“Do soils become exhausted faster at Demerara than elsewhere?” asked Mr. Bruce. “If not, there is a poor prospect before our whole race. One would fear they must starve in time. What do they say in England, son?”
“They say, sir, that soils used to be exhausted there, and that, as a matter of course, they were suffered to lie fallow from time to time; but I believe sugar-planters do not like fallows.”
“We cannot afford them,” said Mitchelson. “We must have crops year by year to answer our expenses; and when we have short leases, we must make the most of them, whatever becomes of the land when we have done with it.”
“English farmers are so far of your opinion, that the best of them say they cannot afford fallows; but neither do they exhaust their soils.”
“How in the name of wonder do they manage then?”
“They practise convertible husbandry to a greater extent than we planters ever dream of. Wheat and barley exhaust the land like canes; but by growing green crops in turn with grain, and changing corn land into pasture, they renew the powers of the soil, and may go on for ever, for aught I see, till fallows are banished from the land, and every rood is fertile in its due proportion.”
“That is all very well,” said Mitchelson; “but it is no example for us. Sugar is our staple, and sugar we must grow. We have little use for green crops, and less for pasture.”
“In the present state of things, certainly,” replied Alfred. “The question is, whether it might not answer to find a use for both? I have seen a calculation, and I mean to verify it as I have opportunity, of the expenses and profits of the management of such an estate as this by methods of convertible husbandry. Such a system involves many changes; but they seem to me likely to be all advantageous; and I long to see them tried.”
“He who made the calculation had better try, son.”
“He means to do so, and I shall go over to Barbadoes, some day, and see the result. He will begin by making his slaves more like English labourers——”
“There is a foolish English fancy to begin with,” observed Mitchelson.
“Employing them,” continued Alfred, “in a greater variety of ways than is common here, and doing much of their work with cattle. Instead of buying provisions, importing bricks, and a hundred other things that might be procured at hand, while the soil is all the time growing barren as fast as it can, he will vary his crops, thus raising food for man and beast; he will enlarge his stock of cattle, thus providing manure for his land, and butcher’s meat for his people; his horses will graze for themselves instead of the slaves doing it for them, and they, meanwhile, will be making bricks and doing other things worthy of men, while the work of cattle will be done by cattle.”
“Very fine, indeed! and what becomes of his sugar all this time?”
“A certain proportion of this estate will thus, he expects, be always kept in good heart for the production of the staple on which his profits depend. The profits of this portion and the savings consequent on his management, will amount to at least as much, at the end of ten years, as the profits of growing sugar only; while his land will be in as good condition as ever, the number of his slaves increased, the quality of his stock improved, and all in good train for going on to a state of further prosperity.”
“Your friend is a proprietor, I suppose, Mr. Alfred?”
“He is; but he would follow the same plan if he held a lease.”
“Not he; at least if he once knew what slaves are.”
“He sees, sir, that whatever slaves may be, they can do many things that cattle cannot do, while cattle do the hardest part of slaves’ work better than slaves.”
“To say the truth,” said Mr. Bruce, “I have often wished for ploughs and oxen, if I could but have fed the cattle and employed my lazy slaves. It did seem strange, when I came back from England, to contrast the fine farm-yards and dairies I saw there, with our paddocks, where our half-starved beasts are fed with grass ready cut.”
“It reminds me,” observed Alfred, “of a child’s story-book I saw in England, with pictures of the world turned topsy-turvy. There was one of a mare perched in a gig, with her master in harness. We might make a fellow to it of a man cutting grass for the ox, after having done the work of the plough.”
Alfred had not forgotten that ladies were present all this time, and was still further from supposing that the conversation could be interesting to them; but he was relieved from all consideration for them, by having seen them long before drop asleep, or shut their eyes so as to prohibit conversation as much as if they were. When the gentleman rose, however, to return to the mansion, the fair ones roused themselves and took each an arm to be conducted through the wood. What was the subject of their conversation is not recorded; but it was probably not convertible husbandry, as the ladies of Demerara hear quite enough in the gross of the troubles of a plantation, to be excusable for wishing to avoid the details of grievances which they are told can be remedied by no other power than the English government.
Old Robert seemed to care so little for slavery himself, that perhaps it was natural that he should expect others to care as little; and that he should laugh at his neighbour Cassius for working so hard as he did in his provision-ground, and for his general gravity of manner. Yet Robert knew something of the worst treatment of slaves. He was one who had survived the system of over-working which high prices had occasioned; and he showed that he remembered its hardships by his present dislike of work and contrivances to avoid it. Not a slave on the plantation was so inventive of excuses, so rich in pretences, so ready with long stories and jokes, all designed to stave off work, as Robert, unless it were his wife. None were at the same time so impatient of idleness in others as they; and there was not a hardship which they had suffered, not a threat which had terrified them in former days, not a punishment that it came within their power to inflict, that they did not practise whenever opportunity threw an inferior in their way. If Robert had to lead a horse or drive an ox anywhere, he was sure to beat and torment the animal to the utmost by the way. If his wife found a reptile in her dwelling, she killed it as slowly as she dared, and as cruelly as she could. It would have been well if their power had not been extended beyond beasts, birds, and reptiles; but it was not only shown, by their example, that slavery is the school of tyranny, but, in the instance of a poor little sufferer who lived with them, that the most dreadful lot on earth is to be the slave of slaves.
