OCR Text |
Show 258 LIBERTY AND SLAYER Y. idlerwis arul vagrancy, arul even •·elapse into ba>·bal" ism." This was predicted by the \Vest Indian planters, who certainly had a good opportunity to know something of the character of the negro, whether bond or free. But who could suppose for a moment that an enlightened abolitionist would listen to slaveholders? ilia· response was, that "their unhappy position ;..'IS slaveholders had robbed them of their reason and blunted their moral sense." Precisely the same thing had been foretold by the Calhouns and the Clays of this countl"y. But they, too, were unfortunately slaveholdci·s, and, consequently, so completely "sunk in moral darkness," that their testimony was not entitled to credit. The calmest, the profoundest, the wisest statesmen of Great Britain likewise forewarned the agitators of the desolation and the woes they were about to bring upon the \Vest Indies. But the madness of the day would confide in no wisdom except its own, and listen to no testimony except to the clamor of fanatics. Hence the fi·ightfnl m.:pcriment was made, and, as we have seen, the prediction of the anti-abolitionists has been fulfilled to the very letter. ARG UMENT FROM TTIE PUBLIC GOOD. 259 The cause of this downward tendency in the British colonies is now perfectly apparent to all who have eyes to sec. On this point, tho two committees above referred to both concm in the same conclusion. The committee of 1842 declare, "that the principal causes of this diminished production, and consequent distress, are the great difficulty which has been experienced by tho planters in obtaining steady and continuous labor, and the high rate of remuneration which they give for even the broken and irulijfel"ent work which they are able to procure." The cry of the abolitionist has been changed. At firstr-even before the experiment was more than a year old-he insisted that the industry of the freed black was worh.-ing wonders in the British colonies. In the West Indies, in particular, he assured us that the freed negro would do "an infinity of work for wages."* Though he had been on the islands, and had had an opportunity to see for himself, he boasted that "the old notion that the negro is, by constitution, a lazy creature, who will do no work at all except by compulsion, is now forevel" ex- * Gurney's Letters on the West Indies. |