Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies

by Matthew Gregory Lewis

  The conduct of the poor child's mulatto mistress in this case was more unpardonable, and is the only one of numerous instances of a similar description, which have been mentioned to me. Indeed, I have every reason to believe that nothing can be uniformly more wretched than the lives of the slaves of free people of colour in Jamaica ; nor would any thing contribute more to the relief of the black population than the prohibiting by law any mulatto to become the owner of a slave for the future. Why should not rich people of colour be served by poor people of colour, hiring them as domestics? It seldom happens that mulattoes are in possession of plantations ; but when a white man dies, who happens to possess twenty negroes, he will divide them among his brown family, leaving, perhaps, five to each of his four children. These are too few to be employed in plantation work ; they have, therefore, to maintain their owner by some means or other, and which means are frequently not the most honest, the most frequent being the travelling about as higglers, and exchanging the trumpery contents of their packs and boxes with plantation negroes for stolen rum and sugar. I confess I cannot see why, on such request being made, the law should not order the negroes to be sold, and the produce of the sale paid to the mulatto heirs, but absolutely prohibiting the mulattoes from becoming proprietors of the negroes themselves.

  Every man of humanity must wish that slavery, even in its best and most mitigated form, had never found legal sanction, and must regret that its system is now so incorporated with the welfare of Great Britain as well as of Jamaica, as to make its extirpation an absolute impossibility, without the certainty of producing worse mischiefs than the one which we annihilate. But certainly there can be no sort of occasion for continuing on the colonies the existence of domestic slavery , which neither contributes to the security of the colonies themselves, nor to the opulence of the mother-country, the revenue of which derived from colonial duties would suffer no defalcation what ever, even if neither the whites nor blacks in the West Indies were suffered to employ slaves, except in plantation labour.

  MAY 2.

  I gave my negroes a farewell holiday, on which occasion each grown-up person received a present of a half-dollar, and every child a maccaroni. In return, they expressed their sorrow for my departure by eating and drinking, dancing and singing, with more vehemence and perserverance than on any other former occasion. As in all probability many years will elapse without my making them another visit, if indeed I should ever return at all, I have exerted myself while here to do everything which appeared likely to contribute to their welfare and security during my absence. In particular, my attorney has made out a list of all such offences as are most usually committed on plantations, to which proportionate punishments have been affixed by myself. From this code of internal regulations the overseer is not to be allowed to deviate, and the attorney has pledged himself in the most solemn manner to adhere strictly to the system laid down for him. By this means the negro will no longer be punished according to the momentary caprice of their superintendent, but by known and fixed laws, the one no more than the other, and without respect to partiality or prejudice. Hitherto, in everything which had not been previously determined by the public law, with a penalty attached to the breach of it, the negro has been left entirely at the mercy of the overseer, who, if he was a humane man, punished him slightly, and if a tyrant, heavily ; nay, very often the quantity of punishment depended upon the time of day when the offence was made know. If accused in the morning when the overseer was in cold blood and in good humour, a night's confinement in the stocks might be deemed sufficient ; whereas, if the charge was brought when the superior had taken his full proportion of grog or sangaree, the very same offence would be visited with thirty-nine lashes.

  I have, moreover, taken care to settle all disputes respecting property, having caused all negroes having claims upon others to bring them before me previous to my departure, and directed, that from that time forth no such claim should be inquired into, considered as definitively settled by my authority. It would have done the Lord Chancellor's heart good to see how many suits I determined in the course of a week, and with what expedition I made-a clear court of chancery. But perhaps the most astonishing part of the whole business was, that after judgement was pronounced, the losers as well as the gainers declared themselves perfectly satisfied with the justice of the sentence. I must acknowledge, however, that the negro principle that " massa can do no wrong," was of some little assistance to me on this occasion. " Oh! quite just, me good massa! what massa say, quite just ! me no say nothing more ; me good massa!" Then they thanked me " for massa's goodness in giving them so long talk!" and went away to tell all the others " how just massa had been in taking away what they wanted to keep, or not giving them what they asked for." It must be owned that this is not the usual mode of proceeding after the loss of a chancery suit in England. But to do the negroes mere justice, I must say, that I could not have wished to find a more tractable set of people on almost every occasion. Some lazy and obstinate persons, of course, there must inevitably be in so great a number ; but general I found them excellently disposed, and being once thoroughly convinced of my real good-will towards them, they took it for granted that my regulations must be right and beneficial, even in cases where they were in opposition to individual interests and popular prejudices.

  My attorney bad mentioned to me several points which he thought it advisable to have altered, but which he had vainly endeavoured to accomplish. For instance, the negroes were in the practice of bequeathing their houses and grounds, by which means some of there were become owners of several houses and numerous gardens in the village, while the others with large families were either inadequately provided for, or not provided for at all. I directed that from henceforth no negro should possess more than one house, with a sufficient portion of ground his family, and on the following Sunday the overseer by my order looked over the village, took from those who had too much and gave to those who had too little, and made an entire new distribution according to the most strict Agrarian law. Those who lost by this measure came the next day to complain to me ; when I told them it had been done by my order, and explained the propriety of the proceeding ; after which they declared themselves contented, and I never heard another murmur on the subject.

  Again, mothers being allowed certain indulgences wile suckling, persist in continuing the operation for two years and upwards, to the great detriment both to themselves and their children. Complaint if this being made to me, I sent for the mothers, and told them that every child must be sent to the weaning-house on the first day of the fifteenth month, but that their indulgences should be continued to the mothers for two months longer, although the children would be no longer with them. All who had children of that age immediately gave them up ; the rest promised to do so when they should be old enough ; and they all thanked me for the continuance of their indulgences, which they considered as a boon newly granted them.

  On my return from Hordley, I was told that the negroes suffered their pigs to infest the works and grounds in the immediate vicinity of the house in such numbers, that they were become a perfect nuisance ; nor could any remonstrance prevail on them to confine the animals within the village. An order was in consequence issued on a Saturday, that the first four pigs found rambling at large after two days should be put to death without mercy ; and accordingly on Monday morning at the negro breakfast-hour, the head governor made his appearance befor ethe house, armed cap-a-pee, with a lance in his hand and an enormous cutlass by his side. The news of this tremendous apparition spread through the estate like wildfire. Immediately all was in an uproar ; the negroes came pouring down from all quarters; in an instant the whole air was rent with noises of all kinds; men, women, and children shouting and bellowing, geese cackling, dogs barking, turkeys gobbling; and, look where you would, there was a negro running along as fast as he could, and dragging a pig along with him by one of the hind legs, while the pigs were all astonishment at this, sudden attack, and called upon he
aven and earth for commiseration and protection, -

  "With many a doleful grunt and piteous squeak,

  Poor pigs ! as if their pretty hearts would break!

  From thenceforth not a pig except my own was to be seen about the place; yet instead of complaining of this restraint, several of the negroes came to assure me, that I might depend on the animals not being suffered to stray beyond the, village for the future, and to thank me, for having given them the warning two days before. What other negroes may be, I will not pretend to gues ; but I am certain that there cannot be more tractable or better disposed persons (take them for all in all) than my negroes of Cornwall. I only wish, that in my future dealings with white persons, whether in Jamaica or out of it, I could but meet with half so much gratitude, affection, and good-will.

  THE END

  London : Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.