Little Hester was only ten years old when she was first put under old Sukey, according to the custom by which novices in bondage are made to serve a sort of apprenticeship to those who have been long under the yoke. Some humane masters observing the facilities thus afforded to slave-tyranny, have attempted to break through the custom, but have found that, with all its abuses, it is too much liked by the slaves to be given up. The children prefer, at the outset, being instructed by their own people; and the elderly folks find pleasure, some in the exercise of authority, and others in reviving their impressions of their own young days of friendless slavery. No one who knows how fond negroes are of excitements of feeling, will wonder at their seeking this melancholy enjoyment. There are many instances where the pupil has been cherished by a mother whose babe had been early taken from her by death or violence; or by a father who had seen his sons carried off to a distance, one by one, as they became valuable for their strength or skill. There are many more instances, however, where the young slave’s lot is more chequered than that of childhood in any other part of the world; where kindness is as capricious or rare as sunshine and warmth to the blossoms of a Greenland meadow. Little Hester seemed to wither fast under the treatment of her master and mistress, as they called themselves; but a tone of voice gentler than usual, a mild word, a look of encouragement, would revive her and strengthen her till the next gleam came. There was no end to her troubles but in sleep; and she never slept without dreading the waking. Wearied as she was when she laid herself down on her mat, she was apt to sleep as long as the old people; and if she ever failed to jump up when the gong sounded, Robert was sure either to throw cold water over her, or to touch her feet with a blazing piece of wood from the fire, and to laugh at her start and cry. However foggy the morning, out she must go to the field, and do as much of other people’s work as was put upon her by her master’s order. However tired at noon, she must cook the mess of vegetables, and feed the pigs, and run hither and thither in the broiling sun. However dewy the evening, she must stand in the grass and pluck as much as she could carry; and, having carried it, must be kept the last, as she was the youngest, before she was relieved of her burden. She dared not put it down and leave it; for, when she once did so, she was flogged for not having gathered her portion. When she came home damp and shivering, she was thrust from the fire; and creeping under her mat, lay awake till the smoke hung thick enough round her to warm her, and make her forget her bodily hunger and her cravings of the heart in sleep. These cravings of the heart were her worst misery; for she had known what it was to be cherished, and to love in return. Of her father she remembered little. He had been executed for taking part in an insurrection when she was very young; but her mother and she had lived together till lately. She had seen her mother die, and had stood by the grave where she was buried; yet she awoke every morning expecting to see her leaning over her mat. She dreamed almost every night that her arm was round her mother’s neck, and that her mother sang to her, or that they were going together to find out the country where her father was waiting for them; but as often as she awoke, she saw old Robert’s ugly face instead, as he stood with his red and blue cap on, mocking her; or heard both shouting the hymns which she hated, because they were most sung on Sundays when she was more unhappy than on other days, being tormented at home, and just as much overworked as in the field, without any one to pity her or speak for her. Cassius now and then took her into his ground and gave her some fruit; and he had once stopped Sukey when he thought she had beat the girl enough; but his respect for the aged prevented his seeing how cruel these people were; and, supposing that the poor child would be a slave all her days, he did not “make her discontented with her conditioncondition,” as the overseer’s phrase was on all occasions of interference.
One day, when Hester returned from her morning’s work, she found the cottage empty, and her dinner left on the table as if her master and mistress had taken their’s, or did not mean to return for it. The little girl danced to the door to shut it, and then sat down on her mat to eat her mess of vegetables and herrings. Almost before she had done, she sank down asleep, for, besides being overwearied as usual, the absence of scolding tongues made such an unwonted quiet in the dwelling, that she felt as if it was night. She slept this time without fear of being roused by fire or water; for Robert was taking his turn that day as watchman of the provision-grounds in the neighbourhood; and on these occasions the old man frequently took his dinner in a neighbour’s dwelling, and his wife made holiday also during the hour and a half she could call her own. Hester therefore thought herself secure till the gong should sound. She was mistaken, however; for after dreaming that she heard the dreaded voice calling her, and that she knew it was only a dream, she felt her hair twitched smartly, and started at Sukey’s shout of—
“Don’t you hear your master calling you?”
“Sleep has no master,” said the poor little girl, trying to rouse herself, and to remember what time of day it was. “Is the sun up? Shall I be flogged?”
“Yes; you shall be flogged if you don’t run this moment to the sick house and say that your mistress is ill, and can’t work any more to-day. Make haste, or you won’t be there before the gong sounds.”
“But,” said the child, looking timidly at Sukey’s face, which showed more signs of mirth than of pain; “they will not believe me, and then they will flog me.”
Sukey said she should go down to the sick house as soon as she could; and in the mean time began to hold her body and writhe herself about as if in great pain, while Robert mixed something in a calabash as Hester had seen him do before when he was lazy or bent on mischief, and wanted to make himself ill for a short time to escape work. The little girl still lingered, saying—
“If you would go with me now, the surgeon would see that you are ill.”
But Sukey flying at her in a passion, and Robert giving her a tremendous kick to hasten her departure, the child fled away through the wood at her utmost speed.
“Horner,” said the surgeon to the overseer, when Hester had made her way through the crowd of reputed invalids who surrounded the door of the sick house, “what is the matter with Sukey? Where was she this morning?”
“At her work, and so merry I was obliged to make her hold her tongue. She was as well as I am two hours ago, and is now, I’ll be bound for it.”
