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

a good while after they
were their own masters. The short time, too, which the planters knew

they should have them at their control, naturally stimulated them to
make the most of them meanwhile. One gentleman in Metcalfe, for
instance, laid out a thousand acres of coffee on a newly enlarged
property, and gave orders to transfer a gang of negroes from an estate
of his some twelve miles distant. The negroes cling like oysters to their
birthplace, and they flatly refused to leave their grounds and their
friends. The master summoned policemen, and had them cruelly
flogged till they consented to go. Apprenticeship was abolished two
years earlier than he had reckoned on, and the laborers thus forcibly
transferred left him then in a body, and the thousand acres of coffee
went to ruin. Had some Trollope 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