OCR Text |
Show 17h THE CONTRAST. and the superabundance of fertile wild land, the pea. san try are working as peaceably a~d diligently on their old locations, as in Antigua itself. Nor does Jamaica, when duly inspected and fairly estimated, furnish any exception to the general result. We find that, in that island, wherever the negroes are fairly, kindly, and wisely treated, there they are working well on the properties of their old masters; and that the existing instances of a contrary description must be ascribed to causes which class under slavery, and not under freedom. Let it not however be imagined, that the negroes who are not working on the estates of their old masters are, on that account, idle. Even these are in general busily employed in cultivating their own grounds, in various descriptions of handicraft, in lime-buming or fishing-in benefiting themselves and the community, through some new, but equally desirable medium. Besides all this, stone walls are built, new houses erected, pastures cleaned, ditches dug, meadows drained, roads made and macadamized, stores fitted up, villages formed, and other beneficial operations effected ; the whole of which, before emancipa· tion, it would have been a folly even to attempt. The old notion that the negro is, by constitution, a lazy creature, who will do no work at all except by com· pulsion, is now for ever exploded. Taking the same population of black people, a larger proportion of them is operative (in various ways) under freedom than was the case under slavery; and of the operative part, each individual, on an average, performs more work than he did before. Thus the whole quan· tity of work, obtained by the stimulus of wages, is con· THE l!ONTilAST. siderably greater than the. amount~ 179 by the terror of the wh · W ormerly procured st1· mn 1u s of wages I II' P·d hen I speak of the ffi · ' a u e especially t · e ec!Jve form-payment by t II e pi.e ce or o. Ibt s most peasantry of the vounty f' N fi ' .1° · The . 0 or olk i E I a fmr specimen of industr. 1 b' n ng and, afford . IOns a or o d ' m a cool climate. My 0 b n ay s wages wn o servatio h I ' to the conclusion th'a t a fir ee negr · n1 as ed me dies, paid by the day will . ' 0 m t Ie West In- ' ' m general fi three quarters of the qu an tJ' ty of wor'k perh o' rm about 1 be called a fair day's !'a bor m. N orfolk wB IC 1 would and pay him by the J'ob . · ut employ ' or p1ece and h 'I equal, and even exceed th d I ' e WI I soon Norfolk peasant. I e ay-. abor standard of the presume It was h. fl work that a most intelli ent . c Je y to job tophel·'s alluded when hg 'dmagJstrate of St. Chris- ' e sa1 to · h phasis-" They will do :,~ . me Wit great em-an 11!J•ntfy of work fi II. An increased quant't f or wages." h 1 Y 0 work th t e market, is of course followed b rown upon of labor. That th1·s 1. s h . Y the cheapening t e case J . clearest manner dem t m ama1ca, is in the ons rated b th A. B. and his friends . h ~ e experience of G ·' Ill t e par1sh f M reat is the pecuniary rei' f 0 anchester. ~he planters, in the sever~~ i~:~;l:iene~d by many of Ill .consequence of their d . ' wh~eh we visited, wetght of their I ehverance from the dead s aves. In some amounts to the half of th . cases the saving planter who owned th e!r former ·outgoing. A he provided food cl thr~e hundred slaves, for whom Sl' I s, and medical ' att0 dm g' b e ddm' g, household uten-en ance- t men for watchers h. no to mention white vered from th h wl ips, and bilboes-is now d I' e w o e of this bnrden . . e 1- , pays one hun- N2 |