The Anti-Slavery Examiner Volume II Part 54

FIRST OF AUGUST.

"It gives us great pleasure to state that, so far as our information from the country extends, this day was observed in a manner highly creditable to our brethren. We never ourselves antic.i.p.ated any riotings or disorder on the part of the emanc.i.p.ated. A little exhilaration begetting a shout or two, would not have surprised us; but even this, we are happy to say, made no part of their manifestation of joy. The day was spent in quiet piety! In heartfelt, soul overflowing grat.i.tude to their heavenly Father, whose divine agency had raised up friends in their necessity, and brought their great tribulation to an end, they crowded at an early hour to the several churches and chapels, in which their numbers could scarcely find turning room, and then quietly and devoutly poured forth their souls in prayer and praise and thanksgiving!

No revellings, no riotings, no drunkenness, desecrated this day. We have heard from five parishes, and in none of the five have we heard of a single convivial meeting. From church and chapel they went to their homes, and eat their first free dinner with their families, putting to shame the intolerant prejudices which had prepared powder and b.a.l.l.s, and held the Riot Act in readiness to correct their insubordinate notions of liberty!"

From the New Haven, Ct., Herald.

_"Barbados, Aug. 2, 1838_

Yesterday's sun rose upon eight hundred thousand freemen, on whom and their ancestors the badge of slavery had rested for two hundred years. It was a solemn, delightful, most memorable day. I look upon it as a matter of exceeding thankfulness, that I have been permitted to be a witness to it, and to be able to speak from experience and from observation, of the happiness to which that day has given birth. The day had previously been set apart by proclamation of the Governor, "as a day of devout thanksgiving and praise to Almighty G.o.d for the happy termination of slavery." The thanksgiving and praise were most truly sincere, heartfelt and general. It was an emanc.i.p.ation not merely of the slave but of the proprietor. It was felt as such; openly acknowledged and rejoiced in as such. Never have I witnessed more apparently unfeigned expressions of satisfaction than were made on that day by the former owners of slaves, at the load of which they had been relieved.

I do not wish to be understood as a.s.serting that previous to the working of emanc.i.p.ation, the slave proprietors wished the abolition of slavery. Far from it. But having, though unwillingly, been made witnesses of the operations of freedom; and having themselves tasted of the previously unknown satisfaction of employing voluntary and contented, because _free_ laborers; their minds became enlightened, softened, changed: and from being the determined opposers, they became themselves the _authors_ of complete emanc.i.p.ation. I know not in what terms to describe to you the emotions excited by pa.s.sing through the streets of this populous town on that memorable morning.

There was a stillness and solemnity that might be felt. It was caused by no display of force, for none was to be seen. Here and there a policeman going his usual rounds, but not a soldier, nor the slightest warlike preparation of any kind to strike the eye, or overawe the spirit of disorder.

The spirit that seemed to fill the entire population was eminently the spirit of peace, good will, thankfulness and joy too deep, too solemn, to allow of any loud or noisy demonstration of it. Of course, all stores, shops and offices of every kind were closed. So also were all places of amus.e.m.e.nt. No sound of revelry, no evidences of nightly excess were to be heard or seen. I do not say too much when I a.s.sert that the reign of order, peace, and sobriety, was complete.

To give eclat to an event of such importance, the Governor had ordered one company of militia to attend with him at the cathedral.

It is an immense building, and was crowded in every part of its s.p.a.cious area, galleries and aisles, with a most attentive a.s.semblage of people, of all colors and conditions. Several clergymen officiated, and one of them at the opening of the services read most appropriately the 58th chapter of Isaiah. Imagine for a moment the effect in such an audience, on such an occasion, where were many hundreds of emanc.i.p.ated slaves, of words like these:--"Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?" The sermon by the Bishop was, as might have been expected on such an occasion, interesting and impressive. He spoke with great effect of the unexpected progress of freedom, from island to island, from colony to colony, until, with a solitary exception, upon that day the stain of slavery was obliterated forever from every British possession. The progress of education, the gradual reformation of morals, and the increasing thirst for religious instruction, were all dwelt upon with great force, and the glory of all ascribed, as was most fit, to the Great Giver of every good and perfect gift. It was an occasion rich with happy emotions, and long to be remembered as a bright and beautiful spot in the pathway of our earthly pilgrimage.

