In view of the local situation of Jamaica--the violent character of its planters--and the inevitable dependency of the magistrates, it is very manifest _that immediate emanc.i.p.ation was imperatively demanded there_. In no other colony did the negroes require to be more _entirely released from the tyranny of the overseers, or more thoroughly shielded by the power of equal law_. This is a principle which must hold good always--that where slavery has been most rigorous and absolute, there emanc.i.p.ation, needs to be most unqualified; and where the sway of the master has been _most despotic, cruel, and_ LONG CONTINUED, there the protection of law should be most SPEEDILY _extended and most impartially applied_."[B]
[Footnote B: Since the above was written we have seen a copy of a message sent by Sir Lionel Smith, to the house of a.s.sembly of Jamaica, on the 3d November, 1837, in which a statement of the deprivations of the apprentices, is officially laid before the house. We make the following extract from it, which contains, to use his Excellency"s language, "the princ.i.p.al causes, as has been found by the records of the special magistrates, of complaints among the apprentices; and of consequent collisions between the planters and magistrates."
"Prudent and humane planters have already adopted what is recommended, and their properties present the good working of this system in peace and industry, without their resorting to the authority of the special magistrates; but there are other properties where neither the law of the apprenticeship nor the usages of slavery have been found sufficient to guard the rights of the apprentices.
First, the magistrates" reports show that on some estates the apprentices have been deprived of cooks and water-carriers while at work in the field--thus, the time allowed for breakfast, instead of being a period of rest, is one of continual labor, as they have to seek for fuel and to cook. The depriving them of water-carriers is still more injurious, as the workmen are not allowed to quit their rows to obtain it. Both these privations are detrimental to the planter"s work. Second, a law seems wanting to supply the estates"
hospitals with sufficient attendants on the sick apprentices, as well as for the supply of proper food, as they cannot depend on their own grounds, whilst unable to leave the hospitals. The first clause of the abolition law has not been found strong enough to secure these necessary attentions to the sick. Third, in regard to jobbers, more exposed to hardships than any other cla.s.s. A law is greatly required allowing them the distance they may have to walk to their work, at the rate of three miles an hour, and for compelling the parties hiring them to supply them with salt food and meal; their grounds are oftentimes so many miles distant, it is impossible for them to supply themselves. Hence constant complaints and irregularities. Fourth, that mothers of six children and upwards, pregnant women, and the aged of both s.e.xes, would be greatly benefited by a law enforcing the kind treatment which they received in slavery, but which is now considered optional, or is altogether avoided on many properties. Fifth, nothing would tend more to effect general contentment and repress the evils of comparative treatment, than the issue of fish as a right by law. It was an indulgence in slavery seldom denied, but on many properties is now withheld, or given for extra labor instead of wages. Sixth, his Excellency during the last sessions had the honor to address a message to the house for a stronger definition of working time. The clause of the act in aid expressed that it was the intention of the legislature to regulate "uniformity" of labor, but in practice there is still a great diversity of system. The legal adviser of the crown considers the clause active and binding; the special magistrate cannot, therefore, adjudicate on disputes of labor under the eight hour system, and the consequences have been continual complaints and bickerings between the magistrates and managers, and discontent among the apprentices by comparison of the advantages which one system presents over the other. Seventh, if your honorable house would adopt some equitable fixed principle for the value of apprentices desirous of purchasing their discharge, either by ascertained rates of weekly labor, or by fixed sums according to their trade or occupation, which should not be exceeded, and allowing the deduction of one third from the extreme value for the contingencies of maintenance, clothing, medical aid, risk of life, and health, it would greatly tend to set at rest one cause of constant disappointment. In proportion as the term of apprenticeship draws to a close, THE DEMANDS FOR THE SALE OF SERVICES HAVE GREATLY INCREASED. It is in the hope that the honorable house will be disposed to enforce a more general system of equal treatment, that his Excellency now circ.u.mstantially represents what have been the most common causes of complaint among the apprentices, and why the island is subject to the reproach that the negroes, in some respects, are now in a worse condition than they were in slavery."
We heard frequent complaints in Jamaica respecting the falling off of the crops since abolition. In order that the reader may know the extent of the failure in the aggregate island crops, we have inserted in the appendix a table showing the "exports for fifty-three years, ending 31st December, 1836, condensed from the journals of the House."
