Volume II Part 29 (1/2)
There is no insecurity now. Before emanc.i.p.ation there was a continual fear of insurrection. Mr. C. said he had lain down in bed many a night fearing that his throat would be cut before morning. He has started up often from a dream in which he thought his room was filled with armed slaves. But when the abolition bill pa.s.sed, his fears all pa.s.sed away.
He felt a.s.sured there would be no trouble then. The motive to insurrection was taken away. As for the cutting of throats, or insult and violence in any way, he never suspects it. He never thinks of fastening his door at night now. As we were retiring to bed he looked round the room in which we had been sitting, where every thing spoke of serenity and confidence--doors and windows open, and books and plate scattered about on the tables and sideboards. ”You see things now,” he said, ”just as we leave them every night, but you would have seen quite a different scene had you come here a few years ago.”
_Mr. C. thinks the slaves of Barbadoes might have been entirely and immediately emanc.i.p.ated as well as those of Antigua._ The results, he doubts not, would have been the same.
He has no fear of disturbance or insubordination in 1840. He has no doubt that the people will work. That there may be a little unsettled, excited, _experimenting_ feeling for a short time, he thinks probable--but feels confident that things generally will move on peaceably and prosperously. He looks with much more anxiety to the emanc.i.p.ation of the non-praedials in 1838.
There is no disposition among the apprentices to revenge their wrongs.
Mr. C. feels the utmost security both of person and property.
The slaves were very much excited by the discussions in England. They were well acquainted, with them, and looked and longed for the result.
They watched every arrival of the packet with great anxiety. The people on his estate often knew its arrival before he did. One of his daughters remarked, that she could see their hopes flas.h.i.+ng from their eyes. They manifested, however, no disposition to rebel, waiting in anxious but quiet hope for their release. Yet Mr. C. had no doubt, that if parliament had thrown out the emanc.i.p.ation bill, and all measures had ceased for their relief, there would have been a general insurrection.--While there was hope they remained peaceable, but had hope been destroyed it would have been buried in blood.
There was some dissatisfaction among the blacks with the apprentices.h.i.+p.
They thought they ought to be entirely free, and that their masters were deceiving them. They could not at first understand the conditions of the new system--there was some murmuring among them, but they thought it better, however, to wait six years for the boon, than to run the risk of losing it altogether by revolt.
The expenses of the apprentices.h.i.+p are about the same as during slavery.
But under the free system, Mr. C. has no doubt they will be much less.
He has made a calculation of the expenses of cultivating the estate on which he resides for one year during slavery, and what they will probably be for one year under the free system. He finds the latter are less by about $3,000.
Real estate has increased in value more than thirty per rent. There is greater confidence in the security of property. Instances were related to us of estates that could not be sold at any price before emanc.i.p.ation, that within the last two years have been disposed of at great prices.
The complaints to the magistrates, on the part of the planters, were very numerous at first, but have greatly diminished. They are of the most trivial and even ludicrous character. One of the magistrates says the greater part of the cases that come before him are from old women who cannot get their coffee early enough in the morning! and for offences of equal importance.
Prejudice has much diminished since emanc.i.p.ation. The discussions in England prior to that period had done much to soften it down, but the abolition of slavery has given it its death blow.
Such is a rapid sketch of the various topics touched upon during our interview with Mr. C. and his family.
Before we left the hospitable mansion of Lear's, we had the pleasure of meeting a company of gentlemen at dinner. With the exception of one, who was provost-marshal, they were merchants of Bridgetown. These gentlemen expressed their full concurrence in the statements of Mr. C., and gave additional testimony equally valuable.
Mr. W., the provost-marshal, stated that he had the supervision of the public jail, and enjoyed the best opportunity of knowing the state of crime, and he was confident that there was a less amount of crime since emanc.i.p.ation than before. He also spoke of the increasing attention which the negroes paid to neatness of dress and personal appearance.
The company broke up about nine o'clock, but not until we had seen ample evidence of the friendly feelings of all the gentlemen toward our object. There was not a single dissenting voice to any of the statements made, or any of the sentiments expressed. This fact shows that the prevailing feeling is in favor of freedom, and that too on the score of policy and self-interest.
