Page:On the motion of Sir George Strickland; for the abolition of the negro apprenticeship.djvu/67

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In order to complete that part of the argument which regards the account between the State of Great Britain and the planters, it is highly requisite to take into view such probable evidence as is already within our reach, having reference to that, now not distant, period, when the emancipation will be brought finally to the test of experience.

There are two questions for consideration: the first whether the negroes will be willing to work habitually, continuously, and generally, in West Indian agriculture: the second, whether the planters will be able to pay them such wages as, supposing there is a degree of inducement which would suffice, will lead them to continue the present cultivation.

As regards the first, the balance of probabilities, however subject to doubt, appears to be in its favour. The circumstances which throw uncertainty upon it are, in some but I trust few cases, the want of good feeling between the labouring class and those set over them; the progress of the free children towards maturity without their being trained to industrial pursuits, or, in a considerable number of instances, by any religious education; the facility with which it is likely they may be able to obtain patches, or what have been called pocket-handkerchiefs, of land; and the fact that the manumitted field-labourers do not return to that employment after emancipation in the apprentice colonies.

But, upon the other hand, their abandonment of that occupation may be owing to the demi-servile associations which attend it: while apprenticed, they appear always willing to work in their extra time, and commonly for wages at field or manufacturing labour; and although the cases of Bermuda and the Bahamas are quite irrelevant, there is also some encouragement in the case of Antigua.

That island differs from nearly all the other West Indian colonies in the cheapness of labour, the comparatively high cost of maintenance, which is by imported food, the general appropriation of the available land, a larger portion of resident proprietors, a po-