Alexander McDonnell

“ When property in slaves is made but a precarious interest, dependent upon the slaves themselves, it is no more than the truth to assert, that a rigorous system of coercion, such as prevailed in the colonies some twenty years ago, would return.
If it be argued, that this involves a contradiction in reference to the contentment, described as being the proprietor’s chief object to establish, let it be recollected that he is now in a dilemma. If he allows his slaves to accumulate earnings, they may be employed to his own total ruin ”

“ It is vain to disguise or cloak the measure. Every colonial proprietor knows the excitement that will always be kept up by the anti-colonial party. “If I am to be robbed,” he will say, “rather let me suffer at once, than be kept in perpetual dread of ruin. ”

“ Again, when the recent Amelioration Clauses were proposed, how furious was the opposition in the colonies,—the proprietors there were to be utterly ruined. Many of these clauses have since been enacted, even where opposition was strongest at the first, and yet no injury or change has taken place! What is the inference in regard to compulsory manumission? We have strenuous opposition at present, it is true; but when the measure is once carried, that will soon subside, and all the frightful features of danger which have alarmed the colonists will turn out to be mere phantoms of the imagination. ”

“ On the contrary, the old slaves on a plantation, in whom the ardent passions have subsided, knowing that they must soon come to be exempt from work, and entitled to that maintenance gratuitously from their master, which in a state of freedom they would have to earn for themselves, would make no attempt to procure their own liberation, but would devote their earnings, and any accumulation of money they may have already made, to the ransom of their children. ”

“ When West India members have come forward to state their case, have we not seen it retorted upon them in the widely-disseminated publications of the anti-colonial party, in terms of the utmost coarseness: “He is a slave-driver: what attention or confidence is due to the statement of such a character?”
The West India members are indeed in a dilemma: if they speak, they run the risk of being abused—if silent, they are to be held parties to all the acts of precipitation and folly which may take place in colonial government. ”

“ The slave knows well that his master can return to the old system at his will, and this reflection is the chief cause for establishing the improvement. The master knows well, that the law empowers him to keep his slaves at work till six in the evening; but he considers that, if he can elicit their spontaneous skill and assiduity, they will get through an equal quantity of work by an earlier hour, and will pursue their labour cheerfully. ”

“ But let compulsory manumission be insisted on, and how differently will he then contemplate the earnings of his slaves! At present their little funds are spent in harmless amusements—in adorning their persons, and giving Christmas and other holiday entertainments, in which it is their delight to mimic the manners of the whites. But change the scene, and let them employ their earnings to procure their freedom, and what will be the master’s course? He will be constrained, in self-defence to stop their means of earning. ”

“ COUNTERACTS THE INCENTIVES TO CIVILISATION. A free peasantry in the colonies is the desideratum sought by the framers of the measure. It is argued, that men are creatures of habit, and that if the negro, by voluntary industry, amass such a sum as will procure his ransom, the habit of working will have become firmly established, and he will continue to labour when he has obtained his freedom. ”

“ That having long since committed the crime of transporting the negroes to our West India colonies, it is expected by the British nation, that the welfare of future generations will be contemplated; and that, hereafter, a black society may be witnessed, possessing in itself the attributes, moral, intellectual, and political, of a civilized people. ”

“ When slaves have the power to enforce their freedom from their owners by such a process as that of appraisement, those who are of bad character are comparatively rewarded, while those who are really meritorious are punished.
Thus, on the same estate, a disorderly and unprofitable slave may be readily parted with by his master for fifty pounds, whilst another, a steady, intelligent, and assiduous slave, might, for these good qualities, be worth three hundred. ”

“ Our abolition of the slave-trade, without securing the effectual concurrence of foreign powers in a similar act, has transferred from British to foreign colonies the principal supply of Europe with sugar, and without the smallest benefit to Africa. The Registry Bills are an enormous tax on our impoverished colonies, and it is not to them we owe the extinction of our colonial slave-trade. Of our recent Amelioration [81] Clauses, the effect in diminishing production is as yet more certain than that of increased benefit to the negro-population. ”

“ He discovers that discontent is his surest remedy; that he has only to display the sullenness which he actually feels; that, in one word, he has but to become a bad subject, in order to obtain liberty the more speedily.
Can then the sturdiest champions of compulsory manumission attempt to maintain, that if this man was worth a dollar a day before this occurrence, he will be worth as much still; and if the return from his labour be reduced one-half or two-thirds, will any man contend that a direct violation of property has not been inflicted? ”

