"The Island of Jamaica is not in the deplorable state set forth by your correspondent.--Land is rising in value so rapidly, that what was bought five years ago at 3 dollars per acre, is now selling for 15 dollars; and this in the interior of the Island, in a parish not reckoned the most healthy, and sixteen miles distant from the nearest town. Crops are better than in the days of slavery--extra labour is easily obtained where kindness and justice are exercised towards the people. The hopes of proprietors are great, and larger sums are being offered for estates than were offered previous to August, 1834, when estates, and negroes upon them, were disposed of together."
Again, as in Jamaica commerce rests wholly upon agriculture, _its_ inst.i.tutions can only flourish in a flourishing condition of the latter.--What then are we to infer from an imposing prospectus which appears in the island papers, commencing thus:--
"Kingston, October 26, 1838
Jamaica Marine, Fire, and Life a.s.surance Company.
Capital 100,000,
In 5000 shares of 20 each.
It has been long a matter of astonishment that, in a community so essentially mercantile as Jamaica, no Company should have been formed for the purpose of effecting Insurance on Life and Property; although it cannot be doubted for an instant, that not only would such an establishment be highly useful to all cla.s.ses of the community, but that it must yield a handsome return to such persons as may be inclined to invest their money in it," &c.
Farther down in the prospectus we are told--"It may here be stated, that the scheme for the formation of this Company has been mentioned to some of the princ.i.p.al Merchants and _Gentlemen of the Country_, and has met with decidedly favourable notice: and it is expected that the shares, a large number of which have been already taken, will be rapidly disposed of."
The same paper, the Morning Journal, from which we make this extract, informs us: Nov. 2d--
"The shares subscribed for yesterday, in the Marine Fire and Life Insurance Company, we understand, amount to the almost unprecedented number of One Thousand Six Hundred, with a number of applicants whose names have not been added to the list."
The Morning Journal of October 20th in remarking upon this project says:--
"Jamaica is now happily a free country; she contains within herself the means of becoming prosperous. Let her sons develope those resources which Lord Belmore with so much truth declared never would be developed _until slavery had ceased_. She has her Banks.--Give her, in addition, her Loan Society, her Marine, Fire, and life a.s.surance Company, and some others that will shortly be proposed, and capital will flow in from other countries--property will acquire a value in the market, that will increase with the increase of wealth, and she will yet be a flourishing island, and her inhabitants a happy and contented people."
Now men desperately in debt _might_ invite in foreign capital for temporary relief, but, since the _compensation_, this is understood not to be the case with the Jamaica planters; and if they are rushing into speculation, it must be because they have strong _hope_ of the safety and prosperity of their country--in other words, because they confide in the system of free labor. This one prospectus, coupled with its prompt success, is sufficient to prove the falsehood of all the stories so industriously retailed among us from the Standard and the Despatch. But speculators and large capitalists are not the only men who confide in the success of the "great experiment."
The following editorial notice in the Morning Journal of a recent date speaks volumes:--
SAVINGS BANK.
"We were asked not many days ago how the Savings Bank in this City was getting on. We answered well, very well indeed. By a notification published in our paper of Sat.u.r.day, it will be seen that 1600 has been placed in the hands of the Receiver-General. By the establishment of these Banks, a great deal of the money now locked up, and which yields no return whatever to the possessors, and is liable to be stolen, will be brought into circulation. This circ.u.mstance of itself ought to operate as a powerful inducement to those parishes in which no Banks are yet established to be up and doing. We have got some _five_ or _six_ of them fairly underweigh, as Jack would say, and hope the remainder will speedily trip their anchors and follow."
We believe banks were not known in the West Indies before the 1st of August 1834. Says the Spanishtown Telegraph of May 1st, 1837, "_Banks, Steam-Companies, Rail-Roads, Charity Schools_, etc., seem all to have remained dormant until the time arrived when Jamaica was to be _enveloped in smoke_! No man thought of hazarding his capital in an extensive banking establishment until Jamaica"s ruin, by the introduction of freedom, had been accomplished!" And it was not till after the 1st of August, 1838, that Jamaica had either savings banks or savings. These inst.i.tutions for the industrious cla.s.ses came only with their manhood. But why came they at all, if Emanc.i.p.ated industry is, or is likely to be, unsuccessful?--In Barbados we notice the same forwardness in founding monied inst.i.tutions. A Bank is there proposed, with a capital of 200,000. More than this, the all absorbing subject in all the West India papers at the present moment is that of the _currency_. Why such anxiety to provide the means of paying for labor which is to become valueless? Why such keenness for a good circulating medium if they are to have nothing to sell? The complaints about the old fashioned coinage we venture to a.s.sort have since the first of August occupied five times as much s.p.a.ce in the colonial papers, we might probably say in each and every one of them, as those of the non-working of the freemen. The inference is irresistible. _The white colonists take it for granted that industry is to thrive_.
