Page:The Negroes at Port Royal - Report of the Government Agent.pdf/25

Rh not even the best of men, charged with the duties which ought to belong to the guardians of these people, should be put in a position where there would be such a conflict between his humanity and his self-interest—his desire, on the one hand, to benefit the laborer, and, on the other, the too often stronger desire to reap a large revenue—perhaps to restore broken fortunes in a year or two. Such a system is beset with many of the worst vices of the slave system, with one advantage in favor of the latter, that it is for the interest of the planter to look to permanent results. Let the history of British East India, and of all communities where a superior race has attempted to build up speedy fortunes on the labor of an inferior race occupying another region, be remembered, and no just man will listen to the proposition of leasing, fraught as it is with such dangerous consequences. Personal confidence forbids me to report the language of intense indignation which has been expressed against it here by some occupying high places of command, as also by others who have come here for the special purpose of promoting the welfare of these laborers. Perhaps it might yield to the treasury a larger immediate revenue, but it would be sure to spoil the country and its people in the end. The Government should be satisfied if the products of the territory may be made sufficient for a year or two to pay the expenses of administration and superintendence, and the inauguration of a beneficent system which will settle a great social question, ensure the sympathies of foreign nations, now wielded against us, and advance the civilization of the age.

The better course would be to appoint superintendents for each large plantation, and one for two or three smaller combined, compensated with a good salary, say $1,000 per year, selected with reference to peculiar qualifications, and as carefully as one would choose a guardian for his children, clothed with an adequate power to enforce a paternal discipline, to require a proper amount of labor, cleanliness, sobriety, and better habits of life, and generally to promote the moral and intellectual culture of the wards, with such other inducements, if there be any, placed before the superintendent as shall inspire him to constant efforts to prepare them for useful and worthy citizenship. To quicken and ensure the fidelity of the superintendents, there should a director-general or