The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 | Page 6

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 depopulation. But though
the waste of life was diminished, it still went on. Estate after estate had
to be given up for want of hands, at the same time that a constant
decrease in the price of sugar in London, amounting to fifty per cent
between 1815 and 1835, made it less and less profitable to work the
remaining ones, and thus the planters were going steadily to ruin and
the negro population steadily to extinction, for almost a generation
before emancipation. In a memorial of the planters to Parliament in
1831, three years before abolition, they declare that without
Parliamentary aid they are doomed to hopeless ruin. Already, they say,
hundreds of respectable persons had been reduced almost to beggary by
the precarious condition of the planting interest. In this memorial they
make no allusion to the anti-slavery agitations, which produced no
serious effect in the colony till 1832. Indeed the West Indian interest
had been a notorious mendicant of old, and as in time a large part of
West Indian estates had come to be owned by the British aristocracy,
this begging was not apt to be in vain. Could Creole thriftlessness have
been abolished and the slave trade retained, the ruin of the estates might
have been averted. But as human power was not adequate to the first,
nor Christian conscience capable of the second, no course was left but
to let planting prosperity go its own way to destruction, and endeavor at
least to save the population of the island from extermination. This

emancipation effected, and this was its work. If it hastened the ruin of
an interest which not even Parliamentary subsidies and high protective
duties could prop up without the horrors of the middle passage, its
trespass was certainly a very venial one compared with its work of
salvation. Undoubtedly the great transition from slavery to freedom
might have been better managed had the planters, recognizing it as
inevitable, concurred heartily in efforts to smoothe the passage. The
emancipationists in Parliament had at first no thought of immediate or
even of speedy abolition. They did not suppose it wise or humane.
Their first efforts merely contemplated such ameliorations of the
condition of the slaves as common decency and humanity would
prompt. They brought the Imperial Government to propose to the
slaveholding colonies the enactment of laws abolishing the flogging of
females, mitigating punishments, allowing the slaves to testify in court
in cases to which whites were parties, providing for their religious
instruction, appointing guardians of their scanty rights, giving them one
week day for themselves, and restricting arbitrary sales of slaves. Not
one of the colonies would agree to a single one of these measures. That
peculiar obstinacy which slaveholding dominion seems to engender,
made them, as with us, bent on having all or nothing. All hopes of
instituting a gradual preparation for freedom being thus defeated by the
stubborn refusal of the slaveholders to concur, speedy emancipation
became a necessity. But even yet the abolitionists had not learned that
if slaves are to be set free from their masters, the more quickly they are
put out of their hands the better. A muzzled wolf, appointed to keep
sheep he would much rather eat, would make about as amiable a
custodian as masters allowed to exercise a limited authority over
bondmen whom they have hitherto always had at their own will, and
know they are about to lose altogether. I think it is generally agreed that
the few years of apprenticeship were more plague than profit to all
parties, and made the alienation between proprietors and laborers still
more complete. At the same time, as the hours of labor were limited to
eight, and Saturday was secured to the apprentices for themselves, the
negroes fell into a way of thinking that they could only work those
eight hours anyhow, and must have an idle time on the Saturday; and
this notion continued to foster indolence for