By the disaffected planters, the diminished crops were hailed as "an evident token of perdition." They had foretold that abolition would be the ruin of cultivation, they had maintained that sugar, coffee, rum, &c., could not be produced extensively without the _whip of slavery_, and now they exultingly point to the short crops and say, "See the results of abolition!" We say exultingly, for a portion of the planters do really seem to rejoice in any indication of ruin. Having staked their reputation as prophets against their credit as colonists and their interests as men, they seem happy in the establishment of the former, even though it be by the sacrifice of the latter. Said an intelligent gentleman in St. Thomas in the East, "The planters have _set their hearts upon_ ruin, and they will be sorely disappointed if it should not come."
Hearing so much said concerning the diminution of the crops, we spared no pains to ascertain the _true causes_. We satisfied ourselves that the causes were mainly two.
First. The prevailing impression that the negroes would not _work well_ after the abolition of slavery, led many planters to throw a part of their land out of cultivation, in 1834. This is a fact which was published by Lord Sligo, in an official account which he gave shortly before leaving Jamaica, of the working of the apprenticeship. The overseer of Belvidere estate declared that he knew of many cases in which part of the land usually planted in canes was thrown up, owing to the general expectation that _much less work_ would be done after abolition. He also mentioned one attorney _who ordered all the estates under his charge to be thrown out of cultivation_ in 1834, so confident was he that the negroes would not work. The name of this attorney was White. Mr. Gordon, of Williamsfield, stated, that the quant.i.ty of land planted in cane, in 1834, was considerably less than the usual amount: on some estates it was less by twenty, and on others by forty acres. Now if such were the fact in the Parish of St. Thomas in the East, where greater confidence was felt probably than in any other parish, we have a clue by which we may conjecture (if indeed we were left to conjecture) to what extent the cultivation was diminished in the island generally.
This of itself would satisfactorily account for the falling off in the crops--which at most is not above one third. Nor would this explain the decrease in "34 _only_, for it is well known among sugar planters that a neglect of planting, either total or partial, for one year, will affect the crops for two or three successive years.
The other cause of short crops has been the _diminished amount of time for labor_. One fourth of the time now belongs to the laborers, and they often prefer to employ it in cultivating their provision grounds and carrying their produce to market. Thus the estate cultivation is necessarily impeded. This cause operates very extensively, particularly on two cla.s.ses of estates: those which lie convenient to market places, where the apprentices have strong inducements to cultivate their grounds, and those (more numerous still) which _have harsh overseers_, to whom the apprentices are averse to hire their time--in which cases they will choose to work for neighboring planters, who are better men.
We should not omit to add here, that owing to a singular fact, the falling off of the crops _appears_ greater than it really has been. We learned from the most credible sources that _the size of the hogsheads_ had been considerably enlarged since abolition. Formerly they contained, on an average, eighteen hundred weight, now they vary from a ton to twenty-two hundred! As the crops are estimated by the number of hogsheads, this will make a material difference. There were two reasons for enlarging in the hogsheads,--one was, to lessen the amount of certain port charges in exportation, which were made _by the hogshead_; the other, and perhaps the princ.i.p.al, was to create some foundation in appearance for the complaint that the crops had failed because of abolition.
While we feel fully warranted in stating these as the chief causes of the diminished crops, we are at the same time disposed to admit that the apprenticeship is in itself exceedingly ill calculated either to encourage or to compel industry. We must confess that we have no special zeal to vindicate this system from its full share of blame; but we are rather inclined to award to it every jot and t.i.ttle of the dishonored instrumentality which it has had in working mischief to the colony.
However, in all candor, we must say, that we can scarcely check the risings of exultation when we perceive that this party-fangled measure--this offspring of old Slavery in her dying throes, _which was expressly designed as a compensation to the proprietor_, HAS ACTUALLY DIMINISHED HIS ANNUAL RETURNS BY ONE THIRD! So may it ever be with legislation which is based on _iniquity and robbery!_
But the subject which excites the deepest interest in Jamaica _is the probable consequences of entire emanc.i.p.ation in 1840_. The most common opinion among the prognosticators of evil is, that the emanc.i.p.ated negroes will abandon the cultivation of all the staple products, retire to the woods, and live in a state of semi-barbarism; and as a consequence, the splendid sugar and coffee estates must be "thrown up,"
and the beautiful and fertile island of Jamaica become a waste howling wilderness.
