THE WEST INDIA QUESTION.
Ir.
For several years past great efforts have been made to supply to the West Indies the one element of strength and prosperity which they want, and from the want of which all their other blessings are to them so many curses. For the more teeming the soil, the more genial the sky, the less will a scanty population be prone to create for themselves comfort and prosperity by strenuous and permanent exertion. Canada, with her long winters of deep snow, frozen rivers and icebound harbours; and with her thousands and thousands of miles of forest land, will always have her popu- lation, however sparse, congregated in a few moderately cultivated districts. In Jamaica, Demerara, or Trinidad, a people of simple tastes and few wants can go and settle anywhere. Nature there is so bountiful, that man can do and thrive without the cooperation and assistance of his fellowman. Hence, at an early hour after the emancipation of our slaves, the more elearsighted and provident among our statesmen felt that immigration was the one, the only means by which the West Indies would be saved from that curse of physical abundance and moral starvation, from that surfeit of
• the coarsest material enjoyments, and that dearth of all the civilizing and humanizing influences, which has engulphed and proved the bane of many of the most beautiful and fertile countries. The remedy of immigration, resorted to from the first, was from the first pertinaciously opposed by the leading members of the Anti-Slavery Society. In how far these persons can be made answerable for the false and fatal leaning given to some attempts at immigration, it is not for me to decide. Enough, that in many eases, more especially at first, the supply of labour to the West Indies was grossly mismanaged. The opinion prevailed that many of our poor could better themselves if they were transferred to Jamaica and other islands, and it was asserted that the natives of colder countries might live and thrive in the West Indies. Those who made this assertion forgot to tack to it the con- ditions of frugality and temperance. I borrow the record of the transaction from one of the familiars of New Broad Street, from the Reverend William Garland Barrett, whose pamphlet against immigration has for many months been recommended by the official organ of an association which boasts of the management of such men as the Fenders, Mr. Joseph Cooper, Mr. F. W. Harris, and Mr. Charles Gilpin, M.P.
After stating that in Jamaica the first supply of immigrants was obtained from Great Britain, Mr. Barrett says, "4000 English, Irish, and Scotch, in most cases the refuse of our workhouses were brought to Jamaica, at an ex- pense of nearly 50,0001., and none of whom, we believe, ever lived to return home, the greater part dying off like rotten sheep." It is worth while to examine the grievance thus ostentatiously put forward by Mr. Barrett. Four thousand people were sacrificed to the demands of the landed pro- prietors of Jamaica, and of these 4000 unfortunates, scarcely any lived to return to England. Shocking, no doubt. But may there not be a per contra ..grievance on the part of the planters who paid 50,0001. for the introduction of these people ? These planters asked, these planters paid the passage- money fbr able-bodied, steady, industrious labourers, and by some means, which Mr. Barrett does not condescend to explain, somebody furnished them with the "refuse of our workhouses," Intemperance is the besetting sin of numbers among the working-classes in this country ; it is the sin which most efficiently and permanently recruitsour workhouses. With the ex- ception of a few broken-backed and broken-winded superannuated labourers, "the refuse of our workhouses," will be found to consist of incorrigible drunkards. In this country and climate, the bottle-imp leads men to the workhouse ; in the West Indies, it leads them to the grave. Rum is compara- tively cheap in the countries where it is made, and new rum is by far a more active poison than old rum. Any one who considers these facts, any one who reflects on the broken constitutions of our confirmed paupers, on the effect of a tropical sun and.of tropical fruits, of new rum, and the drunkard's bed, in the midst of luxuriant and malaria exhaling vegetation,will soon understand why the white labourers from our poorhouses came to grief in Jamaica. And possibly such a reflecting person—unless he be affiliated to the Anti-Slavery Society—may gradually become convinced, that the poor immigrants were not the only sufferers by this transaction. The Jamaica planters advanced the passage-money for men who were fit to live, able to work, and likely to prosper, for nothing short of the addition to the population of such men would ever repay the outlay. Somebody, or some body of men sent them drunkards, "who died off like rotten. sheep." Who suggested the sending out of these men ? Who selected them ? Who were the shipowners that conveyed. this doomed band to the land of pineapples and new rum ? I doubt whether the intrepid Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society will stand forth to answer these questions.
Immigrants have also been obtained from Madeira, from Africa, and from China. The immigration of Portuguese front Madeira has been objected to on the ground that the creoles in the West Indies are unsettled by the pre- sence among them of Roman Catholic settlers, and that they are scandalised. by the lax observance of Sunday on the part of those Catholics. So painful and harassing, did these grievances become, that, on more than one °era- sion, the exasperated feelings of the creole population vented themselves in riots. They attacked the Portuguese, plundered their shops, and destroyed their chapels, thus throwing a heavy burden of indemnity payments on the
colonies which the scenes of these outbreaks of sectarian fervour. I state, but do not comment upon, facts which are known everywhere, except in New Broad Street. Possibly we have no right to scandalize the poor creoles by the presence among them of people whose religion permits them to work sometimes-on Sundays and always on Saturdays ; who adore images of wood and atone, and who keep their highest festival on Corpus Christi day, some time in June or July. But then, for the sake of justice, let us cease to censure the intolerance of the Portuguese, who object to the settle- ment of Protestants in their colonies, and who cannot be reconciled to our ways, because we are strict ghservers of the Sunday, because we see nothing to adore in images, and bedkuse scarcely any of us know even the date of Corpus Christi day. " At a very early period," says a late historian of the Scotch Church, " men found out that others did wrong to persecute them ; but it has taken thousands of yeara to make people generally understand that it is wrong to persecute others." It appears to me that this under- standing is as yet far from general among the men who have the spiritual direction of our West Indian creoles.