The close of the day was not less auspicious than its commencement.

In company with Mrs. H., I drove through several of the princ.i.p.al streets, and thence through the most public thoroughfare into the country; and no where could aught be seen to mar the decent and truly impressive solemnity of the day. There were no dances, no merry-making of any sort; not a solitary drunkard, not a gun fired, nor even was a shout heard to welcome in the newborn liberty. The only groups we saw were going to or returning from the different chapels and churches: except in a few instances, where families might be seen reading or singing hymns at their own dwellings.

And now, sir, having arrived at the long looked for consummation of all the labors and prayers of the friends of the slave for so many years, as I cast my eye around this _land of liberty_, how many thoughts crowd my mind? I ask myself--is it indeed finished? And are there none to lament the downfall of time-honored, h.o.a.ry-headed slavery? Where are the mourners? Where are the prognosticators of ruin, desolation, and woe? Where are the riots and disorders, the bloodshed and the burnings? The prophets and their prophecies are alike empty, vain, and unfounded, and are alike buried in oblivion.

And why, in the name of humanity, was not this glorious consummation brought about ages ago?--Is it because the slaves of 1838 are better fitted for freedom than those of fifty or a hundred years since? No one believes it. The only preparation for freedom required in this island, or any where else, in order to put a peaceful end to slavery, is the preparation of heart in the slaveholder to grant deliverance to the captive.

Yours truly,

WM. R. HAYES

P.S. August 9th.--All is quiet, and the utmost good order every where prevails."

To complete the picture we will give two extracts of letters from eminent Jamaica Attornies to their employers in England, with regard to the turning out to work. It is remarked by the English papers that the Attornies generally in writing to their employers adopt the same strain.

They are all doing well on _their_ estates, but hear that the rest of the island is in a woful condition.--These are the men who are the greatest, if not the only, losers by emanc.i.p.ation; hence their testimony is doubly valuable.

From the British Emanc.i.p.ator, Nov. 14.

LETTERS FROM ATTORNIES.

_Extract of a Letter from an eminent Estate Attorney, in St. Mary's, Jamaica, dated August_ 24, 1838.

"There was nothing whatever done in this parish, or throughout the island, for the first two weeks of the month. In this quarter some estates did a little last week, and have been making more progress since, but the far greater number have not yet done any work; the minds of the people are very unsettled, and full of all sorts of foolish notions, which will continue more or less till we hear of the home government having accepted and approved of our abolition bill, and their views with regard to us.

On several of the estates which have wrought, the people have struck once or twice. We have in this parish ministers of every denomination, and they are all acting very properly; but they do not seem to have as much influence as expected; we must _be as considerate and liberal as possible to secure their confidence_ ourselves. We are in St. Mary's paying the highest rate of wages in the island; 1s. 8d. currency per day nett, with allowances, are generally offered; I am giving here, from sheer necessity, 2s. 6d.

currency per day, without charging any rent in the mean time. In the present state of things when so few estates are doing anything at all, I have much satisfaction in saying that the people here, on ----, a good proportion of them were at work last week, and I have now the mill about making sugar, with every probability, I think of going on satisfactorily; and looking dispa.s.sionately at the great change which has so suddenly taken place, our present difficulties are not much to be wondered at.

Sunday night, 8th Sept.--The foregoing was written, but too late, for the last packet; but as another sails to-morrow, I write you a few lines more. There is, up to this moment, but little material alteration in the state of affairs generally, certainly none for the worse. I have made here twenty hogsheads of sugar since the 1st ult.

