The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 | Page 5

still a predominant social and political influence. And it is to be noted that Carlyle's picture is drawn from the neighborhood of a plantation, and so are Trollope's. Mr. Trollope, it is true, takes all imaginable pains to write himself down an ass. By his own ostentatious confessions, the only intellectual comprehensiveness to which he can lay claim is an astonishingly comprehensive ignorance. In view of this, his sage discoursings upon grave questions of political and social economy have about as comical an effect as the moralizings of a harlequin. But he is a lively describer of what passes under his eyes, and his sketches of what he heard and saw among the planters and on the plantations are doubtless authentic. However, he did not visit the small settlers; and to take pains to inform himself of the condition of a class of the population which he was not among, except by catching up the dinner-table maledictions of his planting friends against the class which they hate most, as being least dependent on them, would be of course entirely contrary to his professed superficiality.
There are but two recent works of much value on emancipation in Jamaica--Underhill's and Sewell's. The work of Mr. Underhill, although, as a delegate of a missionary society which had much to do in bringing about emancipation, he might be supposed to have a strong party interest, is marked by an impartial caution which entitles it to great respect and confidence.[4]
As to Mr. Sewell's book, it is marvellous how he could obtain so clear an insight in so short a time into the true condition of things. The paucity of statistical facts, however, plagued him, as it does every writer on Jamaica; and while the delinquencies of the planters are patent and palpable, he could not appreciate so well as a resident the difficulties arising from the provoking treacherousness of the negro character.
It is known by most, who do not choose to remain conveniently ignorant, that though the ruin of Jamaican planting prosperity has been accelerated by emancipation, it had been steadily going on for more than a generation previous. In 1792 the Jamaica Assembly represented to Parliament that in the twenty years previous one hundred and seventy-seven estates had been sold for debt. In 1800, it is stated in the Hon. Richard Hill's interesting little book, 'Lights and Shadows of Jamaica History,' judgments had been recorded against estates in the island to the enormous amount of ￡33,000,000. In the five years before the slave trade was abolished in 1807, sixty-five estates had been given up. Against the abolition of the slave trade the Assembly made the most urgent remonstrances, representing that it would be impossible to keep up the supply of labor without it. In other words, the slaves were worked to death so rapidly that natural increase alone would not maintain their number. The result justified their prediction.[5] In 1804, it appears that there were eight hundred and fifty-nine sugar estates in operation in the island. In 1834 there were six hundred and forty-six. In 1854 there were three hundred and thirty. Thus it appears that in the thirty years previous to the abolition of slavery, one quarter of the estates in operation at the beginning of that term had been abandoned, and in the twenty years succeeding abolition one half of those remaining had been given up. It is certainly no wonder that so great a social shock as emancipation, coming upon a tottering fabric, hastened its fall. But the foregoing facts show that, in the language of Mr. Underhill, 'ruin has been the chronic condition of Jamaica ever since the beginning of the century.'
The distinguished historian of the island, Bryan Edwards, himself a planter, and opposed to the abolition of the slave trade, describes the sugar cultivation, even before the supply of labor from Africa was cut off, as precarious in the highest degree, a mere lottery, and often, he says, 'a millstone around the neck of the unfortunate proprietor.' That this was from no invincible necessity, the uniform prosperity of numerous estates shows. But these estates are all conducted economically, while, on the other hand, reckless extravagance was the rule in the palmy days of the olden time, and has remained, even in humbler circumstances, an inborn trait of the Creole gentleman.
If this was so during the continuance of the slave trade, what could have been looked for when this means of obtaining labor was suddenly cut off? Sewell states the estimated supply of negroes from Africa necessary to make up the annual waste at ten thousand. When this ceased it was obvious that only such a complete revolution in the system of labor as should save the horrible waste of life could preserve the plantations from ruin and the island from