The _reasons_ for this opinion consist in part of naked a.s.sumptions, and in part of inferences from _supposed_ facts. The a.s.sumed reasons are such as these. The negroes will not cultivate the cane _without the whip_. How is this known? Simply because _they never have_, to any great extent, in Jamaica. Such, it has been shown, was the opinion formerly in Barbadoes, but it has been forever exploded there by experiment. Again, the negroes are _naturally improvident_, and will never have enough foresight to work steadily. What is the evidence of _natural_ improvidence in the negroes? Barely this--their carelessness in a state of slavery. But that furnishes no ground at all for judging of _natural_ character, or of the developments of character under a _totally different system_. If it testifies any thing, it is only this, that the natural disposition of the negroes is not always _proof_ against the degenerating influences of slavery.[A] Again, the actual wants of the negroes are very few and easily supplied, and they will undoubtedly prefer going into the woods where they can live almost without labor, to toiling in the hot cane fields or climbing the coffee mountains. But they who urge this, lose sight of the fact that the negroes are considerably civilized, and that, like other civilized people, they will seek for more than supply for the necessities of the rudest state of nature. Their wants are already many, even in the degraded condition of slaves; is it probable that they will be satisfied with _fewer of the comforts and luxuries of civilized life_, when they are elevated to the sphere, and feel the self-respect and dignity of freemen? But let us notice some of the reasons which profess to be _founded on fact_. They may all be resolved into two, _the laziness of negroes, and their tendency to barbarism_.
[Footnote A: Probably in more instances than the one recorded in the foregoing chapter, the improvidence of the negroes is inferred from their otherwise unaccountable preference in walking six or ten miles to chapel, rather than to work for a maccaroni a day.]
i. They _now_ refuse to work on Sat.u.r.days, even with wages. On this a.s.sertion we have several remarks to make.
1.) It is true only to a partial extent. The apprentices on many estates--whether a majority or not it is impossible to say--do work for their masters on Sat.u.r.days, when their services are called for.
2.) They often refuse to work on the estates, because they can earn three or four times as much by cultivating their provision grounds and carrying their produce to market. The ordinary day"s wages on an estate is a quarter of a dollar, and where the apprentices are conveniently situated to market, they can make from seventy-five cents to a dollar a day with their provisions.
3.) The overseers are often such overbearing and detestable men, that the apprentices doubtless feel it a great relief to be freed from their command on Sat.u.r.day, after submitting to it compulsorily for five days of the week.
2. Another fact from which the laziness of the negroes is inferred, is their _neglecting their provision grounds_. It is said that they have fallen off greatly to their attention to their grounds, since the abolition of slavery. This fact does not comport very well with the complaint, that the apprentices cultivate their provision grounds to the neglect of the estates. But both a.s.sertions may be true under opposite circ.u.mstances. On those estates which are situated near the market, provisions will be cultivated; on those which are remote from the market, provisions will of course be partially neglected, and it will be more profitable to the apprentices to work on the estates at a quarter of a dollar per day, raising only enough provisions for their own use.
But we ascertained another circ.u.mstance which throws light on this point. The negroes expect, after emanc.i.p.ation, to _lose their provision grounds_; many expect certainly to be turned off by their masters, and many who have harsh masters, intend to leave, and seek homes on other estates, and _all_ feel a great uncertainty about their situation after 1840; and consequently they can have but little encouragement to vigorous and extended cultivation of their grounds. Besides this, there are very many cases in which the apprentices of one estate cultivate provision grounds on another estate, where the manager is a man in whom they have more confidence than they have in their own "busha." They, of course, in such cases, abandon their former grounds, and consequently are charged with neglecting them through laziness.
3. Another alleged fact is, that _actually less work_ is done now than was done during slavery. The argument founded on this fact is this: there is less work done under the apprenticeship than was done during slavery: therefore _no work at all_ will be done after entire freedom!