We are altogether in an uncertain state, but there are more mills about, and more work doing _in this district than in any other in the island_, which might and ought to be a feather in the cap of Maitter, our late stipe. I have no time to say more now, excepting that, although I am in great hopes that things will soon generally improve, and am of opinion that our present difficulties are not to be wondered at, yet our situation is still so critical, that I dare not venture to hazard an opinion as to the success of the great experiment, I repeat, however, again, that we have not seen anything to disappoint or surprise us, bad as many things are."

_Extract of a Letter from an Attorney in St. Mary's, Jamaica, 24th August_, 1838

"The services of the stipes are much wanting here; I am paying 10s. a week for first cla.s.s, 6s. 8d. for second, and 4s. 2d. for third, for five days work; they say they will not work on Fridays. However, I have got people at ---- to work today; they are behaving better than most others. I hope things will now improve; and it is my opinion that good estates will do, and others will fall to the ground. Old Mr. Tytte is dead, and his son Alexander made stipe for the district. The Governor's speech respecting women has done a great deal of harm. None of the women want to work. If Lord Glenelg had made such a mistake, he would have heard enough of it. I wish the Government would take it on themselves to settle the rate of wages, otherwise two-thirds of the estates will be thrown up before next year; of course I can stand this as well as any.

The ---- people have behaved well: they did every thing I told them; they are working on piece-work, which is the best plan."

Precisely similar is the testimony of private correspondents and of the public press so far as we have been able to learn, in all the other colonies where emanc.i.p.ation has taken place. There is certainly nothing in all this that indicates a disposition on the part of the emanc.i.p.ated to throw off the employment of their former masters, but much the reverse. We may safely challenge contradiction to the a.s.sertion, that at the expiration of the jubilee there were not a set of free laborers on earth from whom the West India planters could have got more work for the same money. It may be proper in these days, when the maxims of slavery have so fearfully overshadowed the rights of man, to say that a man has a _right_ to forbear laboring when he can live honestly without it--or, at all events, he has a right to choose whether he will employ himself or be employed by another. Hence it _may_ turn out that the refusal to labor, so far as there has been any, only serves to prove the more clearly the fitness of the laborers of freedom.

WAGES

It must have been obvious to every man of reflection that in a change so vast, involving so many laborers, and in circ.u.mstances so various, there would arise almost infinite disputes about the rate of wages. The colonies differ widely as to the real value of labor. Some have a rich, unexhausted, and, perhaps, inexhaustible soil, and a scanty supply of laborers. Others are more populous and less fertile. The former would of course offer higher wages than the latter, for so sudden was the step there could be no common understanding on the point. Again, as we have seen, the planters came into the measure with different views. Some antic.i.p.ated the general change, and either from motives of humanity or policy, or more probably of both, adopted a course calculated to gain the grat.i.tude and good will of the laborer.--These would offer wages which the less liberal would call ruinous. Many, and it would seem the great body of them in Jamaica, yielded unwillingly to superior power.

They saw the sceptre of despotic authority was to be wrested from their grasp. They threw it down, as one may easily believe, resolved to seize the best subst.i.tute they could. They would infallibly fall upon the plan of getting the greatest possible amount of work for the least possible amount of pay. When we consider that even in the oldest, most civilized, and most Christianized free-labor communities, employers are wont to combine to keep down the rate of wages, while on the other hand the laborers throw up work to raise it, we shall not be surprised that there should be things of this sort in Jamaica, liberty being in the gristle.

The only help for such an evil is, that there is always a rate of wages which is advantageous to both parties, and things being left to themselves, it will at last be found.

To the planters and freed-men in settling the question what wages they should offer and receive, two standards or guides presented themselves,--1. The rate of wages which had been given in Antigua since 1834. 2. The compensation that had been demanded by the Jamaica planters themselves, and adjudged by the magistrates, in case of apprentices buying their own time. Hundreds of planters had declared upon oath what the time of the apprentice was worth to them. Possibly as sellers, in the elasticity of their consciences, they may have set a higher price than they would be willing to give as buyers. In strict honesty, however, it is difficult to see why labor should not be worth to them as much in the one case as the other. The rate of wages fixed upon in Antigua may be seen by a reference to the Journal of Thome and Kimball to be very inadequate to the wants of the laborer. Free labor is there screwed down to the lowest possible point. The wonder is that the laborers should have submitted to such a scale for a moment. But they had no precedent to guide them, no advisers free from the yoke of the proprietary, no valuations given by their own masters, and there was every facility for successful combination on the part of the masters.