It may be proper to remark that the late refusal of the Jamaica legislature to fulfil its appropriate functions has no connection with the working of freedom, any further than it may have been a struggle to get rid in some measure of the surveillance of the mother country in order to coerce the labourer so far as possible by vagrant laws, &c. The immediate pretext was the pa.s.sing of a law by the imperial Parliament for the regulation of prisons, which the House of a.s.sembly declared a violation of that principle of their charter which forbids the mother-country to lay a tax on them without their consent, in as much as it authorized a crown officer to impose a fine, in a certain case, of 20. A large majority considered this an infringement of their prerogatives, and among them were some members who have n.o.bly stood up for the slave in times of danger. The remarks of Mr. Osborn especially, on this subject, (he is the full blooded, slave-born, African man to whom we have already referred) are worthy of consideration in several points of view. Although he had always been a staunch advocate of the home government on the floor of the a.s.sembly are now contended for the rights of the Jamaica legislature with arguments which to us republicans are certainly quite forcible. In a speech of some length, which appears very creditable to him throughout, he said--
"Government could not be acting fair towards them to a.s.sume that the ma.s.s of the people of this island would remain in the state of political indifference to which poverty and slavery had reduced them. They were now free, every man to rise as rapidly as he could; and the day was not very distant when it would be demonstrated by the change of representatives that would be seen in that house. It did appear to him, that under the pretext of extending the privileges of freemen to the ma.s.s of the people of this country, the government was about to deprive them of those privileges, by curtailing the power of the representative a.s.sembly of those very people. He could not bring himself to admit, with any regard for truth, that the late apprentices could now be oppressed; they were quite alive to their own interests, and were now capable of taking care of themselves. So long as labor was marketable, so long they could resist oppression, while on the other hand, the proprietor, for his own interest"s sake, would be compelled to deal fairly with them."
Though it is evidently all important that the same public opinion which has wrested the whip from the master should continue to watch his proceedings as an employer of freemen, there is much truth in the speech of this black representative and alderman of Kingston. The brutalized and reckless attorneys and managers, _may_ possibly succeed in driving the negroes from the estates by exorbitant rent and low wages. They _may_ succeed in their effort to buy in property at half its value. But when they have effected that, they will be totally dependent for the profits of their ill-gotten gains upon the _free laboring people_. They may produce what they call idleness now, and a great deal of vexation and suffering. But land is plenty, and the laborers, if thrust from the estates, will take it up, and become still more independent. Reasonable wages they will be able to command, and for such they are willing to labor. The few thousand whites of Jamaica will never be able to establish slavery, or any thing like it, over its 300,000 blacks.
Already they are fain to swallow their prejudice against color. Mr.
Jordon, member for Kingston and "free n.i.g.g.e.r," was listened to with respect. Nay more, his argument was copied into the "Protest" which the legislature proudly flung back in the face of Parliament, along with the abolition of the apprenticeship, in return for Lord Glenelg"s Bill. Let all in the United States read and ponder it who a.s.sert that "the two races cannot live together on term of equality."
Legislative independence of Jamaica has ever been the pride of her English conquerors. They have received with joy the colored fellow colonists into an equal partic.i.p.ation of their valued liberty, and they were prepared to rejoice at the extension of the const.i.tution to the emanc.i.p.ated blacks. But the British Government, by a great fault, if not a crime, has, at the moment when all should have been free, torn from the lately ascendant cla.s.s, the privileges which were their birthright, another cla.s.s, now the equals of the former, the rights they had long and fortunately struggled for, and from the emanc.i.p.ated blacks the rights which they fondly expected to enjoy with their personal freedom.
The boon of earlier freedom will not compensate this most numerous part of our population for the injustice and wrong done to the whole Jamaica people.
The doc.u.ments already adduced are confined almost exclusively to Jamaica. We will refer briefly to one of the other colonies. The next in importance is
BARBADOS
Here has been played nearly the same game in regard to wages, and with the same results. We are now furnished with advices from the island down to the 19th of December 1838. At the latter date the panic making papers had tapered down their complainings to a very faint whisper, and withal expressing more hope than fears. As the fruit of what they had already done we are told by one of them, _the Barbadian_, that the unfavourable news carried home by the packets after the emanc.i.p.ation had served to raise the price of sugar in England, which object being accomplished, it is hoped that they will intermit the manufacture of such news. The first and most important doc.u.ment, and indeed of itself sufficient to save the trouble of giving more, is the comparison of crime during two and a half months of freedom, and the corresponding two and a half months of slavery or apprenticeship last year, submitted to the legislature at the opening of its session in the latter part of October. Here it is. We hope it will be held up before every slave holder.
From the Barbadian of Dec. 1.
Barbados.--Comparative Table, exhibiting the number of Complaints preferred against the Apprentice population of this Colony, in the months of August, September and to the 15th of October, 1838; together with the Complaints charged against Free Labourers of the same Colony, during the months of August, September and to the 15th of October, 1838.
The former compiled from the Monthly Journals of the Special Justice of the Peace and the latter from the Returns of the Local Magistracy transmitted to his excellency the Governor
APPRENTICESHIP.
Total of Complaints vs. Apprentices from the 1st to 31st August 1837. 1708 Ditto from the 1st to 30th September 1464 Ditto from the 1st to 15th October 574
Grand Total 3746
Total number of Apprentices punished from the 1st to 31st August 1608 Ditto from 1st to 31st September 1321 Ditto from the 1st to 15th October 561
Grand Total 3490
Total compromised, admonished and dismissed from 1st to 31st August 105 Ditto from the 1st to 30th September 113 Ditto from 1st to 15th October 38
Total 256
Deficiency in compromised cases in 1837 comparatively with those of 1838 158
Grand Total 414
FREEDOM.
Total of Complaints vs. Labourers from the 1st to the 31st August 1838 582 Ditto from the 1st to the 30th September 386 Ditto from the 1st to the 15th October 103
Total 1071
Comparative Surplus of Complaints in 1838 2675
Grand Total 3746
Total of Laborers punished from the 1st to the 31st August, 1838, 334 Ditto from the 1st to 30th September 270 Ditto from the 1st to 15th October 53
Total 657
Comparative surplus of punishment in 1837 2833
Grand total 3490
Total compromised, admonished and dismissed from the 1st to the 31st August 248 Ditto from the 1st to 30th September 116 Ditto from the 1st to 15th October 50
Grand Total 414
NOTE.