Page:Emancipation in the West Indies.djvu/2

 EMANCIPATION

IN THE WEST INDIES.

substance of the following Essay was given in the form of a Lecture at Concord, and afterwards in Boston, where it was printed in The Pine and Palm. The writer has likewise furnished eight articles for the Springfield Republican, embodying the same views, but presented in a different form. He wishes, in this way, to contribute to the public information concerning a matter unhappily but little understood even in New England. Doubtless there are errors in these pages, but they are not those of intention.

Concord, March 27th, 1862,

Sidney Smith mentions a critic who would never read a book till after he had reviewed it; "because," he said, "reading is apt to bias the mind." King James I. used to wonder that his judges could decide any case after they had heard both sides; "for if I hear but the one party," said he. "my judg- ment is clear; but when they have both told! their story, by my saul! I canna tell what to say." Something like the wisdom of these two sages seems to have taken possession of the American mind on the question of Eman- cipation. There are people enough to ad- vance the theory; there are more than enough to denounce it, and ery out on its dangers and horrors; but few of either party have taken the trouble to inform themselves of the facts. For the abolition of Slavery is not a mere theory, like the hypothesis of an open sea at the North Pole, which they say Lieut. Maury believed in. because he heard there were whales in Baffin's Bay, with their noses pointing to the north-no, it is a great his- torical fact, and we are to judge of it as we do of other facts. less by the arguments ad- vanced in its favor than by the results which have attended it. Let us consider, then, this most important topic-Emancipation as a Fact, not as a Theory,—confining the inquiry to Negro Emancipation in the West Indies.

What should we think of a man who should today gravely raise the question whether the Atlantic can be crossed by steam- ships,—whether a Sharpe's rifle is better thana crosshow, or a power press than a monk's inkhorn and sheepskin? Should we not imagine he had strayed away from Ken- tucky or the office of the Boston Courier?

Yet the facts which prove the safety and profit of Emancipation are less recent than the success of ocean steamships, against which Lardner prophesied in vain; nay, they are older than the bold contrivances of Ful- ton, which, within half a century, have revo- Intionized commerce and maritime warfare. They lie at our very door: we have only to look at them to be convinced.

Yet, so inveterate are the prejudices which our unfortunate political and commercial sins have brought upon us, that not one person in a hundred, it is safe to say, is acquainted with the truth of the West Indian experiment of freedom In the British, French, and Danish West Indies, and in Hayti, together with the South African colonies of Bourbon, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope, about 1600 000 slaves of the African race, have been set free since 1792, or within seventy years. Of these, half a million were libera- ted in Hayti, in 1798; 100 000 more in the same island a few years later; 770 370 by England, in 1834-5; and about 260 000 by