free blacks alone, has materially declined since the abandonment of slavery, and is not so great now as it was during the first years of freedom; and, so far is it from being equal to what it was while slavery prevailed, and especially while the slave trade was continued, that it now falls short of the production of that period by an immense amount. In no way, therefore, can it be claimed, that the cultivation of the British West India islands is on the increase, except by resorting to the pious fraud of crediting the products of the immigrant labor to the account of emancipation a resort to which no conscientious Christian man will have recourse, even to sustain a philanthropic theory."

In confirmation of the statements here given, in relation to the falling off in the productions of Jamaica, it is only necessary that the declaration of the Colonial Minister should be given, as it appeared in the New York Tribune, and was thence transferred to the American Missionary, February, 1859:

"The Colonial Minister says: Jamaica is now the only important sugar-producing colony which exports a considerably smaller quantity of sugar than was exported in the time of slavery, while some such colonies, since the passage of the emancipation act, have largely increased their product.'"

But it is claimed that an exception exists in the island of Barbadoes, the exports of which having been considerably increased without the aid of coolie labor. As we shall elsewhere refer to this point, it need only be remarked here, that that island is a small one-22 miles in length by 14 in breadth and has been very densely populated for the last hundred years. Its population now numbers about 800 to the square mile. * When emancipation came, the negroes had no waste land, like their brethren in Jamaica, upon which to squat; but had to remain on the plantations, as the only means of earning their bread. †

These investigations need not be prosecuted any further. Men of intelligence will no longer claim that any miracle has occurred in the British West Indies, to demonstrate the moral duty and economical advantages of emancipation. A people degraded like the

"Cotton is King" gives full particulars on this point.

† London Economist.

blacks of these islands were when liberated, never have become producers, in agriculture, to an extent much beyond the supply of their absolute necessities. They have not done it in the United States, in Canada, in Mexico, the South American Republics, or Hayti. They never will do it as long as the world stands. They must be educated before they can rise to the dignity of enlightened freemen, capable, from their own voluntary industry, of supplying a large surplus of products to commerce. Indeed, the apology

offered for the abolition of West India slavery, by prominent British writers, is no longer based upon the economical benefits resulting from that measure. The downward tendency of the productiveness of the islands, where negro labor alone is employed, is fully admitted; but the advantages of emancipation, it is now claimed, exist in the fact that free labor can, at present, be introduced to an extent equaling the demands of the owners of estates policy that was impracticable as long as slavery existed. The free labor referred to, it is scarcely necessary to add, consists of imported coolies! As long as slavery prevailed, say these writers, free labor could not be introduced, because freemen could not labor by the side of slaves the control of the two classes requiring widely different systems of management.

We repeat a previous remark. The domestic exports of a country are not always to be taken as a true measure of the personal comforts or moral progress of its population. This proposition has been claimed as having an illustration in the West Indies. While admitting the diminution of exports, it is asserted that the comforts of a population are greatly enhanced by the consumption of an increased amount of their own productions. On this question, however, some dispute has arisen. As the utmost fairness is the author's aim, no other testimony, to any considerable extent, than that of anti-slavery men, will be used on this point, nor shall even that be extensively paraded.

Mr. BIGELOW, of the New York Evening Post, spent a winter in Jamaica, and became well acquainted with its condition and prospects. Since his return, he has still watched the progress of events in the island with anxious solicitude. In reviewing the returns published by the Jamaica House of Assembly, in 1853, in reference to the ruinous decline in the agriculture of the island,

and stating the enormous quantity of lands thrown out of cultivation, since 1848, the Post said:

"This decline has been going on from year to year, daily becoming more alarming, until at length the island has reached what would appear to be the last profound of distress and misery, . . . . . . when thousands of people do not know, when they rise in the morning, whence or in what manner they are to procure bread for the day.”