But the apprenticeship allows _one fourth less time_ for labor than slavery did, and presents no inducement, either compulsory or persuasive, to continued industry. Will it be replied that emanc.i.p.ation will take away _all_ the time from labor, and offer no encouragement _but to idleness_? How is it now? Do the apprentices work better or worse during their own time when they are paid? Better, unquestionably.
What does this prove? That freedom will supply both the time and the inducement to the most vigorous industry.
The _other reason_ for believing that the negroes will abandon estate-labor after entire emanc.i.p.ation, is their _strong tendency to barbarism!_ And what are the facts in proof of this? We know but one.
We heard it said repeatedly that the apprentices were not willing to have their free children educated--that they had pertinaciously declined every offer of the _bushas_ to educate their children, and _this_, it was alleged, evinced a determination on the part of the negroes to perpetuate ignorance and barbarism among their posterity. We heard from no less than four persons of distinction in St. Thomas in the East, the following curious fact. It was stated each time for the double purpose of proving that the apprentices did not wish to have their children _learn to work_, and that they were opposed to their _receiving education_. A company of the first-gentlemen of that parish, consisting of the rector of the parish, the custos, the special magistrate, an attorney, and member of the a.s.sembly, etc., had mustered in imposing array, and proceeded to one of the large estates in the Plantain Garden River Valley, and there having called the apprentices together, made the following proposals to them respecting their free children, the rector acting as spokesman. The attorney would provide a teacher for the estate, and would give the children four hours" instruction daily, if the parents would _bind them to work_ four hours every day; the attorney further offered to pay for all medical attendance the children should require. The apprentices, after due deliberation among themselves, unanimously declined this proposition. It was repeatedly urged upon them, and the advantages it promised were held up to them; but they persisted in declining it wholly. This was a great marvel to the planters; and they could not account for it in any other way than by supposing that the apprentices were opposed both to labor and education, and were determined that their free children should grow up in ignorance and indolence! Now the true reason why the apprentices rejected this proposal was, _because it came from the planters_, in whom they have no confidence. They suspected that some evil scheme was hid under the fair pretence of benevolence; the design of the planters, as they firmly believed, was to get their _free children bound to them_, so that they might continue to keep them in a species of apprenticeship. This was stated to us, as the real ground of the rejection, by several missionaries, who gave the best evidence that it was so; viz. that at the same time that the apprentices declined the offer, they would send their free children _six or eight miles to a school taught by a missionary_. We inquired particularly of some of the apprentices, to whom this offer was made, why they did not accept it. They said that they could not trust their masters; the whole design of it was to get them to give up their children, and if they should give them up _but for a single month_, it would be the same as acknowledging that they (the parents) were not able to take care of them themselves. The busha would then send word to the Governor that the people had given up their children, not being able to support them, and the Governor would have the children bound to the busha, "and _then_," said they, "_we might whistle for our children_!" In this manner the apprentices, the _parents_, reasoned. They professed the greatest anxiety to have their children educated, but they said they could have no confidence in the honest intentions of their busha.
The views given above, touching the results of entire emanc.i.p.ation in 1840, are not unanimously entertained even among the planters, and they are far from prevailing to any great extent among other cla.s.ses of the community. The missionaries, as a body, a portion of the special magistrates, and most of the intelligent free colored people, antic.i.p.ate glorious consequences; they hail the approach of 1840, as a deliverance from the oppressions of the apprenticeship, and its train of disaffections, complaints and incessant disputes. They say they have nothing to fear--nor has the island any thing to fear, but every thing to hope, from entire emanc.i.p.ation. We subjoin a specimen of the reasoning of the minority of the planters. They represent the idea that the negroes will abandon the estates, and retire to the woods, as wild and absurd in the extreme. They say the negroes have a great regard for the comforts which they enjoy on the estates; they are strongly attached to their houses and little furniture, and their provision grounds. These are as much to them as the "great house" and the estate are to their master. Besides, they have very _strong local attachments_, and these would bind them to the properties. These planters also argue, from _the great willingness_ of the apprentices now to work for money, during their own time, that they will not be likely to relinquish labor when they are to get wages for the whole time. There was no doubt much truth in the remark of a planter in St. Thomas in the East, that if _any_ estates were abandoned by the negroes after 1840, it would be those which had harsh managers, and those which are so mountainous and inaccessible, or barren, that they _ought_ to be abandoned. It was the declaration of a _planter_, that entire emanc.i.p.ation would _regenerate_ the island of Jamaica.