They must work for such wages as the masters pleased to offer, or starve.

Say Messrs. Thome and Kimball--"_By a general understanding among the planters_, the rate is at present fixed at a _shilling_ per day, or a little more than fifty cents per week, counting five working days." This Antigua scale, and not the one they themselves had sold labor by during the apprenticeship, became at once the favorite with a great part of the Jamaica and Barbados planters. If they in any cases offered higher wages, they made it up by charging higher rent for the houses and grounds, which the negroes had built and brought under culture on their properties. It was before the first of August that this procedure was resolved upon by the planters, as we gather from numerous communications in the papers recommending a variety of modes of getting labor for less than its natural market value. We select a single one of these as a specimen, by the application to which of a little arithmetic, it will be perceived that the employer would _bring the laborer in debt_ to him at the end of the year, though not a moment should be lost by sickness or other casualty. The humanity of the doc.u.ment is perfectly of a piece with that of the system which would civilize mankind by making merchandize of them.

To the Editor of the Morning journal.

SIR,--Let meetings be held, not only in every parish, but in every district of a parish, and let all land-owners, &c., agree not to rent land under 8[A] per acre, and not to sell it for less than double that sum. Should a few be found regardless of the _general weal_, let the proprietary, &c. join and purchase such lands, and if otherwise, it is presumed the dissentients to the measure would be so small as not to affect in any material degree the _general_ interest, inasmuch as those who dissented, from the consequent scarcity of land arising from the measure, would demand a high rental for their land. The _maximum_ system appears to be preferable to the _minimum_. I have therefore made choice of it as a stimulus to the laborers to work _at least_ four days or thirty-six hours in the week to pay for their rent, &c. &c., _or pay 2s.

1d. for every day's absence_; or, if sick, pay up the labor by working on the Friday, &c., _and Sat.u.r.day, if needful_. Weekly settlements with both parties, or _immediate summary ejectment_, if deemed necessary.

[Footnote A: The sums are in the currency of the islands when not otherwise specified, that is 7s 6d to the dollar.]

s. d.

Rent of 2 acres of land as a ground for each able adult, at 5 per acre 10 0 0 Do. of house and garden, from 4 to 10 per annum, say 6 0 0 _Medical attendance, medicine, &c. &c., worth 4 per annum_ 4 0 0 Clothing and Christmas allowance per annum 1 13 4 ---------- 21 13 4 ----------

Four days' or 36 hours' labor in each week, at 2s. 1d. per day, or 208 days, at 2s. 1d. 21 13 4 If task-work were adopted, or the day's labor prolonged to 10-1/2 or 12 hours'

labor, 3 days' or 3-1/2 days' labor _would suffice_, consequently, the laborer would have 2 or 3 days in each week to work for extra wages.

In addition to the above, say pasturage for a horse, at 4s. 2d. per week per annum 10 16 8 Pasturage for an a.s.s, at 2s. 1d. per week per annum 5 6 4 _Run of pasturage and fruit, for a sow, barrow, or sholt_; IF RUNG IN THE NOSE, 10_d. per week_; IF NOT RUNG, 1_s._ 8_d. per week; per annum, at 10d. per week_ 2 3 4

The above charges for pasturage might be paid for either _by additional labor_ or in money, and to a good head-man they might be granted as a gratuity, and perhaps an additional acre of land allowed him to cultivate. It would be desirable that the negroes should, when quite free, work 11 hours per day in the short days, and 12 hours in the longer ones. I believe the shortest day's labor in England in the winter months in 10 hours' actual labor, and 12 hours' in the summer, for which 2 hours they are paid extra wages.

_St. Mary's, 8th June, 1838_. S.R.