Dinner parties are in one sense a very safe pulse in all matters of general interest. They rarely beat faster than the heart of the community. No subject is likely to be introduced amid the festivities of a fas.h.i.+onable circle, until it is fully endorsed by public sentiment.
Through the urgency of Mr. C., we were induced to remain all night.
Early the next morning, he proposed a ride before breakfast to Scotland.
Scotland is the name given to an abrupt, hilly section, in the north of the island. It is about five miles from Mr. C.'s, and nine from Bridgetown. In approaching, the prospect bursts suddenly upon the eye, extorting an involuntary exclamation of surprise. After riding for miles, through a country which gradually swells into slight elevations, or sweeps away in rolling plains, covered with cane, yams, potatoes, eddoes, corn, and gra.s.s, alternately, and laid out with the regularity of a garden; after admiring the cultivation, beauty, and skill exhibited on every hand, until almost wearied with viewing the creations of art; the eye at once falls upon a scene in which is crowded all the wildness and abruptness of nature in one of her most freakish moods--a scene which seems to defy the hand of cultivation and the graces of art. We ascended a hill on the border of this section, which afforded us a complete view. To describe it in one sentence, it is an immense basin, from two to three miles in diameter at the top, the edges of which are composed of ragged hills, and the sides and bottom of which are diversified with myriads of little hillocks and corresponding indentations. Here and there is a small sugar estate in the bottom, and cultivation extends some distance up the sides, though this is at considerable risk, for not infrequently, large tracts of soil, covered with cane or provisions, slide down, over-spreading the crops below, and destroying those which they carry with them.
Mr. C. pointed to the opposite side of the basin to a small group of stunted trees, which he said were the last remains of the Barbadoes forests. In the midst of them there is a boiling spring of considerable notoriety.
In another direction, amid the rugged precipices, Mr. C. pointed out the residences of a number of poor white families, whom he described as the most degraded, vicious, and abandoned people in the island--”very far below the negroes.” They live promiscuously, are drunken, licentious, and poverty-stricken,--a body of most squalid and miserable human beings.
From the height on which we stood, we could see the ocean nearly around the island, and on our right and left, overlooking the basin below us, rose the two highest points of land of which Barbadoes can boast. The white marl about their naked tops gives them a bleak and desolate appearance, which contrasts gloomily with the verdure of the surrounding cultivation.
After we had fully gratified ourselves with viewing the miniature representation of old Scotia, we descended again into the road, and returned to Lear's. We pa.s.sed numbers of men and women going towards town with loads of various kinds of provisions on their heads. Some were black, and others were white--of the same cla.s.s whose huts had just been shown us amid the hills and ravines of Scotland. We observed that the latter were barefoot, and carried their loads on their heads precisely like the former. As we pa.s.sed these busy pedestrians, the blacks almost uniformly courtesied or spoke; but the whites did not appear to notice us. Mr. C inquired whether we were not struck with this difference in the conduct of the two people, remarking that he had always observed it.
It is very seldom, said he, that I meet a negro who does not speak to me politely; but this cla.s.s of whites either pa.s.s along without looking up, or cast a half-vacant, rude stare into one's face, without opening their mouths. Yet this people, he added, veriest raggam.u.f.fins that they are, despise the negroes, and consider it quite degrading to put themselves on term of equity with them. They will beg of blacks more provident and industrious than themselves, or they will steal their poultry and rob their provision grounds at night; but they would disdain to a.s.sociate with them. Doubtless these _sans culottes_ swell in their dangling rags with the haughty consciousness that they possess _white skins_. What proud reflections they must have, as they pursue their barefoot way, thinking on their high lineage, and running back through the long list of their ill.u.s.trious ancestry whose notable badge was a _white skin_! No wonder they cannot stop to bow to the pa.s.sing stranger. These sprouts of the Caucasian race are known among the Barbadians by the rather ungracious name of _Red Shanks_. They are considered the pest of the island, and are far more troublesome to the police, in proportion to their members, than the apprentices. They are estimated at about eight thousand.
The origin of this population we learned was the following: It has long been a law in Barbadoes, that each proprietor should provide a white man for every sixty slaves in his possession, and give him an acre of land, a house, and arms requisite for defence of the island in case of insurrection. This caused an importation of poor whites from Ireland and England, and their number has been gradually increasing until the present time.