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464 was brought about by our exclusiveness. The sole result was to offend the Brazilians, and almost ruin our trade with them. No doubt, Brazil and Cuba fancied they were going to have an extended trade, when their sugar was admitted to England. A temporary increase of the slave trade was an unhappy, unforeseen, result, for which Lord Denman and others did not cease to reproach the Whig ministers, though Sir Robert Peel supported them. The West Indian proprietors actually claimed both the promise given to them and the apprenticeship as "part of the compensation." Jamaica had a virtuous abhorrence of slave sugar, while she continued most tyrannical to the freed blacks. In all the islands the apprenticeship worked very ill, as every man of common sense ought to have foreseen. The Marquis of Sligo, governor of Jamaica, condemned it, and at once set free all his slaves, advising others to do the same; but he had few imitators, except in Barbadoes. During the apprenticeship, when a negro desired to buy his own time of his master, he was charged in Jamaica two shillings and sixpence a day as its value. But as soon as freedom was complete, the planters who wanted laborers valued their work as worth only one shilling a day. From this and other frauds, besides the ill blood from old cruelties, many could not get field laborers at all. Moreover, the freed women no longer worked in the field. Nevertheless, on the few estates where good wages were paid punctually, no difficulty occurred.

It is needless here to pursue the miserable tale — how, after the apprenticeship was arbitrarily terminated in Parliament (not least through its exposure by the devoted efforts of Joseph Sturge and other good Quakers), the colonial legislatures hankered after a new slave trade, under the name of apprenticed coolies, and taxed the negroes to import them. Jamaica, as usual, had the pre-eminence in tyrannical legislation and unjust application of public money; until their legislature itself became unendurable to Tories as well as Whigs. Space does not permit to detail the deeds of Governor Eyre. Suffice it to say in outline, that in 1865 an alarming outbreak of some hundreds of colored men took place; that martial law was proclaimed in a limited district; that Governor Eyre arrested a colored member of the legislature, his political opponent, Mr. G. W. Gordon, the advocate of justice for the blacks; carried him by force into the district where civil law was suspended, had him tried by martial law by two young officers, and hanged. Many besides were hanged; men and women were flogged with piano-wire, houses of black men were burnt, and after all semblance of insurgency or resistance was put down, violent horrors continued. The Assembly passed a bill justifying all Governor Eyre's proceedings, which interposed insuperable difficulties to prosecuting him. The English judges were aghast at such lawlessness and at the frightful precedent. Neither a Whig nor a Tory minister could for a moment defend it; and though Governor Eyre was not punished, nor Mrs. Gordon (the widow) compensated for losses, the verdict of England was pronounced against the whites of Jamaica. They were summoned to resign their legislature, and did not dare to refuse. An English governor was sent out (Mr. John Peter Grant, of Indian celebrity) to rule them despotically, and from that day the condition of Jamaica has slowly improved. The chief thing needed has been to take power out of the hands of those who in former days were accustomed to be tyrants.

If space allowed us to pursue the argument, it would most abundantly be proved that every approach to a modified slavery, such as disguises itself in apprenticeship of coolies, is always as mischievous as unjust; and that the vigilance exercised by the Aborigines Protection Society is never superfluous. But the pen must be checked. In future articles the yet greater question of slavery under the American Union will be treated.

 

 

entered the hall, where Donal spent a whole minute rubbing his shoes on the mat, as diligently as if he had just come out of the cattle-yard, and then Gibbie led him in triumph up the stair to the drawing-room. Donal entered in that loose-jointed way which comes of the brains being as yet all in the head, and stood, resisting Gibbie's pull on his arm, his keen hazel eyes looking gently round upon the company, until he caught sight of the face he sought, when, with the stride of a sower of corn, he walked across the