“ THE CONVERSION OF GOOD SERVANTS INTO BAD. If we imagine an estate, with a given number of negroes, to produce three hundred hogsheads of sugar a year, few will be inclined to doubt the disposition of the proprietor to increase its production, if practicable, to three hundred and fifty or four hundred. What are the means, then, to effect this object, without increasing the number of labourers? The proprietor finds himself possessed of a number of people, the development of whose full capability for labour depends upon their treatment. ”

“ For the sake of the community, indeed, such indiscriminate manumissions ought to be prevented; for, undoubtedly, if the purchase-money were obtained from any fund which may be formed for the liberation of slaves, there would be no test of previous habits of industry, of which there is presumptive evidence where the money is procured by the honest earnings of the slave. ”

“ With the negroes generally, there is also a direct encouragement to theft, since, under the peculiar circumstances of West India cultivation, the master’s property is, necessarily, much exposed, and liable to be stolen by his slaves. Even at present, the quantity stolen annually is ascertained to be very great. Crime usually increases in proportion to temptation; and, under the proposed enactment, the slave must become habituated to fraudulent propensities, and all his ingenuity stimulated to the commission of secret theft. ”

“ The higher the personal value of the slave, the greater is his relative utility to the plantation, and the greater must be the recompense awarded to the proprietor for superseded cultivation. The relative utility of a negro of bad character may thus be estimated at not more than ten pounds, while that of a trustworthy individual may rise so high as one hundred and fifty. In both these cases, the respective sums have to be added to the slave’s personal value, before his master can be said to have received an equivalent for his liberation. ”

“ If there could be, in the first instance, a hope that cultivation might hereafter be conducted by free labourers, it is destroyed in its bud; and precisely in the degree that the negroes are freed, will the value of the colonies decline.
Political economy is now the fashion. All who are connected with the Legislature, or who take a part in public affairs, are anxious to display their proficiency in this science. Without further comment, an appeal is made to them to pronounce, on weighing well the reasoning referred to, if profitable cultivation in the colonies will not be superseded. ”

“ On the broad principle of the measure itself, no system of appraisement, no reference to previous character, can meet the artifices which a slave may employ to depreciate his value; because many of such artifices, depending on the suppression of skill or zeal, being of a negative character, defy detection; and, even were they detected, detriment to the proprietor’s interests must ensue, since a willing has been changed into a discontented labourer.
Upon the rising generation, too, of the negroes, the operation of the same baneful policy of self-deterioration must increase. ”

“ Let us suppose some measure introduced into one of the counties of England, affecting its population as vitally as compulsory manumission affects the slaves in our colonies, and what would be thought of any person who should gravely propose, that a public officer, amid other multifarious duties, should certify minutely as to the individual character of every man in the county? ”

“ Each proprietor is by law obliged to maintain the aged, the infirm, and the helpless, upon his estate. This duty he performs with the utmost cheerfulness. He can hold out to his able negroes no stronger incentive to good conduct than the assurance verified in their parents, that they will pass the evening of life in rest and contentment, with every little want provided for. The spectacle itself is one of the most agreeable which can strike the eye of the stranger ”

“ Thus the supply of voluntary labourers not only existing, but increasing in that colony, the inducements to perpetuate slavery must progressively expire, and slaves may consequently be freed without injury to the property of their owners, or danger to the public safety. ”

“ When he finds his long-cherished hopes utterly frustrated; when, too, he perceives a worthless fellow, distinguished only for idleness and debauchery, now sporting and enjoying himself at liberty all day long, perhaps laughing at the deserving individual who remains in servitude; when he sees his acquaintance on some neighbouring plantation attain his freedom, merely from his chancing to live on an estate where less machinery was used, will he, in common reason, return to his duty a [30] contented man? ”

“ When we prove injury in the principle, it is scarcely necessary to descend to discuss the practice. Many colonists view with alarm the great power given to the Protector, and other officers of government. But let us pass over details. It is only necessary to reflect upon what the appraiser has to do, to perceive that the mode of working must be as bad as the design, and that the whole process must be vague and mere guess-work. ”

“ Good conduct frequently renders a negro more valuable even than skill, and it thus becomes a principal impediment to the attainment of his freedom. In the case of a drunken, worthless character on a plantation, the proprietor, instead of opposing his liberation, will be glad to get rid of him at a small amount, because he is continually giving trouble and setting a bad example. ”

