if he did not work for less than that sum, the planter in Tortola could obtain no profit on stock, and consequently could have no motive for employing any person to work for such wages. The white race, being unable to work, must in this, as in all similar cases, perish, or abandon their country and property to the blacks, who can work, but who, as I have shown, are not likely to make use of more voluntary steady exertion than will afford the means of subsistence in the lowlands of the torrid zone, where the pleasure of repose forms so great an ingredient in the happiness of mankind, whether whites, blacks, or Indians.”

We really stand aghast at the extravagance of a writer who supposes that the principle which leads a man to prefer light labour and twenty-one pounds, to hard labour and six Bounds fifteen shillings, is a principle of which the operation is confined to the torrid zone! But the matter may be put on a very short issue. Let Major Moody find any tropical country in which the inhabitants prefer mechanical trades to field labour when higher advantages are offered to the field labourer than to the mechanic. He will then have done what he has not done hitherto. He will have adduced one fact bearing on the question.

If the circumstances which we have been considering prove any thing, they appear to prove the inexpediency of the {381}coercive system. The effect of that system in the West Indies has been to produce a glut of agricultural labour, and a scarcity of mechanical dexterity. The discipline of a plantation may stimulate a sluggish body; but it has no tendency to stimulate a sluggish mind. It calls forth a certain quantity of muscular exertion; but it does not encourage that ingenuity which is necessary to the artisan. This is the only explanation which at present occurs to us of the enormous price which skilled labour fetches in a country in which the cultivator can barely obtain a subsistence. We offer it, however, with diffidence, as the result of a very hasty consideration of the subject. But it is with no feeling of diffidence that we pronounce the whole argument of the Major absurd. That he has convinced himself we do not doubt. Indeed he has given the best proof of sincerity: For he has acted up to his theory; and left us, we must confess, in some doubt whether to admire him more as an active or as a speculative politician.

Many of the African apprentices emigrated from Tortola to the Danish island of St. Thomas, some with the consent of their masters, and others without it. Why they did so, is evident from the account which the Major himself gives. The wages were higher in St. Thomas than in Tortola. But such theorists as the Major are subject to illusions as strange as those which haunted Don Quixote. To the visionary Knight every inn was a castle, every ass a charger, and every basin a helmet. To the Major every fact, though explicable on ten thousand obvious suppositions, is a confirmation of his darling hypothesis. He gives the following account of his opinions and of his consequent measures.

“The occupations followed by the apprentices in the Danish island of St. Thomas, on these occasions were generally the irregular and occasional industry of porters, servants on hoard vessels, &e., in which they often got comparatively high wages, which enabled them to work for money at one time in order to live, without working for a longer or shorter period; such a mode of existence being more agreeable to them than steady and regular industry affording employment during the whole year.

“From this irregular application to certain kinds of labour and dislike to that of agriculture, it was my wish to turn the attention of the African apprentices, and therefore I was anxious to prevent their running away to the Danish island of St. Thomas, or being sent there. His Excellency Governor Van Seholton afforded me every facility in removing them; but they soon returned again. It will also be seen that in St. Thomas they were liable to be taken up and sold as slaves, it was actually the case with one apprentice. It is not undeserving of remark, that not one of the apprentices who thus withdrew themselves from Tortola, ever {382}hired themselves to agricultural labor for any fixed period.”

“The occasional high wages in irregular kinds of industry, however uncertain, appear to have pleased them belter than the permanent rewards procured by an employment less exposed to uncertainty, but which required a steady exertion.”

What the permanent rewards of agricultural labour were in Tortola, we have seen. The planter would have found it ruinous on most estates to give more than six pounds fifteen shillings a year, or about fourpence a day. Unless, therefore, they were much higher in St. Thomas, it is surely not extraordinary that they did not induce these apprentices to quit the employments to which, not by their own choice, but by the orders of the Government, they had been trained, for a pursuit uncongenial to all their habits. How often is it that an Englishman, who has served his apprenticeship to an artisan, hires himself to agricultural labour when he can find work in his own line?

But we will pass by the absurdity of condemning people for preferring high wages with little labour, to low wages with severe labour. We have other objections to make. The Major has told us that the African apprentices could not legally be employed in agriculture on the island of Tortola. If so, we wish to know how their dislike of agricultural labour could be their motive for quitting Tortola, or how, by bringing them back to Tortola, he could improve their habits in that respect? To bring a man by main force from a residence which he likes, and to place him in the hands of an employer acknowledged to be cruel, for fear that he may possibly be made a slave, seems to us also a somewhat curious proceeding, and deserves notice, as being the only indication of zeal for liberty which the Major appears to have betrayed during the whole course of his mission.

The Major might perhaps be justified in exerting himself to recover those apprentices who had emigrated without the consent of their masters. But with regard to the rest, his conduct {383}appears to have been equally absurd and mischievous. He repeatedly tells us that Tortola is a poor island. It appears from the schedules, that he was in the habit of asking the masters and mistresses, whether their apprentices, after the term of service should have expired, would be able to support themselves. In the ease of some most respectable and industrious workmen, the answer was, that they possessed all the qualifications which would enable them to earn a livelihood; but that Tortola was too poor to afford them an adequate field: And this was evidently the cause which induced so many to transport themselves to St. Thomas. Of all the innumerable instances in which public, functionaries have exposed their ignorance by officiously meddling with matters of which individuals ought to be left to judge for themselves, we remember none more conspicuous than that which Major Moody has thus recorded against himself.