The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 | Page 7

chanced then to be travelling through that quarter, and been entertained by the disappointed proprietor with all the noble bounteousness which distinguished him, we can easily imagine how this fact would have figured in his book, as a proof of unconquerable negro laziness.
It was peculiarly unfortunate for Jamaica at this juncture, that the estates were mostly managed by attorneys and overseers for absentee landlords. Middlemen, it is said, ruined Ireland, and it is certain that they have helped mightily to ruin Jamaica. If attorneys had been ever so honest, how could they be efficient, when one attorney had very commonly the charge of four, six, ten, or even fourteen estates? If he paid a hasty visit to each one once in two years he did well. And as to overseers, how could honesty be expected when common morality was not permitted? It was a rule, having almost the force of law, that an overseer, if he married, was at once dismissed.[6] Loose licentiousness and loose dishonesty are very apt to go hand in hand, and it is certain that they did in Jamaica. A saying still in use among the whites of the island illustrates the standard of integrity: 'Make me your executor, and I do not ask you to make me your heir.' No wonder that estates went down like a row of bricks, one after another, when they had such managers. Had Jamaica been occupied at the time of emancipation by a resident proprietary, it is not likely that even they could have so far overcome their despotic habits and contempt for the negro as to treat the laboring population with fairness, and what they value still more, with decent respect. But still less could it be expected of the overseers that they would exercise foresight and self-control enough to retain the good will of the blacks. They had all the feelings of slaveholders, aggravated by more direct contact with the slaves, while their interest only bound them to make the most out of the estates during their own term of employment, no matter if they took a course that would ruin them eventually. Besides, an overseer must have been often tempted to work on the fears of a proprietor, just after emancipation, to persuade him to sell the estate to him; and many a one would not hesitate to ruin the property to bring down its price to his own means, knowing that the sale of the land or its conversion to pasturage would reimburse him.
The various means by which the planters endeavored to keep the negroes on the estates are too well known to require detail. Summary ejectments of the refractory from their dwellings, destruction of their provision grounds, refusal to sell them land except at exorbitant prices, were all tried. But there is too much land in Jamaica, and too few people, to make this game successful. There were abundance of thrown-up estates, and especially of coffee properties in the mountains, whose owners were only too glad to sell land at reasonable rates, and so this policy of coercion simply wrought out an incurable alienation between a large part of the proprietors and a large part of the peasantry. It must not be supposed, however, that the tyranny was all on one side. If at emancipation there was an unprincipled strife on the part of the planters to get the better of the negroes, there was an equally unprincipled and far more adroitly managed strife on the part of the negroes to get the better of the planters. Long and close observation of the emancipated black has satisfied the writer beyond all doubt that laziness is not one of his prominent faults. Negligent, unthrifty, careless of time, and sufficiently disposed to take his ease, he undoubtedly is. But every year of freedom has shown an advance, and the five years and a half of the writer's residence showed so unmistakable an advance in regular industry, carefulness of time, skill in laying out labor, and in the increase of the wants that stimulate industry, that his early misgivings as to the capacity and disposition of the freed negro to take care of himself were finally put to rest. But a disposition to take care of himself and a disposition to be faithful to the interests of others are two very different things. At emancipation, the negroes' stimulants to making money were very strong. In the first impulse of their zeal they were everywhere erecting chapels and schools, raising large sums for the support of their ministers and schoolmasters; they were everywhere building houses, buying land, and laying the foundation of that settled well-being which time has continually made firmer. Then, too, money was plentiful, sugar bore a high price, and, notwithstanding the churlishness of many planters,