“If she is not really ill, child,” said the surgeon, “you shall be punished for bringing such a story.”
“We’ll make you really ill, I can tell you,” Horner proceeded.
The child looked out wistfully, in hopes Sukey was coming to tell her own story. She was rejoiced to see Robert approaching with a solemn face and a calabash in his hand.
“Sukey is very bad, very bad,” he protested. “She can’t come; she can’t walk; but if the surgeon will send her some physic, she hopes she can go to her work to-morrow.”
And he displayed the contents of his calabash—some stinking black stuff which he vowed she had just thrown up. The surgeon looked at it, and then jerked the liquor in the old rogue’s face. Robert whined and muttered as he shook the perfume from his locks and wiped it from his nose and chin, but bowed humbly when the surgeon handed him a powder, and hobbled away to avoid further question. The little girl had already disappeared.
It was moonlight when she returned from delivering her bundle of cattle-feed. As she passed slowly before the fence of Cassius’s ground, it seemed to her that it was not in its usual order. Another look showed her that the soil was as rough in some parts as if it had been dug up, and that the green crop was trampled and the leaves strewn about as if a herd of oxen had made their way through it. This might have been the case, as the gate stood open; and Hester stepped in to see. She started when she saw that somebody was there. Cassius stood, leaning his forehead against his low threshold, his arms folded on his breast. The child remained beside him for some minutes, hoping he would turn round, but as he did not, she gently pulled his jacket. He still took no notice. At last, a long deep sob broke from him, and the child, terrified at his agitation, ran away. He strode after her, and caught her at the gate. He held her with a strong grasp, as he cried—
“Who robbed my ground? You know, and you shall tell me. Don’t dare to tell me a lie. Who robbed me?”
“Indeed, indeed, I don’t know. I did not know you had been robbed.”
“You did, you did. Why, don’t you see?” he cried, as he dragged her from one plot to another, “here is not a potato left, the yams are all gone, and look at the plantain boughs torn down. Everything is spoiled. I have nothing to feed my pigs with. I have nothing to carry to market. I have no more money than I had a year ago. I shall not be free this year—nor the next—nor the next—nor—I wish I was dead. I shall never be free till then.”
Hester did not understand what all this meant, so she remained silent and quiet.
“Child!” Cassius broke forth again, “do you want to be free? Do you know anybody that wants to be free?”
“I don’t know what it is to be free,” said the child, innocently.
“No, nor ever will,” muttered Cassius. “It was not you that helped to rob me then. It is somebody else who wants a ransom by fair means or foul.”
“You always gave me some fruit when I asked,” said the child, “so why should I steal it? And I have been in the fields ever since dinner-time.”
“And where have Robert and Sukey been?”
Instead of answering, Hester looked round for a way of escape. Her impatient companion shook an answer out of her.
“They beat me sometimes when I say where they are.”are.”
“I will beat you if you don’t. No, no, I won’t,” said Cassius, relenting at the child’s tears; “I never beat you, did I?”
“No, never; and I had rather anybody beat me than you; but you won’t say that I saw you?”
“Not if you tell me all you know.”
“Well; I don’t know anything about your ground being robbed; but my master can tell you, I suppose, because he was watchman this afternoon, and I think my mistress stayed from work to help him, for she said she was ill.”
“And is she ill?”
“Only the same as she always is, when she does not like to go to the field.”
Cassius made no other answer to all Hester told him, than to bid her go home, as it was so late that Robert and Sukey would suspect her if she stayed longer.
Robert’s door was fastened when the child got home; and when she called to be let in, her master cried out, that she should be punished in the morning for loitering; and that in the mean time she might get supper and sleep where she could, for he and Sukey would not get up to let her in. The child began to wail, but was threatened with a double flogging if she did not hold her tongue and go to sleep at the door. She sat down on the ground to consider whether she dared go and ask shelter of Cassius, or whether she should lie down on the litter of straw beside Robert’s dog, and try to keep herself warm in that manner. In a minute she heard a giggle from within, and suspecting her master might not be in bed, she crept round to where the fire-light shone through a chink, and looking in, saw both the old people up and stirring. They seemed to be making a plentiful supper, and little heaps of yams and potatoes were lying about, which she had no doubt came out of Cassius’s ground. It was by this time so very cold, and the sight of a fire was so tempting, that she determined to seek shelter with Cassius, resolving, however, with a prudence melancholy at her years, to say nothing of what she had seen, and hoping that the spoils would be put out of the way of discovery before the morning.
Cassius was not gone to bed, for he knew there would be no rest for him this night. It was a relief to him to have something to do; and he bestirred himself to heap wood on the fire, to get the child some supper, and to cover her up warm. He also promised to beg her off from the threatened flogging; so that the child was unusually happy at the end of her day’s troubles, and got rest by pleasanter means than crying herself to sleep.
Cassius laid his complaint against the watchman as a watchman, as he had no means of proving him to be a thief; for Robert and Sukey had employed the night in removing all traces of their spoils, which, however, filled their pockets well the next market-day. Robert was slightly punished for negligence on his beat, in the face of all the many stories he had to tell of his unequalled excellence as a watchman, and of the extraordinary difficulties which attended his duty on that particular day. By dint of repeated and pertinacious complaints, Cassius obtained some ungracious and imperfect redress, the overseer swearing at him for his obstinacy, and his master complaining of the interference of the law in his private property.