We now submit to the candid examination of the American, especially the Christian public, the results of our inquiries in Antigua, Barbadoes, and Jamaica. The deficiency of the narrative in ability and interest, we are sure is neither the fault of the subject nor of the materials. Could we have thrown into vivid forms a few only of the numberless incidents of rare beauty which thronged our path--could we have imparted to pages that freshness and glow, which invested the inst.i.tutions of freedom, just bursting into bloom over the late wastes of slavery--could we, in fine, have carried our readers amid the scenes which we witnessed, and the sounds which we heard, and the things which we handled, we should not doubt the power and permanence of the impression produced. It is due to the cause, and to the society under whose commission we acted, frankly to state, that we were not selected on account of any peculiar qualifications for the work. As both of us were invalids, and compelled to fly from the rigors of an American winter, it was believed that we might combine the improvement of health, with the prosecution of important investigations, while abler men could thus be retained in the field at home; but we found that the unexpected abundance of materials requires the strongest health and powers of endurance. We regret to add, that the continued ill health of both of us, since our return, so serious in the case of one, as to deprive him almost wholly of partic.i.p.ation in the preparation of the work, has necessarily, delayed its appearance, and rendered its execution more imperfect.
We lay no claim to literary merit. To present as simple narrative of facts, has been our sole aim. We have not given the results of our personal observations merely, or chiefly, nor have we made a record of private impressions or idle speculations. _Well authenticated facts_, accompanied with the testimony, verbal and doc.u.mentary, of public men, planters, and other responsible individuals, make up the body of the volume, as almost every page will show. That no statements, if erroneous, might escape detection and exposure, we have, in nearly every case, given the _names_ of our authorities. By so doing we may have subjected ourselves to the censure of those respected gentlemen, with whose names we have taken such liberty. We are a.s.sured, however, that their interest in the cause of freedom will quite reconcile them to what otherwise might be an unpleasant personal publicity.
Commending our narrative to the blessing of the G.o.d of truth, and the Redeemer of the oppressed, we send it forth to do its part, however humble, toward the removal of slavery from our beloved but guilty country.
APPENDIX.
We have in our possession a number of official doc.u.ments from gentlemen, officers of the government, and variously connected with its administration, in the different islands which we visited: some of these--such as could not be conveniently incorporated into the body of the work--we insert in the form of an appendix. To insert them _all_, would unduly increase the size of the present volume. Those not embodied in this appendix, will be published in the periodicals of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION FROM E.B. LYON, ESQ., SPECIAL MAGISTRATE.
_Jamaica, Hillingdon, near Falmouth, Trelawney, May 15, 1837_.
TO J.H. KIMBALL., ESQ., and J.A. THOME, ESQ.
DEAR SIRS,--Of the operation of the apprenticeship system in this district, from the slight opportunity I have had of observing the conduct of managers and apprentices, I could only speak conjecturally, and my opinions, wanting the authority of experience, would be of little service to you; I shall therefore confine the remarks I have to make, to the operation of the system in the district from which I have lately removed.
I commenced my duties in August, 1834, and from the paucity of special magistrates at that eventful era, I had the superintendence of a most extensive district, comprising nearly one half of the populous parish of St. Thomas in the East, and the whole of the parish of St. David, embracing an apprentice population of nearly eighteen thousand,--in charge of which I continued until December, when I was relieved of St.
