The West India Islands [pp. 455-500]

490 THE WEST INDIA ISLANDS.
looked abandoned, and the luxuriant cocoa, coffee and sugar, which formerly gave
so much beauty to the landscape, were no longer seen; long brushwood had taken
their place and everything wore a neglected aspect."-Vol. i, 80.
In relation to the negroes, Col. Capadose says:
"It is deeply to be regretted that the emancipated, and the people, generally, in
the colonies, are averse to agricultural labor, and that the comparatively few who
do engage in it, are so unreasonable in their demands. It is equally to be lamented, that the free born rising generation seem absolutely disinclined to any pursuits
of that nature, even the cultivation of gardens."-Vol. ii, 250.*
The present value of estates:
" It is affirmed that very few proprietors of estates, in the West Tndia Colonies, now clear the expenses attendant on their cultivation; yet, in some of
them, such as Tobago, Dominica, Grenada, and others, the wages paid to laborers
amount to less than what the maintenance, in all probability, of a similar number
of slaves would have cost before thie emancipation. The loss to proprietors in those
colonies must, then, arise from the difference of labor performed from its present
insufficiency-whilst the laborers have an easy mode of indemnifying themselves
for the lowness of wages by the sale of their ground provisions, on which they
can put what price they please."-Vol. ii, 255.
An able writer, in the February number of Blackwood, 1848, paints
in most fearful colors, the condition of the West Indies:
i Immediately after the emancipation act was passed, the produce of the West
Indian estates began rapidly to decline, and their value to be correspondingly depreciated. This was the inevitable consequence of the abridgment of the working
hours, and of the withdrawal of a great number of laborers altogether from plantation employment. In fact, the want of adequate labor began to be felt most
painfully throughout the colonies. Notwithstanding this, the planters went on,
making every exertion they could, under peculiarly difficult circumstances.
" The increased expense, occasioned by the altered circumstances of the colonies, soon absorbed more than the compensation money which they had received;
and in addition they were urged by government to provide "more fully for the
administration of justice, for the consolidation of the criminal law, for establishing
circuit courts, amending the workhouse laws, improving the state of jails, for
better prison discipline, establishing weekly courts of petit sessions, providing
places of confinement for prisoners, raising an. efficient police, &c.-things no
doubt, very desirable in themselves, but not to be accomplished save at a grievous
cost, which, of course, was thrown entirely upon the shoulders of the planters.
The following extract from the answer of the Jamaica Assembly, in reply to the
Governor's address, at the opening of that chamber on 4th August, 1835, will
show the state of the colonies at the close of the year immediately subsequent to
emancipation:'Seeing large portions of our neglected cane-fields becoming overrun with weeds, and a still larger po/rtion of our pasture lands returning to a state
of nature; seeing, in fact, desolation already overspreading the face of the land, it
is impossible for us, without abandoning the evidence of our own senses, to entertain favorable anticipations,,or to divest ourselves of the painful conviction, that
progressive and rapid deterioration of property will continue to keep pace with the
apprenticeship, and that its termination must (unless strong preventive measures
be applied) complete the ruin of the colony.'
" The following were the immediate and extremely natural consequences:
There was no violence; the mass of the laboring population being left in quiet
possession of the houses and grounds on the estates of their masters. For successive weeks universal idleness reigned over the whole island. The plantation cattle,
deserted by their keepers, ranged at large through the growing crops, and fields of
cane, cultivated at great cost, rotted upon the ground for want of hands to cut
them. Among the ltumibler classes of society, respectable families, whose sole dependence had been a few slaves, had to perform for themselves the most menial of
* Col. Capadose does, in several places, speak of the contentment of the negroes,
and possession of physical comforts; but he is forced, at the same time, to throw
himself upon the name of freedom, so dear; as he admits that they were " comfortable, happy and well taken care of in every way, when slaves."