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

they might have
neighborhood mills and sugar works of the best quality at much less
expense, now, where the small settlers raise the cane, each man must
have his little mill and boilers to himself, at all the extra cost of money
and labor that it occasions. And so of savings banks and associations
for procuring medical aid, and a thousand other objects of public utility,
without which a people must remain in the rudest state. Fortunately,
however, the negro is strongly disposed to worship, and the church, that
society out of which a thousand other societies have sprung, has a
strong hold upon him. Under the shelter of that, many other beneficent
associations will doubtless grow up.
But if rose-colored accounts of the freed negro are to be dismissed
unceremoniously, on the other hand, the malignant representations
which Mr. Carlyle seems to find such a relish in believing deserve to be
branded as both false and wicked. His mythical negro, up to the ears in
'pumpkin,' working half an hour a day, and not to be tempted by love or
money to work more, would have been, during my whole residence in
the island, as great a curiosity to me as an ornithorhynchus. Doubtless
something approaching to the phenomenon can be found; for a young
Scotchman, a friend of mine, who was appointed to take the census of a
secluded district, came to me after visiting it, and gave me an account
of the people he had found in the bush, answering pretty nearly to Mr.
Carlyle's description. But though he had been in the island from a boy,
he spoke of it with something of the surprise attending a new discovery.
I should state, however, that my residence was in a district mostly
occupied by small freeholders, and containing but few estates. In
planting districts the number of worthless, idle negroes is much larger.
I have been assured that the negroes of the parish of Vere are peculiarly
so. The men, I have been told, do scarcely any work, except in crop

time; the women do none at all, not even to keep their houses neat.
There is scarcely a cottage in the parish that has a bread-fruit or a
cocoanut tree on its ground.[3] Everything is dirty and forlorn. On the
other hand, in Metcalfe and the adjoining parts of St. Andrew, and St.
Thomas in the Vale, although the mass of the working people have
certainly not learned much about comfort yet, still the number of neat,
floored, and glazed houses, the fruit trees on almost every negro plot,
the neat hibiscus hedges, with their gay red flowers, surrounding even
the poorer huts, the small cane fields and coffee pieces noticeable at
every turn, and the absence of loungers about the cottages, go to make
up a very different picture from what has been drawn of Vere. It is
plain, then, that the impressions which travellers bring away with them
from Jamaica will vary almost to entire opposition, according to the
quarters they have visited. Now what is the cause of these glaring
contrasts? The negro character is remarkably uniform. If there are great
differences among them, every one that knows them will ascribe it to a
difference in circumstances. What is the difference then between
Metcalfe and Vere? Simply this: Metcalfe is the home of small
freeholders; Vere is a sugar parish, where the estates are in prosperous
activity. It has been less affected by emancipation than any other parish.
In Metcalfe the negroes are independent; in Vere they are completely
subject to the planters. It is said that not even an ounce of sugar is
permitted to be sold in the parish. All is for exportation. If the writer
then attempts to vindicate the character of the blacks from the
reproaches of incurable laziness and unthriftiness that have been cast
upon it, he wishes it to be understood that he speaks only for the
freeholders, who have homes of their own, which they have an
inducement to improve and beautify, and who have land of their own
which no dishonest motive prompts them to neglect, and for the estate
laborers whose condition most nearly resembles theirs. If the blacks on
many plantations are little disposed to adorn homes from which they
may be ejected at any time; if they are discouraged from the minor
industries essential to comfort, lest these should interfere with the
grosser labor required of them; if they are kept idle out of crop time for
fear they should not be available in crop time; if their mental
improvement is discouraged by the planter instinct, unchanged in
nature though circumscribed in scope; if on many estates they are

herded in barracks whose promiscuous life debases still lower their
already low morality; if their