Mr. Mitchelson was perfectly correct in saying that planters are subject to an evil which their countrymen in England are free from, when the law interferes with private property; but that evil is chargeable upon the nature of the property. It is another branch of the mischief of the claimant and the infringer of the law being opposed to one another in one sense, while in another they constitute the same party.
An injured slave appeals to the law; the law decrees him redress; and the unwilling master, while he cannot set aside the decree, complains—and the complaint, though unjust, is true in fact—that the law intermeddles in the disposal of his private property.
This fact brings in another consideration, another instance of the reversal, in the case of slavery, of all common rules,—that slaves are better protected in despotic states than under a free government. Where there is least scruple about interfering with private property,—that is, where there is a despotic magistracy,—there will be the fewest considerations to oppose to the impulses of humanity. Where the slave-holder possesses the largest influence over public opinion,—where he is a member of a colonial assembly, or an influential elector of such a member, or a possessor of any of those means of keeping the magistracy in check, which exist only under a free government,—there is the strongest probability of the magistrate’s being tempted to stifle those complaints which he knows cannot be urged elsewhere if disallowed by him.
In the days of Augustus, one Vidius Pollio, in the presence of the emperor, ordered one of his slaves, who had committed some slight fault, to be cut in pieces and be thrown into his fish-pond to feed the fishes. The emperor thereupon commanded him to emancipate, immediately, not only that slave, but all the others that belonged to him.
In these days, no potentate can thus dispose of the property of a Briton; and it is well. But it is clearly just that while the Briton abjures despotic rule, he should hold none under him in such subjection as to need the interference of despotic vengeance for the redress of their wrongs.
To attempt to combine freedom and slavery is to put new wine into old skins. Soon may the old skins burst! for we shall never want for a better wine than they have ever held.
About this time there was occasion for a family consultation in old Mark’s cottage; and it took place one day instead of the afternoon sleep, to which the family regularly composed themselves when dinner was done, except at such busy seasons as deprived them of the indulgence necessary to negroes.
Old Mark had talked on, as usual, all dinner time, his children listening to him as if he had been an oracle, except Nell, who, for once, seemed inattentive to her father, and full of her own thoughts. Becky observed upon this as soon as there was a pause, saying that she supposed Nell had had some scolding, or was likely to be punished for having spoiled some of her work that morning. Willy said that it was a different sort of speech that Nell had had made to her; and he laughed. Becky’s face clouded over at once; for, much as she had to say about the compliments paid to herself, she knew that Nell had far more.—Nell was handsomer and more spirited than Becky; and they were about equally vain; so that, till they had each a lover, there were frequent quarrels between the sisters; and even since their rivalry had ceased, Becky was subject to pangs of envy as often as she heard of her sister being more admired than herself.
Nell now explained that their neighbour Harry had made up his mind at last to marry her if she chose; and she only waited to know what her father would say.
He shook his head, and asked how long it was since there had been a slave marriage on the estate. None of the young people remembered one on their plantation, but there had been one in the neighbourhood within ten years. Mark remembered that he had been happier with his wife than before he married her; and from his own experience, would have recommended his daughters to settle; but more and more difficulties had arisen since his young days about the consequences of slaves’ marriages, and he was afraid to advise the step; especially as Willy was altogether against it, out of regard to his sister, and Becky, because her own lover would not promise to marry her. Willy did not speak for a long time, while his father went on prosing about how everybody would talk, and stare, and wonder, and whether it would please or displease their master, and lastly, whether Nell would be happier or less happy after it.
“If you will marry too, Willy——”
“I won’t marry,” said Willy, doggedly.
“Your master values you, and so it is most likely he would not be angry; and it would make people wonder less about Nell.”
“They might well wonder at me. No, father; I saw what came of the marriage in the next plantation. It was just like no marriage.”
“But there is a law now to make our marriages as lawful as white people’s.”
“To bind a man and his wife together as long as they are both slaves; but if the man gets free, the woman cannot go with him. His money is not hers because it is his; and if anybody buys her, her husband may not follow her unless his master allows it. They cannot do their children any good. They cannot make them free, nor save them from labour, nor help them to get justice.”
“But there is a pleasure in living with a wife in a cottage, and in sowing corn together, and in making the fire for one another, and in having her to talk to, and to dance with, when holidays come.”
Willy observed that all this might be done without being married, and was done by everybody on the plantation, who would have married if the civil rights of marriage had been allowed to them as to the whites.
“But you do every thing for yourself, Willy. You want nobody to sing to you, or to dance with you, or to go to market with you. You want nobody to love.”
“I love you, father, and Nell, and Becky.”
“But I shall die soon, and Nell will marry, and Becky loves her lover. It is time you should find somebody else to love.”
“The time is past, father. I began to love Clara once, just before she died; and while I was forgetting my sorrow for her, I learned by what I saw, never to love anybody else.”
“Why, Willy?”
“Because a black must be first a slave and then a man. A white woman has nobody to rule her but her husband, and nobody can hurt her without his leave: but a slave’s wife must obey her master before her husband; and he cannot save her from being flogged. I saw my friend Hector throw himself on the ground when his wife was put in the stocks; and then I swore that I would never have a wife.”
