The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4American Anti-Slavery Society
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The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
He is the proprietor of three sugar estates and one cotton plantation in
Barbadoes, on all of which there are seven hundred apprentices. He was a
luxurious looking personage, bottle-cheeked and huge i' the midst, and
had grown fat on slaveholding indulgences. He mingled with every
sentence he uttered some profane expression, or solemn appeal to his
"honor," and seemed to be greatly delighted with hearing himself talk.
He displayed all those prejudices which might naturally be looked for in
a mind educated and trained as his had been. As to the conduct of the
apprentices, he said they were peaceable and industrious, and mostly
well disposed. But after all, the negroes were a perverse race of
people. It was a singular fact, he said, that the severer the master,
the better the apprentices. When the master was mild and indulgent, they
were sure to be lazy, insolent, and unfaithful. _He knew this by
experience; this was the case with_ his _apprentices_. His house-servants
especially were very bad. But there was one complaint he had against
them all, domestics and praedials--they always hold him to the letter of
the law, and are ready to arraign him before the special magistrate for
every infraction of it on his part, however trifling. How ungrateful,
truly! After being provided for with parental care from earliest
infancy, and supplied yearly with two suits of clothes, and as many yams
is they could eat and only having to work thirteen or fifteen hours per
day in return; and now when they are no longer slaves, and new
privileges are conferred to exact them to the full extent of the law
which secures them--what ingratitude! How soon are the kindnesses of the
past, and the hand that bestowed them, forgotten! Had these people
possessed the sentiments of human beings, they would have been willing
to take the boon of freedom and lay it at their master's feet,
dedicating the remainder of their days to his discretionary service!
But with all his violent prejudices, this planter stated some facts
which are highly favorable to the apprentices.
1. He frankly acknowledged that his estates were never under better
cultivation than at the present time: and he could say the same of the
estates throughout the island. The largest crops that have ever been
made, will he realized this year.
2. The apprentices are generally willing to work on the estates on
Saturday whenever their labor is needed.
3. The females are very much disposed to abandon field labor. He has
great difficulty sometimes in inducing them to take their hoes and go
out to the field along with the men; it was the case particularly _with
the mothers!_ This he regarded as a sore evil!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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