The immigration of Negroes from the coast of Africa has likewise been at- tempted, but a variety of motives combined to discourage its promoters. It appears that, having liberated the West Indian creoles, we are bound to con- sult their likings and dislikings, their sympathies and antipathies, and even their prejudices, in and above all things ; and it is alleged—whether truly or falsely it is not for me to say—that the creoles have a great aversion to their poor relations from Africa. It is moreover asserted that the class of Africans who might be induced to emigrate are all owned by somebody in their own country ; that the middle and lower classes of the Negroes are the property of their chiefs; that even if willing to go, they cannot be taken on board ship without some sort of consideration to their owners, and that every attempt to people our colonies with emigrants from Africa, is neither more nor less than an attempt to revive the slave-trade. Even ad- mitting, that there is some slight difference between buying people into . slavery and buying them into freedom, this argument about the revival of the slave-trade must atop all endeavours to procure negro emigrants from Africa. Owing to the perverted action of the Anti-Slavery Society, the slave-trade is already flourishing to a degree which threatens to rival the extent and which certainly exceeds the horrors of that traffic in former days. We keep up squadron, and we sacrifice annually large numbers of men, and still larger sums of money, in our futile attempts to stop a traffic which we encourage by the studied neglect of our colonies and by our enormous and ever-increasing demand for slave-grown produce. The prosperity—ay the very existence of one-third of our manufacturing popu- lation is built on the foundation of slavery, and were it possible for our African squadron to stop the slave-trade for a couple ofyears only, the consequences of that success would be most painfully felt in Bri- tish harbours, in British mills, and in British cottages. But such a success is not likely to overwhelm this country ; under existing arrangements, at least, the shadow of such a triumph of principle need not darken the existence of our factory workers. The whole coast of Africa is lined with American slavers ; the profits of the traffic and the means those profits procure of doing good in a thousand ways, are sufficiently large to tempt even eminent philanthropists; as many negroes as are wanted by the slave-holding countries, are readily forthcoming, and if double the number were required tomorrow, the supply would keep pace with the demand. So long as our necessities compel us to bid high for slave-grown cotton ; so long as slave- grown sugar is sweet to our palates and profitable to our merchants, so long in fact as we pay for the slaves so long will the slaves be forthcoming, and all we can do by restrictive measures is to aggravate the horrors of the traffic and add to the number of its victims. Since, then, we are accessories to the crime of slavery in every quarter of the globe, it is at least prudent to ab- stain from every measure, no matter how innocent in itself, which might tend to impress the African chiefs with the conviction that England connives at or participates in the sale of human beings. African immigration to the West Indies has long been confined to the establishment in several of the colonies, of a small number of wretched and half-starved Negroes, whom our cruisers now and then succeed in rescuing from captured slave-ships. The emigration of British subjects from the East Indies to the islands and the continent of the West is in every respect most desirable, and, perhaps, for that very reason, it has been most vehemently resisted by the Anti-Slavery Society. No other sort of immigration has so pertina- ciously been misrepresented ; against none have the conspirators of New Broad Street so zealously petitioned, memorialized, and agitated. In no one case have they raised a louder outcry that the assisted immigration of labourers into the West Indies is a revival of the slave-trade. It is much to be regretted that certain occurrences and indiscretions of late have given a semblance of truth to this audacious calumny. The planters of St. Lucia having made a demand for a certain number of Indian labourerst that number of men was engaged and sent out by the emigration agent in one
of the Indian ports. Befpre these labourers could be landed, Mr. Francis Hineks, the Governor of Barbadoes, who isalsq Governor of St. Lucia and other islands, decided that the planters did not require the services of .these emigrants, and he forthwith addressed a circular to the other West Indian colonies, offering the cargo of Indians to any colony that would pay the highest price for. them. What is to be said of a British governor who offers. to sell a number of British subject, to the highest bidder, and who compels people who had agreed to go to St. Lucia, and who possibly had some good reason for selecting that island, to go to Trinidad or Jamaica? This proceeding of Mr. Hineks' is certainly a revival of the slave-trade ; but let me say, it is a flagrant and shameless violation of the regulations laid down by Government for the safety and protection 'of emigrants. I should also add, that such a case has never before occurred, and that by the mixed efforts of Lord Brougham, and of Mr. Buxton and Mr. Gilpin, swill an example is sure to be made of the offender as will effectively pre- vent its recurrence. It is now some weeks since the first news of Mr. Hincke attempt to sell British subjects by auction reached this country, and up to this moment our most zealous philanthropists have been silent. Are we to presume that exoessive indignation chokes their utterance ?
OTTO WENESTEItN.
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