by Edmund Burke
This disproportion between the freemen and negroes grows more visible every day. That enterprising spirit which the novelty of the object, and various concurrent causes had produced in the last century, has decayed very much. We have as many men indigent and unemployed at home as we had then; but they have not the same spirit and activity they had at that time. The disposition of the people in the West-Indies concurs with that of our people at home, to increase and to perpetuate the evil of which I complain; for they chuse to do every thing by negroes, which can possibly be done by them; and though they have laws and ordinances to oblige them to keep a certain number of white servants in some proportion to their blacks, in most places these laws are but a dead letter. They find it more easy to pay the penalty when seldom it is exacted, than to comply with the law. Their avarice in the particulars makes them blind to the hazards to which they expose the sum total of their affairs. This disposition in the planters is now almost grown inveterate, and to such a degree, that the remedy will probably never be administred by themselves; and if this disposition continues, in a little time, (which is indeed nearly the case already,) all the English in our colonies there will consist of little more than a few planters and merchants; and the rest will be a despicable, though a dangerous, because a numerous and disaffected herd of African slaves.
Indubitably the security, as well as the solid wealth of every nation, consists principally in the number of low and middling men of a free condition, and that beautiful gradation from the highest to the lowest, where the transitions all the way are almost imperceptible. To produce this ought to be the aim and mark of every well regulated commonwealth, and none has ever flourished upon other principles. But when we consider the colony out of that independent light, and as it is related to Great Britain, it is clear that this neglect is of great detriment to the mother country; because it is certain, that the consumption of our commodities there would be in a great measure in proportion to the number of white men; and there is nobody at all acquainted with the plantations, who will not readily allow, that when I say one white man takes off as much of our manufactures as three negroes, that I estimate his value to us at a very low rate.
But the necessity of having there a proper number of whites is not only strongly enforced by the consideration of the great gain which would from thence accrue to us, but from the vast savings which such an arrangement would produce. The militia of the West-Indies is exceedingly well trained, so as to be in discipline not very much inferior, but in courage and spirit beyond most regular troops; and they really want nothing but sufficient numbers to be able fully to defend themselves, and occasionally to annoy the enemy; for both which purposes they are infinitely more fit by being habituated to the climate, than raw troops, which in this part of the world can never meet the enemy in the field with much more than half their complement. A less number of troops would do there in all times, if this point was well studied; and I may venture to say, that the transporting and comfortably providing for a proper number of men effectually to secure our colonies, and even to make any attempt upon them desperate, would not have cost the government one third part of the money, which for these twenty years past has been expended in the transporting and maintaining of troops there, who die and waste away without any benefit to themselves or their country; whereas these settlers, who would so effectually intimidate a foreign enemy, and take away all hope of liberty from the negroes, would all the while be enriching their mother country, and paying a large interest for the sums she expended in their establishment.
I am conscious that many objections will be made against the very proposal, and that many more would be started against any effectual scheme for increasing the number of white servants in the West-Indies. They are represented, as of very little use, disorderly, idle, drunken, and fitter to pervert the negroes, than to be any assistance to them in their business. This I believe to be in general true; but this is no sort of objection to having them; though it is an excellent argument for putting them, their masters, and the whole colony under a better regulation. If we labour under great inconveniencies from the want of a police at home, this want is infinitely more visible in the West-Indies, where for the most part they all live without the least sense of religion, in a state of vice and debauchery, which is really deplorable to consider them as men and christians, and of a very bad aspect in a political light. If therefore it should be thought convenient by the wisdom of our government, at any time to enter into a scheme for peopling these countries fully and properly, it will be equally convenient at the same time to take such strict measures as may preserve them from vice and idleness; a thing far enough from impracticable. Whenever such regulations shall take place, they will in a good measure answer another end too, the preserving the health and lives of the people; a point which in all places every wise government will have very much at heart; but which is above all necessary in a colony, where the people are an inestimable treasure, and where the climate itself is sufficiently fatal.