“But think of Hector’s children, Willy. O, you do not know the pleasure of hearing one’s little children laugh in the shade, when the sun makes one faint at noon! It is like a wind from the north. And to let them sleep under the same mat, and to see them play like the whites,—and then their master pats their heads sometimes when they follow him.”
“Like dogs,” said Willy, “that as often get a kick as a kind word. When I see little children as clever and as merry as whites, I take them up in my arms and love them; but when they are carried away where their father shall never see them again, or when their mothers look sad to find them growing as stupid as we are, I am glad that I am not their father.”
“Becky!” said her father, “are these the reasons that your lover will not marry you?”
Becky made no answer; for the fact was she knew nothing more than that he thought there was no occasion.
“Willy!” said the old man again, “if you will not love nor marry here, you will try to go somewhere where you can be a man and a husband without being a slave. You work in our ground. Is it that you may be free when I am dead?”
“No, father, I shall not try to be free.”
“Why then do you sow corn and dig our ground for us? If you get money, why will you not pay it to be free?”
“I sow corn that you may have as good food as when you were young and could dig like me. I get money because others do so; but, unless it were many times as much, it does little good to me, for I shall never be free. The Englishmen, over the sea, tell us that they wish us to be free, and bid us try to buy our ransom; and when we have nearly done so, they put a higher price upon us, and laugh when we give up.”
“How can people so far off raise our price?”
“They raise the price of sugars because our masters ask them, and then our masters raise our price. Hector once hoped to buy his freedom; and it made him happy to see his master look sad, because then he knew that his master could not sell his sugar, and did not want his slaves so much, and Hector hoped that no more sugar would be sold till his master had taken his ransom and let him go. But one day the overseer told him that his ransom was too low and he must not go yet. It was because his master wanted to make sugar again; and he wanted to make sugar because the people in England pitied our masters, and made sugar dearer that they might be rich.”
“If the whites in England pitied us,” said Nell, “they would make sugar cheaper that we might be free.”
“Till they do,” said Willy, folding his arms, “I will be as I am, I will work no more than I cannot help. I will sleep all I can, that I may forget. I will love my father till he dies, and Nell and Becky till they have husbands that will love them more than I. Then, since I cannot love, I will hate; and I will call to the hurricane to bury me under my roof and set me free.”
“You will love our young master, Willy? He did not forget you while he was beyond the sea, and he is a kind master now he has come back.”
“I did not forget him,” said Willy. “I remember how he made me play with him when we were both boys; but I did not love him then, because he was oftener my master than my play-fellow; and I do not love him now, because he will be my master again. Don’t ask me, father, to love anybody. Slaves cannot love.”
Willy looked round for his sisters; but Nell was gone to Harry’s cottage to tell him she would marry him, thus taking advantage of her brother’s mention of husbands for herself and Becky. Becky had followed to see how Harry would take the communication. So Willy threw himself down on his mat as if going to sleep, while his father, whose ideas had been carried back to his young days, sat at the door of the hut, singing to himself the song with which he had courted his long-buried wife.
“What can be the matter with Mitchelson?” said Mr. Bruce one day, when his son was riding with him. “See what a hurry he is in, and how vexed he looks! He is in a downright passion with his favourite mare.”
Mr. Mitchelson smoothed his countenance a little as he approached, but still looked sorely troubled. The cause of his vexation was soon told. His mill-dam had burst, and been carried away at a very critical season, and nothing could repay the loss of time before it could be restored. Time was everything in such a case.
“And how long will it take to repair it?” inquired Alfred.
“Three months,—three precious months, I expect.”
“Is it possible?” said Alfred. “I cannot think it.”
“You judge of everything, son, as if this were England,” said Mr. Bruce. “Our people do not turn off work like the labourers you have been accustomed to see.”
“Mr. Mitchelson must know best, of course,” replied Alfred; “but does your surveyor, or contractor, or whoever he be, bid you wait three months?”
“He will when he hears the story which I am now on my way to tell him. I can’t stop, so good morning.”
“Let me go with you,—may I?” said Alfred. “I like to see and hear everything I can.”
Mr. Mitchelson professing himself glad of his company, Alfred turned his horse’s head in search of the contractor.
While this important personage was musing and calculating, Mr. Mitchelson kept urging,—
“Time, you know, is everything. Anything to save time.”
Alfred modestly suggested that it would be worth trying the experiment of making the slaves as much like English labourers for the occasion as possible. Mitchelson laughed at the idea; but asked the contractor how long the repairs would take if the number of slaves he meant to employ were English labourers?
“From twelve to fifteen days, I should think.”
“And how long if they work like slaves in general?”
“Probably sixty days.”
“Somewhat under the time I fixed in my own mind. You know, Alfred, I said three months at a round guess.”
“I wish—I wish——” Alfred kept saying, half to himself.
“What do you wish?” said the contractor, who understood the value of labour, and suspected that he and Alfred were of the same way of thinking on that class of subjects; “what is it you wish?”
“Perhaps Mr. Mitchelson will laugh at me for the notion; but I wish he would let you and me manage this affair, as we shall agree; you pledging yourself for the cost, and I for the time. You shall arrange the work, and I will manage the slaves.”
“In that case,” replied the contractor, “I would engage to finish the repairs in twenty days.”
“Twenty days!” cried Mitchelson. “My dear sir, you were more right in saying sixty. You will not do it under sixty. But you may try. I give you carte blanche; and to leave you perfectly free, I will go away. I want to go into Berbice, and I may as well do it now while our regular business is stopped.”
