Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/284

 have been in a great measure abandoned, while the coffee cultivation, which each cottager can carry on for himself, still flourishes, and forms the staple of the island."

"Tf that is all," I answered, "the slaves themselves would not seem to be in any great danger of starving, however it might be with some of their late masters. But pray, sir, what do you think of the throat-cutting, and other enormities?" "These," he replied, "are bugbears inherited from our grandmothers. The wild savages, many of them prisoners of war, formerly imported from Africa, when they rose in insurrection, as they sometimes did, naturally enough began, if they could, by cutting their masters' throats. An insurrection, even nowadays, as it is sure to be met by bullets, bowie knives, hangings and burnings, is likely enough, while it lasts, to be prosecuted by the same methods. The negro is an imitative creature, and easily adopts the example which his master sets. But to suppose that our slaves, if voluntarily set free, would take to robbing and murdering their white neighbors, instead of bestirring themselves like other poor folks — like the Irish emigrants, for instance, landed on our shores in no respect their superiors, except in freedom — to earn an honest living by their labor, for themselves and their children, seems to me quite ridiculous. It is paying a very poor compliment, indeed, to the courage and superiority of us whites, to doubt whether we, superior as well in numbers as in every thing else, could not inspire awe enough to maintain our natural position at the head of the community, and to keep these poor people in order without making slaves of them."

"But suppose," said I, "the emancipated slaves should prove as harmless as you imagine. Suppose they should actually labor enough to save themselves from starvation; yet, scattered upon little patches of ground, would they not live in idleness and poverty, leaving the present productive plantations abandoned, and reducing the whole south to a squalid