The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 Devoted to Literature and National Policy

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EMANCIPATION IN JAMAICA.

The luminous summary of statistical facts published in the March number of the Atlantic Monthly for 1862, has, in a few pages, conclusively settled the question whether emancipation in the smaller islands of the British West Indies has been a success or a failure. It applies the standard of financial results, which, though the lowest, is undoubtedly the best; for the defenders of slavery would hardly choose its moral advantages as their strong position, and if its alleged economical advantages turn out also an illusion, there is not much to be said for it. Indeed, of late they have been growing shy of the smaller islands, which furnish too many weapons for the other side, and too few for their own; and have chosen rather to divert attention from these by triumphant clamors about the forlorn condition of Jamaica. This magnificent island, once the fairest possession of the British crown, now almost a wilderness, has been the burden of their lamentations over the fatal workings of emancipation. And truly if emancipation has really done so much mischief in Jamaica as they claim, it is a most damaging fact. Testimony of opposite results in the smaller islands would hardly countervail it. Such testimony would be good to prove that the freedom of the negro works well in densely peopled insular communities, where the pressure of population compels industry. The opponents of emancipation are willing sometimes to acknowledge that where the laboring population are, as they say, in virtual slavery to the planters, by the impossibility of obtaining land of their own, their release from the degradation of being personally owned may act favorably upon them. But they maintain that where the negro can easily escape from the control of the planter, as in Jamaica, where plenty of land is obtainable at low rates, his innate laziness is there invincible. This very representation I remember to have seen a few years ago in a Jamaica journal in the planting interest, which maintained that unless the negroes of that island were also reduced to 'virtual slavery'—using those very words—by an immense importation of foreign laborers, it would be impossible to bring them to reasonable terms.

Now the condition of the South is like that of Jamaica, not like that of the smaller islands. Were the Southern negroes emancipated, and should they desert the plantations in a body, it is not likely that they would starve. They could at least support themselves as well as the white sandhillers, and probably better, considering their previous habits of work. Besides, as in Jamaica, there would of course be many small proprietors, who would be ruined by emancipation or before it, and from whom the negroes could easily procure the few acres apiece that would be required by the wants of their rude existence. Jamaica, then, is far nearer a parallel to the South than most of the smaller islands, and for this reason an inquiry into the true workings of emancipation there is of prime interest and importance.

The writer is very far indeed from pretending to have carried through such an inquiry. His personal acquaintance extends to but seven of the twenty-two parishes of the island, and he is intimately acquainted with not more than three of those seven. He has but a meagre knowledge of statistical facts, bearing on the workings of emancipation in the island, and indeed the statistics themselves, as Mr. Sewell complains, are very meagre and very hard to get. Still the writer has been able to gather some facts which will speak for themselves, and he claims for his personal impressions on points concerning which he cannot give particular facts the degree of confidence deserved by one who has resided five years and a half in a rural district, who has lived familiarly conversant with negroes and with whites of all classes, who has heard all sides of the question from valued personal friends, and who neither carried to Jamaica nor brought away from it any peculiar disposition to an apotheosis of the negro character.

There is, however, an excess of candor affected by some writers on this question, which is neither honorable to them nor wholesome to their readers. They would have us believe that they began their inquiries entirely undecided whether slavery or freedom is the normal condition of the African race, and that their conclusions, whatever they are, have been purely deduced from the facts that they have gathered. The writer lays claim to no such comprehensive indifference. He would as soon think of suspending his faith in Christ until he could resolve all the difficulties of the first of Genesis, as of suspending his moral judgment respecting the system which makes one man the brute instrument of another's gain, till he knew just how the statistics of sugar and coffee stand. Woe unto us if the fundamental principles which govern human relations have themselves no better foundation than the fluctuating figures of blue-books!

But if freedom is better than slavery, she will be sure to vindicate her superiority in due time, and is little beholden to overzealous friends who cannot be content meanwhile that present facts shall tell their own story, whatever it be. There is much, very much, in the present condition of Jamaica, to cause an honest man to think twice before setting it down as testifying favorably for emancipation, or before dismissing it as not testifying unfavorably against it....