The other contracting parties were by no means sorry for this. Alfred’s partner returned with him, and operations were commenced immediately.
The main feature of Alfred’s plan was to pay wages. He collected the men, told them what they had to do and expect, promised them warm clothing in case of their working early and late, showed them the ample provision of meat, bread, and vegetables he had stored at hand, marched them off, only staying behind to forbid the overseer to come within sight of the mill-dam, and from that time never left the spot till the work was finished. Horner was very angry, and full of scorn and evil prognostications; but nobody cared except the poor women and children, upon whom he vented his ill-humour as long as he was deprived of his dominion over the able-bodied labourers.
Mr. Bruce arrived when the work was half done, to see how his son’s speculation was likely to succeed. As he approached, he was struck with the appearance of activity so unusual in that region. The first sound he heard was a hum of voices, some singing, some talking, some laughing; for negroes have none of the gravity of English labourers. When they are not sullen they are merry; and now they showed that talk and mirth were no hinderance to working with might and main. Cassius toiled the hardest of all, and was the gravest; but he was happy: for this was an opportunity of increasing the fund for his ransom which he had little dreamed of. Alfred was talking with him, and lending a hand, as he did continually to one or another, when his father appeared.
“Bravo! son,” cried Mr. Bruce, as Alfred ran to meet him. “You and your partner are doing wonders, I see. Will you fulfil your contract?”
“Very easily, sir, if weather remains favourable—(O! I forgot there was no fear of bad weather)—and if Mr. Mitchelson keeps out of the way, so that I may keep Horner and his whip out of the way also till we have done. The family are all absent, you see; but I will step in with you while you rest yourself. I was surprised to find the ladies gone too when I arrived.”
“Mitchelson always takes them with him when he is absent for more than a few hours.”
Alfred thought within himself that he should not have suspected the gentleman of being so very domestic.
“But come,” said Mr. Bruce, dismounting and fastening up his horse, “show me the secrets of your management. What are these barrels, and whence comes this savoury smell?”
“These barrels hold beef and pork, sir; and the savour is from the cooking in yonder hut.”
“And what is your allowance per man?”
“As much as he chooses to eat. We should get little work done if we gave each labourer weekly no more than two pounds of herrings and eight pounds of flour, with the vegetables they grow themselves.”
“The law pronounces that to be enough.”
“But what says the law of nature? You and I do no hard work; and could we keep ourselves sleek and strong on such a supply of food?”
“Negroes do not want so much as whites.”
“That is a good reason for their having as much as they do want. Our people here are not troubled with indigestion, as far as I can perceive. What do you think of our warm jackets?”
“I cannot imagine how they can support the heat in such clothing. No wonder they throw them aside.”
“They are only for morning and evening. The people scarcely seem to heed the morning fogs while they wear their woollens; and we make them put them on again when the sun sets——”
“Do you mean that they work after sunset of their own accord?”
“We have difficulty in making them leave off at nine o’clock. They like to sing to the moon as they work; and when they have done, they are not too tired for a dance. Father, you would more than pay for a double suit of clothing to your slaves by the improvement in their morning’s work; and yet I believe you give them more than the law orders.”
“Yes. One hat, shirt, jacket, and trowsers, cannot be made to last a year; and the clothing that the slaves buy for themselves is more for ornament than warmth. I do not know how the overseer clothes them, but I have always desired that they should have whatever was necessary.”
Alfred said to himself that the overseer’s notions of what was necessary might not be the best rule to go by.
Mr. Bruce meanwhile was looking alternately at two gangs of slaves at work after a rather different manner. He was standing on the confines of two estates; and, in a field at a little distance, a company of slaves was occupied as usual; that is, bending over the ground, but to all appearance scarcely moving, silent, listless, and dull. At hand, the whole gang, from Cassius down to the youngest and weakest, were as busy as bees, and from them came as cheerful a hum, though the nature of their work rather resembled the occupation of beavers.
“Task-work with wages,” said Alfred, pointing to his own gang; “eternal labour, without wages,” pointing to the other. “It is not often that we have an example of the two systems before our eyes at the same moment. I need not put it to you which plan works the best.”
“It is indeed very striking; but what can we do? We must hold labour as capital,—to put the question in the form you like best,—for our modes of cultivation require continuous labour. We cannot begin our tillage, and leave off and begin again, as may suit the pleasure of our labourers. We must have labour always at command.”
“Undoubtedly; and which has the most labour at command at this moment,—Mitchelson, or the owner of those miserable drones yonder? And what is to prevent Mitchelson from having this efficient labour always at command if he uses the same means that have secured it now? Labour is the product of mind as much as of body; and, to secure that product, we must sway the mind by the natural means,—by motives. A man must learn to work from self-interest before he will work for the sake of another; and labouring against self-interest is what nobody ought to expect of white men,—much less of slaves.”
“I am quite of your opinion there, and, in consequence, make my slaves as comfortable as I can. Of course, every man, woman, and child, would rather play for nothing than work for nothing.”
“Then surely it is best for all parties to make the connexion between labour and its reward as clear as possible. I doubt whether any slave believes that his comforts depend on the value of his work. At any rate, he often sees that they do not. And this difficulty will for ever attend the practice of holding labourers as fixed capital.”
“But the maintenance of their labour, son, is reproducible as much as if they were free.”
