Notwithstanding the connexion between our colonies and the mother-country, the instruments proper for some of the most common branches of labour are little known in many parts of the West Indies.In Jamaica the digging of a grave gives full employment to two men for a whole day; as from the want of proper tools it is necessary to make a large hole no way adapted to the human figure.I am informed, that, unless it has been procured very lately, there is hardly a spade in the whole island.In procuring firewood for boiling sugar, etc., a work that takes up about five or six weeks yearly, no use is made of the saw, but the trees are cut with an axe into logs of about 30 inches in length.Instead of a flail the negroes make use of a single stick in threshing the Guinea-corn; so that in this and in winnowing, ten women are capable of doing no more work in a day, than, with our instruments and machinery, two men would perform in two hours.From the want of a scythe or sickle, they are obliged every night to cut with a knife, or pull with their hands, a quantity of grass sufficient to serve their horses, mules, and black cattle.(20*)With regard to the planting of sugar, experiments have been made, in some of the islands, from which it appears that, in this species of cultivation, cattle might be employed with advantage, and that the number of slaves might be greatly diminished.(21*)But these experiments have been little regarded, in opposition to the former usage, and in opposition to a lucrative branch of trade which this innovation would in a great measure destroy.
At any rate, the interest of our colonies seems to demand that the negroes should be better treated, and even that they should be raised to a better condition.The author of a late elegant account of our American settlements has proposed, that small wages should be given them as an encouragement to industry.
If this measure were once begun, it is probable that it would gradually be pushed to a greater extent; as the master would soon find the advantage of proportioning the wages of the slaves to the work which they performed.It is astonishing that so little attention has hitherto been paid to any improvements of this nature, after the good effects of them have been so fully illustrated in the case of the villains in Europe.The owner of a sugar or tobacco plantation, one would think, might easily estimate the average value of the crop which it had formerly yielded, and could run no hazard, whatever profit he might reap, by allowing the people employed in the cultivation to draw a share of any additional produce obtained by their labour and frugality.
It affords a curious spectacle to observe that the same people who talk in a high strain of political liberty, and who consider the privilege of imposing their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights of mankind, should make no scruple of reducing a great proportion of their fellow-creatures into circumstances by which they are not only deprived of property, but almost of every species of right.Fortune perhaps never produced a situation more calculated to ridicule a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the conduct of men is at the bottom directed by any philosophical principles.
In those provinces, however, of North America, where few slaves have ever been maintained, and where slavery does not seem to be recommended by the nature of those employments in which the people are usually engaged, there may be some ground to expect that its pernicious effects upon industry will soon be felt, and that the practice will of course be abandoned.It is said that some of the provincial assemblies in that country have lately resolved to prevent or discourage the importation of negroes; but from what motives this resolution has proceeded, it is difficult to determine.(22*)The advancement of commerce and the arts, together with the diffusion of knowledge, in the present age, has of late contributed to the removal of many prejudices, and been productive of enlarged opinions, both upon this and upon a variety of other subjects.It has long been held, in Britain, that a negro slave, imported into this country, obtained thereby many of the privileges of a free man.But by a late judgment in the court of king's-bench it was found that the master could not recover his power over the servant by sending him abroad at pleasure.(23*)By a still more recent decision of the chief court in Scotland, it was declared:
That the dominion assumed over this negro, under the law of Jamaica, being unjust, could not be supported in this country to any extent: that therefore the defender had no right to the negro's service for any space of time; nor to send him out of the country against his consent.(24*)This last decision, which was given in 1778, is the more worthy of attention, as it condemns the slavery of the negroes in explicit term, and, being the first opinion of that nature delivered by any court in the island, may be accounted an authentic testimony of the liberal sentiments entertained in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
End
