The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4American Anti-Slavery Society
History
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
1. He remarked that the planters were getting along _infinitely_ better
under the new system than they ever did under the old. Instead of
regretting that the change had taken place, he is looking forward with
pleasure to a better change in 1840, and he only regrets that it is not
to come sooner.
2. Mr. H. said it was generally conceded that the island was never under
better cultivation than at the present time. The crops for this year
will exceed the average by several thousand hogsheads. The canes were
planted in good season, and well attended to afterwards.
3. Real estate has risen very much since emancipation. Mr. H. stated
that he had lately purchased a small sugar estate, for which he was
obliged to give several hundred pounds more than it would have cost him
before 1834.
4. There is not the least sense of insecurity now. Before emancipation
there was much fear of insurrection, but that fear passed away
with slavery.
5. The prospect for 1840 is good. That people have no fear of ruin after
emancipation, is proved by the building of sugar works on estates which
never had any before, and which were obliged to cart their canes to
neighbouring estates to have them ground and manufactured. There are
also numerous improvements making on the larger estates. Mr. H. is
preparing to make a new mill and boiling-house on Colliton, and other
planters are doing the same. Arrangements are making too in various
directions to build new negro villages on a more commodious plan.
6. Mr. H. says he finds his apprentices perfectly ready to work for
wages during their own time. Whenever he needs their labor on Saturday,
he has only to ask them, and they are ready to go to the mill, or field
at once. There has not been an instance on Colliton estate in which the
apprentices have refused to work, either during the hours required by
law, or during their own time. When he does not need their services on
Saturday, they either hire themselves to other estates or work on their
own grounds.
7. Mr. H. was ready to say, both as a planter and a magistrate, that
vice and crime generally had decreased, and were still on the decrease.
Petty thefts are the principal offences. He has not had occasion to send
a single apprentice to the court of sessions for the last six months.
8. He has no difficulty in managing his people--far less than he did
when they were slaves. It is very seldom that he finds it necessary to
call in the aid of the special magistrate. Conciliatory treatment is
generally sufficient to maintain order and industry among the
apprentices.
9. He affirms that the negroes have no disposition to be revengeful. He
has never seen any thing like revenge.
10. His people are as far removed from insolence as from vindictiveness.
They have been uniformly civil.
11. His apprentices have more interest in the affairs of the estate, and
he puts more confidence in them than he ever did before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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