These observations principally regard Jamaica, the largest and best of our islands, where there are prodigious tracts of uncultivated land. As the rivers there are not navigable, and as sugar is a bulky commodity, which cannot afford to pay for a very long land carriage, the coasts, or only the land very near the coasts, can be turned to that commodity. But if poor people were sufficiently encouraged to settle in the inland parts, necessity would oblige them to raise cotton, cacao, coffee, ginger, aloes, allspice, the dying woods, and other things which require no vast labour, are not so burthensome in carriage, and which have all a sufficient demand at home to encourage people who do not look to great and sudden fortunes. And as we bring all these, especially the cotton, which is of great use in our manufactures, from abroad, we might encourage the raising more of it by some moderate premium. The same necessity too would oblige them to try experiments on cochineal, and various other things which we don’t now think of, and which the climate would not refuse. By degrees, and with good management, they would improve in the culture of many of these articles in which they are now defective; the careful would grow tolerably rich; and considerable works of many valuable commodities, as cocoa, cochineal, and even indigo, may be attempted with small capitals. Excepting the labour, I don’t know that any of these require above two or three hundred pounds to begin with. So that whilst the great stocks, and the lands convenient to navigation are employed in sugars, the small capitals and the inland might be employed in the less expensive, though not less useful articles I have mentioned; every part would flourish, and agriculture would have it’s share with the other improvements; so that the great number might be subsisted at less expence than the few are now maintained. All this, I am confident, could be effected for twenty thousand pounds, or less, properly laid out; and the island by this means be rendered in a few years three times more beneficial to us than it is at present. By the neglect of some encouragement of this kind, the great stocks, and the running into a staple which required them, have by degrees devoured the island. It is the nature of vast stocks to create a sort of monopoly; and it is the nature of monopoly to aim at great profits from a comparatively little produce; but diffuse business, and by bringing it within the compass of several, you will make them sit down each with a small profit, for all cannot hope a fortune, but the joint produce of all will be very considerable. Indigo was once very greatly produced in Jamaica, and it enriched the island to so great a degree, that in the parish of Vere, where this drug was cultivated, they are said to have had no less than three hundred gentlemen’s coaches; a number I do not imagine even the whole island exceeds at this day; and there is great reason to believe, that there were many more persons of property in Jamaica formerly than are there now, though perhaps they had not those vast fortunes, which dazzle us in such a manner at present.
CHAP. XI.
SINCE I have indulged myself so long in a speculation, which appears to me very material to the welfare of these colonies, I shall venture to say so
mething farther concerning another part of the inhabitants, tho’ it may perhaps meet no warm reception from those who are the most nearly concerned.
The negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more compleat, and attended with far worse circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time. Proofs of this are not wanting. The prodigious waste which we experience in this unhappy part of our species, is a full and melancholy evidence of this truth. The island of Barbadoes, (the negroes upon which do not amount to eighty thousand) notwithstanding all the means which they use to increase them by propagation, notwithstanding that the climate is in every respect, except that of being more wholsome, exactly resembling the climate from whence they come; notwithstanding all this, Barbadoes lies under a necessity of an annual recruit of five thousand slaves to keep up the stock at the number I have mentioned. This prodigiou• failure, which is at least in the same proportion in all our islands, shews demonstratively that some uncommon and insupportable hardship lies upon the negroes, which wears them down in such a surprising manner; and this, I imagine, is principally the excessive labour which they undergo. For previously, I suppose, that none of the inhabitants of the countries between the tropics are capable, even in their own climates, of near so much labour without great prejudice to them, as our people are in ours. But in our plantations the blacks work severely for five days, without any relaxation or intermission, for the benefit of the master, and the other two days they are obliged to labour for their own subsistence during the rest of the week; and this, I imagine, with the other circumstances of great severity which depress their spirits, naturally cuts off great numbers, as well as disqualifies those who remain from supplying this waste by natural propagation.
The planter will say, that if he is to allow his negroes more recreation, and to indulge them in more hours of absence from their work, he can never reimburse himself for the charge he has been at in the purchase of the slave, nor make the profits which induced him to go to that expence. But this, though it appears plausible enough at first, because the slaves are very dear, and because they do not yield above ten or twelve pounds a head annually clear profit by their labour, is notwithstanding very fallacious. For let it be considered, that out of their stock of eighty thousand in Barbadoes, there die every year five thousand negroes more than are born in that island: in effect this people is under a necessity of being entirely renewed every sixteen years; and what must we think of the management of a people, who far from increasing greatly, as those who have no loss by wars ought to do, must in so short a space of time as sixteen years, without foreign recruits, be entirely consumed to a man? Let us suppose that these slaves stand the Barbadians in no more than twenty pounds a head out of the ship; whereas, in reality, they cost a great deal more; this makes one hundred thousand pounds every year, and in sixteen years one million six hundred thousand pounds. A sum really astonishing, and amounting to a fourth of the value of every thing they export.
Now suppose, that by allowing a more moderate labour, and some other indulgences, a great number of these deaths might be prevented, (and many I think it is probable would so be prevented,) and that they could keep up within a thousand of their stock, (and why they could not entirely keep it up by such means, I cannot possibly guess) they would save in this way eighty thousand pounds every year. But from thence we must deduct the time in which these slaves have been unemployed. I suppose that all reasonable indulgences might be given of every sort for the difference of forty thousand pounds, which is the labour of four thousand slaves. This will be far from a small allowance, especially as in this way less time will be lost by sickness, and the surgeon will have less employment. Then, after all deductions, by behaving like good men, good masters, and good christians, the inhabitants of this one island would save forty thousand pounds a year; which if instead of being saved, it were lost by such a proceeding, it ought to be considered as a necessary loss, and borne accordingly.
