The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863: Devoted to Literature and National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
integrity, but their withdrawal would inflict incurable harm on
intelligence, order, industry, and civilization. They may be
contemptuously indifferent to the moral and intellectual improvement of
the blacks, but they have no longer a lively interest in opposing it. By
this time they are gradually becoming convinced that the spirit of
slavery cannot be maintained when its power is gone, and are growing
disposed, so far as they have dealings with the blacks, to deal with
them on more equal terms. Bare justice may be the most they are willing
to accord, but even that is a great gain. The journals in their interest
no longer lavish on the freeholding blacks the abuse with which they
once teemed, even after the writer went to the island. The planters are
willing to admit, like those of Westmoreland in an appeal to the
Assembly in behalf of immigration, 'that they do not find fault with
the difficulty of getting labor, which is a necessary result of the
easy acquisition of land,' The more candid are willing to say, as I
heard a gentleman of their class observe: 'We do not complain of the
negroes; they have done as well for themselves perhaps as any people
would. But just because they are doing so well for themselves, they
cannot be depended on to do well for us.' Hence the call for immigrant
laborers; a just and reasonable call, if only the immigration is
conducted with that rigid and conscientious care for the comfort of the
immigrants for which Mr. Sewell gives the government of Trinidad credit,
and if it is really voluntary. The fear that it will injure the negro,
or that he dreads it, is wholly baseless. The negroes have remained
utterly indifferent to the whole agitation of the subject, and are on
perfectly amiable terms with the few coolies already introduced. Indeed
it will be rather for their interest, as a negro remarked to Mr.
Underhill, by giving them a better sale for their produce. The coolies
now in the island appear to have done well. And the danger of
overcrowding the population on a land teeming with tropical plenty,
whose area of 6,400 square miles is occupied by but 441,000 inhabitants,
is not a very imminent one, from any number within the means of the
colony to introduce. And on the ability to procure foreign labor very
much depends the hope of reviving the planting prosperity of Jamaica on
a sounder basis, and in such a degree as is compatible with the
substantial good of the whole population. It is true the population,
relieved from the dreadful waste of slavery, is increasing. The census
of 1844 showed a population of 377,433. That of 1861 showed one of
441,264, an increase of 63,831 in seventeen years. The immigration of
coolies during that time has been between 18,000 and 20,000; the
decrease of the whites, 3,000. The net increase by immigration then has
been at the most 17,000, leaving 47,000 as the natural increase, or 12
per cent., in seventeen years. This is what remains after two terrible
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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