“It is; in the same way as the subsistence of oxen and horses. In both cases it is consumed and reproduced with advantage: but cattle are fixed capital, and so are slaves. But slaves differ from cattle, on the one hand, in yielding (from internal opposition) a less return for their maintenance; and from free labourers, on the other, in not being acted upon by the inducements which stimulate production as an effort of mind as well as body. In all three cases the labour is purchased. In free labourers and cattle, all the faculties work together, and to advantage; in the slave they are opposed: and therefore he is, as far as the amount of labour is concerned, the least valuable of the three.”
“And too often as to the quality of his labour also, son. A slave does some few things for us that cattle and machinery could not do; but he falls far short of a free labourer in all respects.respects. Our slaves never invent or improve.”
“Why should they? No invention would shorten their toil, for they do no task-work. No improvement does them any good, for they have no share in the profits of their labour. They can invent and improve,—witness their ingenuity in their dwellings, and their skill in certain of their sports; but their masters will never possess their faculties, though they have purchased their limbs. Our true policy would be to divide the work of the slave between the ox and the hired labourer; we should get more out of the sinews of the one and the soul of the other, than the produce of double the number of slaves.”
“I have sometimes wondered,” said Mr. Bruce, “whether we do not lose on the whole by forbidding our slaves to raise exportable produce in their own grounds. They, being better adapted than ourselves to the soil and climate, might discover and practise modes of tillage from which we might gather many useful hints, which might more than repay what we should lose by their thefts.”
“What you would lose by theft is a mere trifle,” answered Alfred, “in the account of the cost of a negro. If they were free labourers, thieving as fast as opportunity would allow, (which being free labourers, they would not,) your blacks would cost you little in comparison of what they do now without thieving.”
“How do you know?”
“I took pains to calculate the cost of a slave before I left England; and I have had the means of proving my calculation by the experience of my friend yonder, the contractor, who has had more opportunity than most people I know of mastering both sides of the question.”
“Does he speak of slaves newly imported, or of those born and bred on the estate? for that makes a vast difference.”
“We have reckoned both. Those imported were, of course, by far the dearest; for, in addition to the usual cost, we had to defray the expenses, in life and money, of wars on the coast of Africa, and of conveying them across the ocean, the loss under the seasoning when they arrived, and the revenue to the African trader; and, after all, they are worth less than those bred on the spot, from being unacquainted with the language, and unused to the kinds of labour in which they were to be employed.”
“I never was one to advocate the importation of slaves; it is so clear that the expenses of their rearing are much less than those attending their transport. But I really do not think the cost of maintaining slaves can be greater than that of free labourers. They must both eat and drink, you know, and be clothed and housed.”
“True, father; and the question therefore is, whether their maintenance can be managed the more economically by their own contrivance when they have an interest in saving, or by their master’s pinching them when they have an interest in wasting his property. The free labourer has every inducement to manage his field or other possession frugally, and to husband whatever produce he may obtain. You need only look into the state of our slave acres, to see how different the case is there. The cultivation is negligently performed, the produce stolen or wasted, so that we reap scarcely a third of the natural crop. In both cases, the master pays the subsistence of the labourer, but the slave-owner pays in addition for theft, negligence, and waste.”
“Well but, Alfred, give me the items. Tell me the value of a healthy slave at twenty-one?”
“I believe his labour will be found at least 25 per cent. dearer than free labour. From birth to fifteen years of age, including food, clothing, life-insurance, and medicine, he will be an expense; will not he?”
“Yes. The work he does will scarcely pay his insurance, medicine, and attendance, leaving out his food and clothing; but from fifteen to twenty-one, his labour may just defray his expenses.”
“Very well; then food and clothing for fifteen years remain to be paid; the average cost of which per annum being at the least 6l., he has cost 90l. over and above his earnings at twenty-one years. Then if we consider that the best work of the best field-hand is worth barely two-thirds of the average field-labour of whites,—if we consider the chances of his being sick or lame, or running away, or dying,—and that if none of these things happen, he must be maintained in old age, we must feel that property of this kind ought to bring in at least 10 per cent. per annum interest on the capital laid out upon him. Whether the labour of a black, amounting to barely two-thirds of that of a white labourer, defrays his own subsistence, his share of the expense of an overseer and a driver, and 10 per cent. interest on 90l., I leave you to say.”
“Certainly not, son, even if we forget that we have taken the average of free labour, and the prime of slave labour. We have said nothing of the women, whose cost is full as much, while their earnings are less than the men’s. But you overlook one grand consideration;—that whites cannot work in the summer time in this climate and on this soil.”
“It is only saying ‘free black’ instead of ‘white.’ The tenure of the labour is the question, not the colour of the labourers, as long as there is a plentiful supply of whichever is wanted. Only let us look at what is passing before our eyes, and we shall see whether negroes working for wages, or even under tribute, are not as good labourers as whites.”
“I have often meditated adopting the plan of tribute, Alfred, since times have gone badly with me; but it is difficult on a coffee plantation. If I were in Brazil, the proprietor of a gold mine, or at Panama, the lord of a pearl-fishery, I would adopt their customs. I would supply my slaves with provisions and tools, and they should return me a certain quantity of gold or pearls, and keep the surplus.”