This matter, though not I think before shewn in this same light, seems in itself extremely clear; but if it were yet clearer, there are several gentlemen of the West-Indies who could not comprehend it; though a waggoner in England will comprehend very clearly, that if he works his horse but moderately, and feeds him well, he will draw more profit from him in the end, than if he never gave him an hour’s respite in the day from his work, and at night turned him upon the common for his subsistence. I am far from contending in favour of an effeminate indulgence to these people. I know that they are stubborn and intractable for the most part, and that they must be ruled with a rod of iron. I would have them ruled, but not crushed with it. I would have a humanity exercised which is consistent with steadiness. And I think it clear from the whole course of history, that those nations which have behaved with the greatest humanity to their slaves, were always best served, and ran the least hazard from their rebellions. And I am the more convinced of the necessity of these indulgences, as slaves certainly cannot go through so much work as freemen. The mind goes a great way in every thing; and when a man knows that this labour is for himself; and that the more he labours, the more he is to acquire, this consciousness carries him through, and supports him beneath fatigues, under which he otherwise would have sunk.
The prejudice this saving would be to the African trade, is I know an objection which to some would appear very plausible. But surely, one cannot hear without horror of a trade which must depend for it’s support upon the annual murder of several thousands of innocent men; and indeed nothing could excuse the slave trade at all, but the necessity we are under of peopling our colonies, and the consideration that the slaves we buy were in the same condition in Africa, either hereditary, or taken in war. But in fact, if the waste of these men should become less, the price would fall; then if a due order were taken the same demand might be kept, by the extending our colonies, which is now produced by the havock made of the people. This is the case on the continent, where though the slaves increase, there is an annual call for seven thousand at least.
The principal time I would have reserved for the indulgence I propose to be granted to the slaves, is Sunday, or the Lord’s day; a day which is profaned in a manner altogether scandalous in our colonies. On this day, I would have them regularly attend at church; I would have them, particularly the children, carefully (full as carefully as any others) instructed in the principles of religion and virtue, and especially in the humility, submission and honesty which become their condition. The rest of the day might be devoted to innocent recreation; to these days of relaxation, and with the same exercises, should be added some days in the grand festivals of Christmass, Easter and Whitsuntide, and perhaps, four or five days in the year besides. Such methods would by degrees habituate their masters, not to think them a sort of beasts, and without souls, as some of them do at present, who treat them accordingly; and the slaves would of course grow more honest, tractable, and less of eye-servants; unless the sanctions of religion, the precepts of morality, and all the habits of an early institution, be of no advantage to mankind. Indeed I have before me an author, if he may be so called, who treats the notion of bringing the negroes to christianity with contempt, and talks of it at the best, as a thing of indifference. But besides that he appears to me a writer of every little judgment, I cannot conceive with what face any body, who pretends to inform the public, can set up as an advocate for irreligion, barbarism, and gross ignorance.
CHAP. XII.
IT is said, that the law of England is favourable to liberty; and so far this observation is just, that when we had men in a servile condition amongst us, the law took advantage even of neglects of the master to enfranchise the villain; and seemed for that purpose even to subtilize a little; because our ancestors judged, that freemen were the real support of the kingdom. What if in our colonies we should go so far, as to find out some medium between liberty and absolute slavery, in which we might place all mulattoes after a certain limi
ted servitude to the owner of the mother; and such blacks, who being born in the islands, their masters for their good services should think proper in some degree to enfranchise? These might have land allotted them, or where that could not be spared, some sort of fixed employment, from either of which they should be obliged to pay a certain moderate rent to the public. Whatever they should acquire above this, to be the reward of their industry. The necessity of paying the rent would keep them from idleness; and when men are once set to work through necessity, they will not stop there; but they will gradually strive for conveniencies, and some even for superfluities. All this will add to the demand for our goods, and the colony will be strengthened by the addition of so many men, who will have an interest of their own to fight for.
There is, amongst others, a very bad custom in our colonies of multipyling their houshold slaves far beyond reason and necessity. It is not uncommon for families of no very great fortunes, to have twenty-five or thirty in the capacity of menial servants only. These are so many hands taken from planting, to be of no manner of use to the public; but they are infinitely the most dangerous of the slaves; for being at all times about our people, they come to abate of that great reverence, which the field negroes have for the whites, without losing any thing of the resentment of their condition, which is common to both. And besides, in any insurrection they have it more in their power to strike a sudden and fatal blow. Surely a sumptuary law might be contrived to restrain the number of these menial slaves, as there might and ought to be one strictly enjoining all who keep five servants, to have one white man and one white woman amongst them, without any power of being indulged in a contrary practice; as it ought to be a rule never to be broken through, to have not only the overseers, but even all the drivers, white men.