David, and in March, 1835, my surveillance was confined to that portion of St. Thomas in the East, consisting of the coffee plantations in the Blue Mountains, and the sugar estates of Blue Mountain Valley, over which I continued to preside until last March, a district containing a population of four thousand two hundred and twenty-seven apprentices, of which two thousand eighty-seven were males, and two thousand one hundred and forty, females. The apprentices of the Blue Mountain Valley were, at the period of my a.s.sumption of the duties of a special magistrate, the most disorderly in the island. They were greatly excited, and almost desperate from disappointment, in finding their trammels under the new law, nearly as burdensome as under the old, and their condition, in many respects, much more intolerable. They were also extremely irritated at what they deemed an attempt upon the part of their masters to rob them of one of the greatest advantages they had been led to believe the new law secured to them--this was the half of Friday. Special Justice Everard, who went through the district during the first two weeks of August, 1834, and who was the first special justice to read and explain the new law to them, had told them that the law gave to them the extra four and a half hours on the Friday, and some of the proprietors and managers, who were desirous of preparing their people for the coming change, had likewise explained it so; but, most unfortunately, the governor issued a proclamation, justifying the masters in withholding the four and a half hours on that day, and subst.i.tuting any other half day, or by working them eight hours per day, they might deprive them altogether of the advantage to be derived from the extra time, which, by the abolition of Sunday marketing, was almost indispensable to people whose grounds, in some instances, were many miles from their habitations, and who were above thirty miles from Kingston market, where prices were fifty per cent. more than the country markets in their favor for the articles they had to dispose of, and correspondingly lower for those they had to purchase. To be in time for which market, it was necessary to walk all Friday night, so that without the use of the previous half day, they could not procure their provisions, or prepare themselves for it. The deprivation of the half of Friday was therefore a serious hardship to them, and this, coupled to the previous a.s.surance of their masters, and Special Justice Everard, that they were ent.i.tled to it, made them to suspect a fraud was about being practised on them, which, if they did not resist, would lead to the destruction of the remaining few privileges they possessed. The resistance was very general, but without violence; whole gangs leaving the fields on the afternoon of Friday; refusing to take any other afternoon, and sometimes leaving the estates for two or three days together. They fortunately had confidence in me--and I succeeded in restoring order, and all would have been well,--but the managers, no longer alarmed by the fear of rebellion or violence, began a system of retaliation and revenge, by withdrawing cooks, water-carriers, and nurses, from the field, by refusing medicine and admittance to the hospital to the apprentice children, and by compelling old and infirm people, who had been allowed to withdraw from labor, and mothers of six children, who were exempt by the slave law from hard labor, to come out and work in the field. All this had a natural tendency to create irritation, and did do so; though, to the great credit of the people, in many instances, they submitted with the most extraordinary patience, to evils which were the more onerous, because inflicted under the affected sanction of a law, whose advent, as the herald of liberty, they had expected would have been attended with a train of blessings. I effected a change in this miserable state of things; and mutual contract for labor, in crop and out of it, were made on twenty-five estates in my district, before, I believe, any arrangement had been made in other parts of the island, between the managers and the apprentices; so that from being in a more unsettled state than others, we were soon happily in a more prosperous one, and so continued.
No peasantry in the most favored country on the globe, can have been more irreproachable in morals and conduct than the majority of apprentices in that district, since the beginning of 1835. I have, month after month, in my despatches to the governor, had to record instances of excess of labor, compared with the quant.i.ty performed during slavery in some kinds of work; and while I have with pleasure reported the improving condition, habits, manners, and the industry which characterized the labors of the peasantry, I have not been an indifferent or uninterested witness of the improvement in the condition of many estates, the result of the judicious application of labor, and of the confidence in the future and sanguine expectations of the proprietors, evinced in the enlargements of the works, and expensive and permanent repair of the buildings on various estates, and in the high prices given for properties and land since the apprenticeship system, which would scarcely have commanded a purchaser, at any price, during the existence of slavery.
I have invariably found the apprentice willing to work for an equitable hire, and on all the sugar estates, and several of the plantations, in the district I speak of, they worked a considerable portion of their own time during crop, about the works, for money, or an equivalent in herrings, sugar, etc., to so great a degree, that less than the time allotted to them during slavery, was left for appropriation to the cultivation of their grounds, and for marketing, as the majority, very much to their credit, scrupulously avoided working on the Sabbath day.
In no community in the world is crime less prevalent. At the quarter sessions, in January last, for the precinct of St. Thomas in the East, and St. David, which contains an apprentice population of about thirty thousand, there was only one apprentice tried. And the offences that have, in general, for the last eighteen months, been brought before me on estates, have been of the most trivial description, such as an individual occasionally turning out late, or some one of an irritable temper answering impatiently, or for some trifling act of disobedience; in fact, the majority of apprentices on estates have been untainted with offence, and have steadily and quietly performed their duty, and respected the law. The apprentices of St. Thomas in the East, I do not hesitate to say, are much superior in manners and morals to those who inhabit the towns.
