XXXI. 1833. to remunerate the labours of the producers. But when, CHAP. on the return of peace, and contraction of the currency to half its former amount, prices fell to 50s. or 60s. the cwt., the tax of 278. or 24s. absorbed half the price received, and entirely extinguished the profits of cultivation. This, however, did not lead, as those not practically acquainted with the subject naturally supposed it would, to a diminution of production; on the contrary, it led to a great and ruinous increase. The great majority of the planters strove to compensate the diminution of price by increase of quantity produced, the clearing of fresh virgin land, and the rigorous exaction of a greater amount of labour from their negroes. This was the true cause of the fact observed by Mr Stanley, that in all the West India Islands, except Antigua and Barbadoes, there had been, for seven years past (ever since the suppression of small notes in Great Britain in 1826), an increase in the production of sugar, and a diminution in the number of the slaves. They were worked beyond their strength, sometimes to death, to compensate the reduction of price consequent on the contraction of the currency. This increase of production again tended still more to depress prices and annihilate the profits of cultivation; but the West India proprietors, ignorant of the real cause of their difficulties, and clinging to hope, the last refuge of the unfortunate, still went on, as is often the case, striving to obviate depressed prices by enhanced production, and got deeper into the mire from every effort they made to extricate themselves from it. the West prietors ac To a body of landed proprietors thus situated, and 103. nearly all labouring under mortgages, of which they were what made unable even to pay the interest, the sudden offer of India pro£20,000,000 as a free gift presented irresistible tempta- quiesce in tions. Though it was not more than a half on an aver- the change. age of the value of the full-grown slaves who were emancipated, nor a fifth of the real amount of the entire pro XXXI. 1833. CHAP. perty endangered by the changes, which was estimated at £120,000,000, it was an immense relief in the mean time, and at once raised numbers from the depths of despair to affluence and prosperity. Many proprietors, especially of West India mortgages, saw a great fortune suddenly created in their hands, where before there was nothing but embarrassment, and were able to retire from business, and realise the ample sums they received in large estates in this country. Nearly half the entire grant was shared by the merchants of Liverpool and Glasgow it may be conceived what a godsend this was to men who, from long-continued embarrassment, had become wellnigh desperate as to their affairs. These considerations explain the ready acquiescence of the West India body in the proposal of Government, fraught as it was, as the event proved, with ultimate danger, and tending to postpone, not remove, the causes which were finally to involve them in ruin. 104. But although these considerations sufficiently explain Fatal effects the ultimate acquiescence of the West India proprietors of the mea in the measure of Government, yet is it not the less cerWest India tain that the measure itself was unwise, premature, and sure on the Islands. has been attended with the most disastrous results. It is difficult to say whether the West India proprietors, the negro population in the islands, the sable inhabitants of Africa, or the manufacturers of the mother country, have suffered most from the change. It appears from the parliamentary returns,* that the produce of Jamaica, * AVERAGE PRODUCE OF JAMAICA BEFORE AND AFTER NEGRO EMANCIPATION. XXXI. 1833. within three years after emancipation took effect, and CHAP. the apprentice system was introduced (January 1, 1834), had decreased a third, and within ten years that of the whole West India Islands had fallen off a half. As might be expected, with so prodigious a decline in the produce of these once magnificent settlements—that is, in the means their inhabitants enjoyed of purchasing luxuries and comforts the exports of British manufactures to. them underwent at the same time a similar diminution.* So great did it become, that within less than fifteen years of the period when emancipation took effect, the exports of British manufactures and produce to the West Indies had diminished a half, while those to the slave states of Cuba and Brazil, which had risen on the ruins of their less fortunate neighbours, had largely increased.+ Perhaps there never was, in the whole history of human affairs, any change against which experience has so unequivocally declared as this, which was introduced with such benevolent intentions and transports of joy in the British Islands. But disastrous as the results of the change have been to British interests both at home and in the West Indies, they are as nothing to those which have ensued to the * TABLE SHOWING THE OFFICIAL RETURNS OF THE EXPORTS OF THE WEST INDIA ISLANDS FROM 1828 TO 1841. -PORTER'S Progress of the Nation, 3d edit., 424, 425. + For Table of Exports of British Produce, see next page. 272,800 1,013 263,268 958 253,872 911 249,079 904 229,117 828 248,378 911 246,695 918 235,179 878 237,922 900 226,468 855 XXXI. 1833. 105. Ruinous effects of tion to the negroes. CHAP. negroes themselves, both in their native seats and the Transatlantic colonies. The fatal gift of premature emancipation has proved as pernicious to a race as it always does to an individual: the boy of seventeen sent out into emancipa- the world has continued a boy, and done as other boys do. The diminution of the agricultural exported produce of the islands to less than a half, proves how much their industry has declined. The reduction of their consumption of British produce and manufactures in a similar proportion tells unequivocally how much their means of comfort and enjoyment have fallen off. Generally speaking, the incipient civilisation of the negro has been and instruc- arrested by his emancipation:1 with the cessation of forced tise on the labour, the habits and tastes which spring from and comdies, 42-79. pensate it have disappeared, and savage habits and pleasures have resumed their ascendancy over the sable race. 1 See in particular Lord Stan ley's able tive Trea West In EXPORT OF BRITISH PRODUCE AND MANUFACTURES TO THE WEST INDIES, XXXI. 1833. The attempts to instruct and civilise them have for the CHAP. most part proved a failure; the dolce far niente, equally dear to the unlettered savage as to the effeminate European, has resumed its sway; and the emancipated Africans, dispersed in the woods, or in cabins erected amidst the ruined plantations, are fast relapsing into the state in which their ancestors were when they were torn from their native seats by the rapacity of Christian avarice. 106. crease of in the for eign slave But deplorable as these effects have been, they are as nothing compared to the heart-rending results of the Great inchange to the unfortunate inhabitants of Africa, and the production frightful increase of the slave trade in its very worst form which has ensued from it. To supply the gap in the States. production of sugar, which took place in consequence of the diminished supply from the West India Islands, the slave-growing states made the most astonishing efforts, and increased their production to the greatest degree. To effect this increase, a large additional supply of slave labour was indispensable, and it was speedily obtained from the opposite coast of Africa. Stimulated by the great increase in prices which took place in consequence of the diminished production of the British West India Islands, cultivation increased immensely in the slave states; the slave trade came to be again carried on by British capital, and the rise in the production of slave-grown sugar was even more rapid than the fall in the British Islands. In 1823, Puerto Rico exported only cattle and coffee in 1838 she exported 33,750 tons of sugar, being more than a sixth of the whole British consumption. The export of Cuba sugar, on an average of three years ending 1816, was 51,000 tons; in 1834 it was 120,000 tons. During the first period the export of Brazil sugar was, on an average, 26,250 tons in the last year it was progress of 70,970 tons.1 The production of coffee declined so the Nation, rapidly in the British West India plantations, that not- Parl. Rep. withstanding a reduction of the duty one-half per pound Indies, 286. in 1825, the export fell, on an average of five years 1 3d edit. 373; on West |