The date should not escape notice. By this plan, for a few petty indulgences, _all of which were professedly granted in the time of slavery itself_, the master could get the entire labor of the negro, and _seven or eight pounds per annum besides_! Some may be disposed to regard this as a mere joke, but we can a.s.sure them it was a serious proposal, and not more monstrous than many things that the planters are now attempting to put in practice. The idea of actually paying money wages was horrifying and intolerable to many of the planters; they seem to have exercised their utmost ingenuity to provide against so dreadful a result. One who signed himself an "Old Planter" in the _Despatch_, before the abolition of the apprenticeship, in view of the emanc.i.p.ation of the non-praedials which was to take place on the first of August, gravely wrote as follows:--

"It is my intention, therefore, when the period arrives for any arrangement with them, to offer them in return for such services, _the same time as the praedials now have_, with of course the same allowances generally, putting out of the question, however, any relaxation from labor during the day, usually allowed field laborers, and understood as sh.e.l.l-blow--house people being considered at all times capable of enjoying that indulgence at their pleasure, besides the impossibility of their master submitting to such an inconvenience.--This appears to me to be the only mode of arrangement that would be feasible, unless we resort to money wages, and I should regret to find that such a precedent was established in this instance, for it would only be a forerunner to similar demands at the coming period, when the praedials became free."

There were more reasons than one why "money wages" were feared by the Jamaica planters. A great many estates are managed by attorneys for absentee proprietors. These gentlemen pocket certain commissions, for which reason they keep in cultivation estates which cannot possibly yield a profit under a system of paid labor. They deem it for their interest to retain their occupation even at the expense of their employers. Not a few conceive it for their interest to depreciate the value of property that they may purchase low, hence they deem it good policy to refuse wages, let the crops perish, and get up a panic. The doc.u.ments we shall furnish will be clear on these points. The great diversity of practice in the planters in regard to wages, as well as the reasonable disposition of the laborers, is shown by the following paragraphs culled from the _Morning Journal_ of August 10:--

"ST. DAVIDS.--A gentleman in the management of a property in this parish, writes in the following strain to his employer--"I have an accession of strength this morning. The people are civil and industrious. I have received letters a.s.suring me that the example of the Cocoa Walt estate people, has been the means of inducing those on other estates to enter into the terms proposed"--that is 5s. per week, with houses, grounds, medicines, &c, &c."

"St. Thomas in the East.--The apprentices on Golden Grove Estate, turned out to work on Monday, but we have not learnt on what terms. At Mount Vernon, the property of Kenneth McPherson Esq., they turned out on Tuesday morning to work for five days in the week, at 10d. per day with houses, grounds, &c."

"Trelawny--A correspondent writes, every thing is quiet, and the people would go to work if any bargains were made, but I believe throughout the parish the people were directed to go to work on Monday morning, without any previous arrangement, or being even told how much they would be paid, or asked what they expected. On one estate 1s. 8d. with houses and grounds was offered and refused. Some of the masters are determined, it is said, to hold out, and will not consent to give more than 1s. 3d. or 1s. 8d. per day."

"St. Johns.--The people in this parish are at work on most of the estates without any agreement. They refuse the offer of 1s. 01-2d. per day, but continue to labor, relying on the honor and liberality of the planters for fair and reasonable pay. If they do not get these in two weeks, our correspondent writes, there will be a dead stop. The laborers fix the quant.i.ty of work to be done in a day, agreeable to the scale of labor approved of by the Governor during the apprenticeship. For any thing beyond that, they demand extra pay, as was usual under that system."

"St. Thomas in the Vale--No work, we understand, is being done in this parish as yet. A correspondent states that some of the overseers and attorneys wish the people to turn out to work without entering into any arrangements, which they refuse to do. The attorney for Rose Hall, Knollis, New Works, and Wallace Estates has offered 1s. 3d. per day, out of which 5 per annum is to be deducted for houses and grounds. The offer has been refused. The overseer of Byndloss estate required his people to work without agreeing as to the rate of wages they were to receive, but they refused to do any thing without a proper agreement."