During the first six or eight months, while the planters were in doubt how far the endurance of their laborers might be taxed, the utmost deference and respect was paid by them to the special magistrates; their suggestions or recommendations were adopted without cavil, and opinions taken without reference to the letter of the law; but when the obedience of the apprentice, and his strict deference to the law and its administrators, had inspired them with a consciousness of perfect security, I observed with much regret, a great alteration in the deportment of many of the managers towards myself and the people; trivial and insignificant complaints were astonishingly increased, and a.s.saults on apprentices became more frequent, so that in the degree that the conduct of one party was more in accordance with the obligations imposed on him by the apprenticeship, was that of the other in opposition to it; again with the hold and infirm hara.s.sed; again were mothers of six living children attempted to be forced to perform field labor; and again were mothers with sucking children complained of, and some attempts made to deprive them of the usual nurses.
Such treatment was not calculated to promote cordiality between master and apprentice, and the effect will, I fear, have a very unfavorable influence upon the working of many estates, at the termination of the system; in fact, when that period arrives, if the feeling of estrangement be no worse, I am convinced it will be no better than it is at the present moment, as I have witnessed no pains taking on the part of the attorneys generally to attach the apprentices to the properties, or to prepare them in a beneficial manner for the coming change. It was a very common practice in the district, when an apprentice was about to purchase his discharge, to attempt to intimidate him by threats of immediate ejectment from the property, and if in the face of this threatened separation from family and connections, he persevered and procured his release, then the sincerity of the previous intimations was evinced by a peremptory order, to instantly quit the property, under the penalty of having the trespa.s.s act enforced against him; and if my interference prevented any outrageous violation of law, so many obstructions and annoyances were placed in the way of his communication with his family, or enjoyment of his domestic rights, that he would be compelled for their peace, and his own personal convenience, to submit to privations, which, as a slave, he would not have been subject to. The consequence is, that those released from the obligations of the apprenticeship by purchase, instead of being located, and laboring for hire upon the estate to which they were attached, and forming a nucleus around which others would have gathered and settled themselves, they have been princ.i.p.ally driven to find other homes, and in the majority of instances have purchased land, and become settlers on their own account.
If complete emanc.i.p.ation had taken place in 1834, there would have been no more excitement, and no more trouble to allay it, than that which was the consequence of the introduction of the present system of coerced and uncompensated labor. The relations of society would have been fixed upon a permanent basis, and the two orders would not have been placed in that situation of jealousy and suspicion which their present anomalous condition has been the baneful means of creating.
I am convinced there never was any serious alarm about the consequences of immediate emanc.i.p.ation among those who were acquainted with the peasantry of Jamaica. The fears of the morbidly humane were purposely excited to increase the amount of compensation, or to lengthen the duration of the apprenticeship; and the daily ridiculous and untruthful statements that are made by the vitiated portion of the Jamaica press, of the indolence of the apprentices, their disinclination to work in their own time, and the great increase of crime, are purposely and insidiously put forward to prevent the fact of the industry, and decorum, and deference to the law, of the people, and the prosperous condition of the estates, appearing in too prominent a light, lest the friends of humanity, and the advocates for the equal rights of men, should be encouraged to agitate for the destruction of a system which, in its general operation, has retained many of the worst features of slavery, perpetuated many gross infringements of the social and domestic rights of the working cla.s.ses; and which, instead of working out the benevolent intention of the imperial legislature, by aiding and encouraging the expansion of intellect, and supplying motives for the permanent good conduct of the apprentices, in its termination, has, I fear, r.e.t.a.r.ded the rapidity with which civilization would have advanced, and sown the seeds of a feeling more bitter than that which slavery, with all its abominations, had engendered.
I am, dear sirs, your very faithful servant,
EDMUND B. LYON, _Special Justice._
Extract from a communication which we received from Wm. Henry Anderson, Esq., of Kingston, the Solicitor-General for Jamaica.