THE FUTURE OF THE WEST INDIES.
THE West Indies, Anti-Slavery, Cheap Sugar—where will they be in a few years? Those phrases represent ideas now cur- rent; they have been plentifully used in the contests of faction —in the intrigues of politicians who made tools of the " enthu- siasm " and cant of the day; but the things that the words repre- sented, who cared for them ? Nobody in power, it seems. The phrases have served their turn, the course of humbug takes another direction, and the dream is almost over. The enthusiasm that has been cajoled may cool itself in the chills of mortified neglect, professional agitation may seek some more fashionable topics, the West Indies may be content to exemplify the decay of nations, and broad-brimmed philanthropy may leave off asking Exeter Hall whether the Negro is not a man and a brother. The West Indies are thrown into the lumber-room, with other appa- ratus of departed projects ; and the notion of establishing a com- mercial nation of free Blacks for the eventual emancipation of their race may be counted among obsolete romances.
Every one who has so far forgotten himself as to doze in com- pany knows the strange sound which the surrounding voices acquire—hollow, remote, and unreal : so sound the speeches in the late debates on the West India question—a drowsy semblance of discussion that pertains not to the dawning morrow nor to the real business of life. The day is gone when men really aspired to achieve the emancipation of the Negro race, or to found the emancipating empire in the West Indies. The West Indians, indeed, who are actually suffering, speak with the accents of living interest. But who responds to them ? Not official persons. Instead of applying themselves to the actual state of the West Indies, rival statesmen, like Lord Grey and Lord Stanley, are incriminating and recriminating about the legislation of 1846 and 1833; instead of combining to repair and compensate, they are squabbling over the idle retrospective question, who is to blame ? A few " measures" are propounded by the gentlemen in office, just to save appearances, until the West India question shall have blown over a little more ; and generalizing essays are welcomed as harmless and showy contributions to the counterfeit consultation.
It is a pity that the official indifference cannot at once be avowed. If it were to go forth, that the Emancipation expe- riment is abandoned—that the West Indies are no longer valued—that the maintenance of the sugar-supply in that quar- ter is no longer "an object "—there might be a chance for the Colonies. If they were simply cast off, left alone, and forgotten, they might be of use to somebody. They might take their own means to replenish their labour-market, to economize expendi- ture, and realize profits. But it is not so. The West Indies are remembered just enough to hold them to the subjection of alle • glance without its supports; their connexion with the mother- country is remembered so far as the bondage goes ; they are still to feel the privative part of the alliance. It needs no great gift of prophecy to obtain an insight into the
future of colonies so bound. While economists are arguing, prize_ essay fashion, on the comparative cheapness of free-labour and slave-labour, the West Indies are steadily and rapidly assuming the character which they will possess in the next stage of their existence. English economists have been looking for an English style of industry in a Tropical country : the expectation might have been fulfilled if the Tropical community had been placed in thoroughly English circumstances—with an English density of population, English vagrancy-laws, English capital protected by an English good faith in the fulfilment of contracts ; but not one of those circumstances has been secured to counteract the inevit- able tendencies of Tropical life. It may almost be said that pains have been taken to relieve labour from all incentives to indus- trious exertion.
Social theorists have recognized but three classes of such in- centives,—the lash of slavery, the pious good-will of cooperation, and the moral spur of competition for subsistence. Slavery we have abolished; Lord Grey and Lord John Russell would be the last men to inculcate the doctrines of Owen or Fourier ; and yet they have been active in preventing the growth of circumstances to bring about the third incentive. The consequence is, that the labouring classes of the West Indies are emancipated, not only from slavery but from industry. The "blessed change" foreseen by Lord John Russell has been completed, but in such fashion as it necessarily would be in a community so different from our own. The Negroes are a vigorous and lively race, prone to phy- sical enjoyment ; they are under a climate to them luxurious; they possess a fertile soil : existence is easy, pleasure to be had for nothing ; and if some vanity induced the labourer to exer- tion, in order to earn the means of dressing like a "gent," of keep- ing a gig, and living like an hotel-waiter, even that novelty has worn off. In all warm and fertile countries, the inhabitants are indolent, gay, and industrious only in holyday-making. Even so far North as Spain or Italy, the peasant plays at industry, and the year is a round of half-holydays—excepting an immense num- ber of whole holydays. So it is with the Black West Indians. Lord John Russell's blessed change" was to have established a thriving community of small traders and labourers at wages, such as we have in England ; but Lord John omitted the cir- cumstances of England, and the result is what we see—a fool's paradise of half-civilized Blacks, who have more wages than they need for a modicum of work, have no need for much trading, little regard for their own future interests, no consideration for the present credit of political economy. Eventually, such planters as remain will learn to fall in with the tumour of the good- natured Black children, and will turn work as much as possible into sport, like the agriculturist in Southern Europe—making periodical games as baits to the industry of the passing season. But what will become of the exportable produce—what of the commercial value of the colonies—what of their ties with Eng- land?
These questions point to the further future, distant, but scarcely out of sight. Worthless to us, neglected, inhabited by a race morally and politically feeble, the West Indies will be a prey to the strongest power of the Western region : on the first war they will fall into the hands of the United States, and then our painstaking process of destruction will be probably inverted : slavery may be reinstituted ; African immigration may be en- couraged, only not free ; free trade may impartially admit to our ports the slave-grown sugar of the newly "annexed" archipelago ; and the historian will moralize over the vain projects of emanci- pation which once engaged the fancy of the English people.
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