“That is one way of making them work by fair means, father. It is an important approach to emancipation, as I believe it was found in Russia. It seems, too, an excellent preparative for a state of freedom; and surely such a preparative would never have been adopted, and would not have been allowed to proceed to entire emancipation, if such comparative freedom had not been advantageous to the master as well as the slave. It is a strong argument, brought forward by slave-holders, in favour of emancipation.”
“But the plan could not be tried on a coffee plantation, son—that is the worst of it. If we lived in the neighbourhood of a large town, I would attempt it on a small scale. Some of my slaves should let their labour, paying me a weekly tribute, and keeping whatever they earned over and above. This is done in places south and west of us on this continent, as a Spanish friend of mine was telling me lately.”
“Suppose we try task work instead, father?”
“I have no other objection than this, son. If the experiment did not answer, there would be no getting the slaves back to the present system.”
“A strong argument against the present system, father; but not the less true for that: suppose then we try with some new employment. If the blacks are as stupid as they are thought to be here, we need not fear their carrying the principle out any farther than we wish. Suppose we make bricks by task-work. Why should we import them, when we have abundance of brick clay on the estate and labour to spare?”
“It has been found to answer better to import them.”
“Who says so?”
“Mr. Herbert, my old neighbour. He had not straw enough, to be sure, growing, as he does little besides sugar.”
“Ah; the bounty is all in all with these sugar-growers, father. They keep their eye fixed on that bounty, and give no other article of production a fair chance. Besides, I suppose he did not try task-work?”
“Not he. But consider, Alfred, how very little the freight is; and then, there is the fuel.”
“The fuel is easily had; and a ton of coal will serve for eight tons of bricks. We are better supplied with straw than if we raised sugars only; and the apparatus is not expensive. Only consider, father: the labour of your slaves, at present, does not average more than fifteen-pence a day; and brickmakers, in England, make from five to seven shillings a day. Do let me try whether, by working by count, we cannot raise the value of our slave-labour, and save the expense of importation.”
“But, my dear son, we do not want bricks enough to make it worth while.”
“Our neighbours want them as well as ourselves; and it may answer well to withdraw a permanent portion of labour from our coffee-walks and transfer it to our brick-field. The art is not difficult, and the climate is most favourable, so confidently as we may reckon on the absence of heavy rains for weeks together.”
“Well; we will see about it, son.”
“I give you warning, father,” said Alfred, laughing, “that I shall not be content with one experiment. If we save by brickmaking, I shall propose our making the bagging and packages for our coffee at home, instead of paying so high as we do for them.”
“Nay, Alfred; what becomes of your boasted principle of the division of labour?”
“I think as highly as ever of it where labour is as productive as it ought to be. But where eight free labourers do as much work as twelve slaves, it follows that if those twelve slaves were set free, four of them would be at leisure for more work. If as much sugar was raised already as was wanted, those four labourers might make a great saving by refining and claying the sugars at home; which business is now done elsewhere.”
“In the Spanish colonies, where there is a large proportion of free labourers, I know they do many things among themselves which British planters do not, and thus reduce the cost of cultivation in a way that we should be very glad to imitate.”
“Such imitation is easy enough, surely. We have only to introduce as large a proportion of free labour.”
“The wages of free labour are so dreadfully high,” objected Mr. Bruce.
“Only in proportion to the scarcity of free labour, I believe, father. Wherever there is little of a good thing, it is dear, according to the general rule. Slave-labour is not only dear in itself, but it makes free labour dear also; and gives an undue advantage to free labourers at the expense of the other two parties. If we would but allow natural principles of supply and free competition to work, the rights of all parties would be equalized.—But there is Horner hovering at a distance and looking as if he longed to come and whip us all round. I must keep him off, or he will spoil our work. The very sight of him is enough to paralyse my men; they absolutely hate him.”
“And well they may,” observed Mr. Bruce. “I cannot think what makes Mitchelson keep that man in his service. Even my overseer, who knows the nature of the business well, calls him a brute.”
Alfred told his father, in a low voice, that he should think it his duty to get this man discharged as soon as possible; for he was so enraged at the adoption of a new plan, and at its evident success, that it was too probable he would ill-treat the slaves to the utmost as soon as he had them again in his power.
“He cannot vent his revenge upon me,” said Alfred, “and will therefore pour it out upon them; and since I have done the deed, I must look to the consequences. Having taken these poor creatures under my care, I must see that they do not fall back into a worse state than before. I will not quit Mr. Mitchelson’s side till I have seen him change his overseer.”
Mr. Bruce shook his head, and made some grave remarks upon the imprudence of making enemies. He did not perceive, and his son did not remind him, that for his one new enemy he had secured a posse of grateful friends.
Mr. Mitchelson and his family returned punctually on the twenty-first day. The dam was, to their great surprise, finished, the mill fit for use, the slaves in good plight, the contractor satisfied and gone home, and all at a less cost than would have secured the reluctant labour of as many hands for sixty days;—to say nothing of the vast advantage of avoiding a suspension of the usual operations on the estate. Mr. Mitchelson being, of course, pleased, all was right, except that Horner snatched every opportunity of oppressing and thwarting the people under him; and it was no easy matter to get him dismissed. He was foolish enough to let fall words in the hearing of the slaves, which showed that he was aware he owed his situation to his master’s favour only, and that he owed Alfred a grudge. The natural consequence, among a people perfectly ignorant, and yet subject to human passions, was that they adored Alfred, and hated Mr. Mitchelson and his overseer with an intense and almost equal hatred.