Page:Emancipation in the West Indies.djvu/12

There was a derangement of commerce and agriculture for a few years. The trade of the colonies fell off 40 per cent. in 1848, as compared with 1847, which was a very prosperous year. At the same time, the trade of France fell off 25 per cent. From 1848–58 there is a falling off of 10 per cent., as compared with the five years before Emancipation; but in the five subsequent years, from 1852-57, there is a gain of nearly 50 per cent., and the four colonies are steadily gaining in wealth and numbers. We have already spoken of the effect of slavery to diminish population in the West Indies. Since emancipation, this tendency has been checked in the French colonies, though it still continues in some of the English islands. The population of the French possessions, in 1836, was 376 296; in 1846, it had fallen to 874 548; in 1856, it had risen to 387 821, exclusive of immigration.^[1]

The Dutch colony of Guiana, where slaves are still held, gives a most atrocious example of this loss of population.^[2] About 1800 there were 80 000 slaves there, producing an annual value of $7 000 000; in 1845 there were but 48.285 slaves and 9712 free blacks; a decrease of 46 per cent. in 45 years, or, if we include the free blacks, of 34 per cent. But these 48 000 slaves only produced in 1845 a value of $700 000. Of 917 plantations 686 have been abandoned.^[3] and the production has fallen away nine-tenths; yet Emancipation has never troubled the Dutch sugar growers.

From the Danish colonies since Emancipation we have few statistics, but those are all favorable to freedom. We know that St. Thomas is a rich emporium, and that Santa Cruz flourishes. Some disorders, by which the negroes were the greatest sufferers, attended emancipation; but they were occasioned by the ill temper of the planters, and were soon quieted by the excellent government. For the past ten years we hear no tidings of tumult or distress from them.

In 1859 when Theodore Parker visited Santa Cruz and St. Thomas, a member of his family wrote thus of the freed slaves:^[4]

"I often think how delighted you would be with the results of Emancipation, as we see them all around us, and have abundant opportunity to examine them; twenty thousand people raised at once from the condition of cattle to that of responsible beings,-protected and assisted, if need be, by the Government. The thrifty and industrious al- ready succeed in laying up enough to put them forward in the world, build a comfortable little home in town, and bring their children up to trades. They have great pride in being independent. . . . They are gradually acquiring a pride of matrimony. A noble young man here, an Episcopal minister, has established a day school for the colored children of his parish, and I was never so pleased with any school I have ever visited. The progress has been surprising indeed."

"Here, as elsewhere," says Cochin, "Slavery did no good, and Emancipation no harm. A hurricane, or the change of a single degree in the thermometer, would have had an influence more hurtful and more lasting, than the fortunate release of 25 000 or 30 000 men, unjustly enslaved."

In the single Swedish island of St. Bartholomew, there were in 1846, 531 slaves, out of a population of 1700. These have all since been freed by purchase gradually made by King Oscar, $10 000 a year having been voted for this purpose by the Swedish Parliament. We have no information about the effects; if they had been bad, we should, no doubt, have heard of it.

We have now spoken of the condition of all the West India Islands where Emancipation has taken place. It has been shown that all from which we have statistics, except Jamaica and Hayti, are more wealthy than during slavery, and that all, without exception, are increasing their trade and production; that the ruin of Hayti and Jamaica, so far as it exists, is owing to many other causes than Emancipation,—chiefly in the one case, to the cruel policy of Napoleon, and the ungenerous course of France, Spain, and the United States,—and in the other, to the folly of the planters, and the evils begotten by slavery. It has been shown, too, how delusive is the assumed prosperity of Cuba and Porto Rico—islands now passing through the hot fit of the slaveholding fever, but which must soon be let blood by Emancipation, as in Hayti, or pass into the ague fit and melancholy decline of the Dutch colonies, which slavery still curses. It has been shown that the negro is not bloodthirsty, that he is not idle, that he is capable of civilization. Let us add that he is not a pauper,—contrary to

1. ↑ Cochin, Tome 1.. p. 276.
2. ↑ See Cochin, H.. p. 267.
3. ↑ Edinburgh Review, April, 1859.
4. ↑ 27th Report of the Am. A. S. Society, N. Y., 1861-p. 309-10.