“ If you demand of a man, living in a country imperfectly civilised, for what reason he works, he will answer, that he may purchase food. But put the same question to a man in a state highly civilised, and he will reply, that besides the purchase of food, he requires good clothing, lodging, and other comforts which have become habitual to him, and in which custom would make it disreputable in him not to indulge. ”

“ If a decline in the value of the capital has ensued, whilst the price of the produce has remained nearly the same, it is proof positive that the depreciation of West India property is not attributable to circumstances purely mercantile, but that it is owing to the proceedings of the British legislature. ”

“ Slavery, considered as an hereditary condition, is perpetuated on the side of the mother only; if means were taken to purchase all the female children, no calculation regarding relative value could be made, and the property of each proprietor must become extinct with the lives of his present negroes. ”

“ If there be any truth in the maxim of moralists, that the road to vice is alluring in itself, what must be the result when men are urged upon it, by the strongest incentives which can be supposed to operate with them? ”

“ The order in council for Trinidad has not affected the principle of the Spanish law, or rather the practice in the Spanish colonies, which allows a slave to enfranchise himself by purchase. But the British law in our settlements gives no such right whatever to a slave. ”

“ But if the slaves, being in law real property, on which the mortgagee holds a lien, be permitted at their will to separate themselves from the plantation, it must weaken the security of the mortgagee, by removing the instruments through which the fixed capital was rendered productive, and by the employment of which for the benefit of the mortgagor, there was a reasonable confidence that the mortgage might ultimately be redeemed. ”

“ By the same law of England, when slaves are expressly specified in a mortgage on West India property, neither the proprietor, nor any other known authority, can legally sell such slaves, even though the proceeds be applied in liquidation of the mortgage, unless it be with the previous consent of the mortgagee. ”

“ But when a step is taken so contrary to the laws of the realm, as, by eminent law-authorities, Compulsory Manumission, in regard to mortgaged property, is conceived to be, responsibility ceases to be an idle term, and circumstances may arise from it to disturb the peace of a minister of state much longer than he anticipates.
It can never be too often repeated that, so far as legislation for the negroes is concerned, what is once done is irrevocable. In other public measures, an opportunity is afforded to a minister, when he makes a false step, to change his policy by a dexterous manœuvre. ”

“ In reality, a part only of the subject has been treated of in Lord Bathurst’s despatch, and in the “Remarks,” inasmuch as they regard only those negroes who may be freed under the operation of the measure, and overlook those who, from inability to procure their freedom, still remain on the plantation.
But it has been shown, that greater deterioration of property may occur from an improper feeling excited among the negroes who remain, than from the more direct loss of labour occasioned by the abstraction of those who become free. ”

“ They are not prepared to lose our West India colonies, which are believed to contribute largely to the prosperity and strength of the kingdom; nor are they at all disposed to inflict injustice upon their fellow-subjects, knowing well, that whatever odium may now attach to the colonial proprietor, [83] the charge of having countenanced slavery is one which he shares with the whole British nation. ”

“ It is presumed, that the great object contemplated by the British nation is to civilize the blacks living in our colonies. The crime of taking them from their own country is long past by; but it surely cannot be intended to compensate them for their former wrongs, by replunging them into barbarism. Yet it is to be feared that this is the consummation to result from compulsory manumission. ”

“ And it is all-important to reflect, that the obnoxious object of these excited passions will be the master, or the resident proprietor. The negro will never believe that he has been deceived by the King of England. He will decide, that the King has conferred on him the boon, and that it has been intercepted by combination of the colonial proprietors.
The negroes are just beginning to be sensible that amelioration is different from what they first [69] imagined it. Proclamations and proceedings of the governors have tended to check their fatal impression that a life of idleness was now at hand ”

“ In Trinidad it is otherwise: a person purchasing a slave in that colony, knows beforehand that he acquires only a precarious title in such a slave, which depends on the ability of the slave to purchase himself. ”

“ Let it be recollected, that it will soon be, not a quota, but the entire of the fixed capital, which the efficient negroes, applying for freedom, will have to pay to indemnify their masters,—and in actual practice can this be done?
The writer of the “Remarks” illustrates the case by comparing a sugar-estate to a mill with a number of buckets! The reader, it is presumed, will be tempted to smile at the idea of considering the negroes as mere passive machines, devoid of those feelings, passions, and intelligence, which it is their master’s chief solicitude to call into existence. ”