The London Times, of about the same date, in speaking of the results of emancipation in Jamaica, says:

"The negro has not acquired, with his freedom, any habits of industry or morality. His independence is but little better than that of an uncaptured brute. Having accepted few of the restraints of civilization, he is amenable to few of its necessities; and the wants of his nature are so easily satisfied, that at the current rate of wages, he is called upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion. The blacks, therefore, instead of becoming intelligent husbandmen, have become vagrants and squatters, and it is now apprehended that with the failure of cultivation in the island will come the failure of its resources for instructing or controlling its population. So imminent does this consummation appear, that memorials have been signed by classes of colonial society hitherto standing aloof from politics, and not only the bench and the bar, but the bishop, clergy, and ministers of all denominations in the island, without exception, have recorded their conviction, that, in the absence of timely relief, the religious and educational institutions of the island must be abandoned, and the masses of the population retrogade to barbarism."

The remedy for the existing evils, as proposed by prominent British writers, is to force the free colored people into habits of greater industry by the introduction of coolie labor. The London Economist recently said:

"We have always been warm advocates of the coolie immigration into the West Indies. We are convinced that by no other plan can the population of these fertile islands be increased up to the highpressure point at which alone Africans can be induced to labor hard. Barbadoes is the only highly successful island among our West India colonies, because Barbadoes is so fully peopled that the negroes are compelled to work for their subsistence, and to work hard. We can

not lay too great stress, as Mr. Buxton wisely said, on the duty of aiding the overflowing population of China and India to fill up the vacuum in our West India colonies. We know now this can be done without inhumanity and with the greatest advantage to both the coolie and the English planter. And it is the part of common sense and good judgment to do it as effectually as we have already done it in the Mauritius, and as speedily as possible."*

This, then, is the remedy proposed for saving the British islands from the effects of emancipation. The negro will not work voluntarily. The whip must no longer be applied to compel him to do so; but work he must, or British trade and commerce and British revenues will suffer. Experience has suggested the remedy. The negroes of Barbadoes "work hard," because where 800 men have to gain a subsistence from the space of 640 acres of land, they must work in earnest or starve; and they must labor, too, according to some efficient system, devised by intelligence, or, even then, a subsistence can not be gained from the soil. The proposition is, that the other islands shall be rendered productive, as Barbadoes was during the prevalence of the slave trade, by crowding them with laborers. It is proposed that they, too, shall be overpopulated, so as to keep the inhabitants constantly at the starvation point; and thus instead of prompting them to action, as under slavery, by the "beneficent whip," to force them into industry, as freemen, by the philanthropic application of hunger!

Such are the measures deemed necessary, by British writers, to remedy the evils growing out of the benevolence of Great Britain toward the African race! She resolved that the negroes should no longer be coerced into industrious habits, and now she is compelled to starve them to it, otherwise her own people at home must be brought to suffering for want of the productions which they can supply.

The injurious effects of African emancipation, upon the national prosperity of the Caucasians, can now be comprehended.

London Economist, 1861.

CHAPTER V.

WEST INDIAN EMANCIPATION A TOTAL FAILURE IN ITS EXPECTED RESULTS.

SECTION I.-GENERAL CONDITION OF THE BRITISH WEST INDIA ISLANDS AT THIS MOMENT.

SINCE the completion of the foregoing chapters, the work of WILLIAM G. SEWELL, ESQ.,-"The Ordeal of Free Labor in the West Indies," has been laid before us.* There had long been much of mystery overhanging the free labor systems of the British West Indies. Mr. Sewell has turned aside the vail more fully than any other writer consulted, and has given the public a candid statement of facts which came under his own observation. But he looks at everything from the "free soil" and "free labor" point of view; so that, though he finds ruin overwhelming the planters, and many grievous evils existing among the blacks, he yet claims that they are not the results of emancipation, or if they are, that even death is preferable to slavery.

Beginning with BARBADOES, he says: "It must be borne in mind, that, protected by her small area, and dense population— a population larger to the square mile than that of China-Barbadoes, since emancipation, has not suffered for the want of labor like other colonies. To this cause more, perhaps, than to any other, she owes her present wonderful prosperity."t

In another paragraph, the author explains the mode by which the planters secure the labor of the free negroes:

"At the time of emancipation the slaves were left in possession of their houses and allotment lands, which they continued to occupy after Mr. Sewell traveled in the West Indies as correspondent for the New York Times. † Sewell, page 31.