Part 13 (1/2)
There is another cla.s.s of cigar known in England as ”Plantations,” here called ”Vegueros.” They are of the richest tobacco, and are all made in the country by the sable ladies of the island, who use no tables to work at, if report speaks truth; and as both hands are indispensable in the process of rolling, what they roll upon must be left to the imagination.
It will not do to be too fastidious in this world. Cooks finger the dainty cutlets, and keep dipping their fingers into the rich sauces, and sucking them, to ascertain their progress, and yet the feasters relish the savoury dish not one whit the less; so smokers relish the Veguero, though on what rolled modesty forbids me to mention,--nor do they hesitate to press between their lips the rich ”Regalia,” though its beautifully-finished point has been perfected by an indefinite number of pa.s.sages of the negro's forefinger from the fragrant weed to his own rosy tongue. Men must not be too nice; but I think in the above description a fair objection is to be found to ladies smoking.
With regard to the population of Cuba, the authorities, of course, wish to give currency to the idea that the whites are the most numerous.
Having asked one of these officials who had the best means of knowing, he told me there were 550,000 whites and 450,000 negroes; but prosecuting my inquiries in a far more reliable quarter, I found there were 600,000 slaves, 200,000 free, and only 500,000 whites,--thus making the coloured population as eight to five. The military force in the island consists of 20,000, of which 18,000 are infantry, 1000 cavalry, and 1000 artillery[Z]. The demand for labour in the island is so great, that a speculation has been entered into by a mercantile house here to bring 6000 Chinese. The speculator has already disposed of them at 24l. a-head; they are to serve for five years, and receive four s.h.i.+llings a day, and they find their own way back. The cost of bringing them is calculated at 10l. a head,--thus leaving 14l. gain on each, which, multiplied by 6000, gives 84,000l. profit to the speculator,--barring, of course, losses from deaths and casualties on the journey. Chinese have already been tried here, and they prove admirably suited to all the mechanical labour, but far inferior to the negroes in the fields.
I find that people in the Havana can he humbugged as well as John Bull.
A Chinese botanist came here, and bethought him of trying his skill as a doctor. Everybody became mad to consult him; no street was ever so crowded as the one he lived in, since Berners-street on the day of the hoax. He got a barrel of flour, or some other innocuous powder, packed up in little paper parcels, and thus armed he received his patients. On entering, he felt the pulse with becoming silence and gravity; at last he said, ”Great fire.” He then put his hand on the ganglionic centre, from which he radiated to the circ.u.mjacent parts, and then, frowning deep thought, he observed, ”Belly great swell; much wind; pain all round.” His examination being thus accomplished, he handed the patient a paper of the innocuous powder, pocketed sixteen s.h.i.+llings, and dismissed him. This scene, without any variety in observation, examination, prescription, or fee, was going on for two months, at the expiration of which time he re-embarked for China with 8000l.
As I believe that comparatively little is known in England of the laws existing in Cuba with respect to domicile, police, slavery, &c., I shall devote a few pages to the subject, which, in some of its details, is amusing enough. No person is allowed to land on the island without a pa.s.sport from the place whence he arrives, and a _fiador_, or surety, in the island, who undertakes to supply the authorities with information of the place of his residence for one year; nor can he remain in the island more than three months without a ”domiciliary ticket.” People of colour arriving in any vessel are to be sent to a government deposit; if the master prefers to keep them on board he may, but in that case he is liable to a fine of 200l. if any of them land on the island; after a certain hour in the evening all gatherings in the street are put a stop to, and everybody is required to carry a lantern about with him; the hierarchy and ”swells”--_personas de distincion_--being alone exempt.
All purchases made from slaves or children or doubtful parties are at the risk of the purchaser, who is liable not merely to repay the price given, but is further subject to a heavy fine: no bad law either. Any boy between the ages of ten and sixteen who may be found in the streets as a vagrant may be taken before the president of the _Seccion de Industria de la Real Sociedad Economica_, by whom he is articled out to a master of the trade he wishes to learn. No place of education can be opened without the teacher thereof has been duly licensed. No game of chance is allowed in any shop or tavern, except in billiard-saloons and coffee-houses, where draughts and dominoes, chess and backgammon are tolerated. After a certain fixed hour of the night, no person is allowed to drive about in a Volante with the head up, unless it rains or the sitter be an invalid; the penalty is fifteen s.h.i.+llings. No private individual is allowed to give a ball or a concert without permission of the authorities. Fancy Londonderry House going to the London police-office to get permission for a quadrille or a concert. How pleasant! The specific gravity of milk is accurately calculated, and but a moderate margin allowed for pump mixture; should that margin be exceeded, or any adulteration discovered, the whole is forfeited to some charitable inst.i.tution. If such a salutary law existed in London, pigs'
brains would fall in the market, and I should not see so many milk-pails at the spring during my early morning walks to the Serpentine.
Among the regulations for health, the following are to be found. No private hospital or infirmary is to be opened without a government licence. All keepers of hotels, coffee or eating houses, &c., are bound to keep their kitchen ”battery” well tinned inside, under a heavy penalty of 3l. 10s. for every utensil which may be found insufficiently tinned, besides any further liabilities to which they may be subject for accidents arising from neglect thereof. Every shop is obliged to keep a vessel with water at the threshold of the outer door, to a.s.sist in avoiding hydrophobia. All houses that threaten to tumble down must be rebuilt, and if the owner is unable to bear the expense, he must sell the house to some one who can bear it. Another clause, after pointing out the proper places for bathing, enjoins a pair of bathing breeches, under a penalty of fifteen s.h.i.+llings for each offence; the particular cut is not specified. Let those who object to put convex fig-leaves over the little cherubs, and other similar works of art at the Crystal Palace, take a lesson from the foregoing, and clothe them all in Cuba pants as soon as possible; scenes are generally more interesting when the imagination is partially called into play. Boys, both little and big, are kept in order by a fine of fifteen s.h.i.+llings for every stone they throw, besides paying in full for all damage caused thereby. No one is allowed to carry a stick more than one inch in diameter under a penalty of twelve s.h.i.+llings; but all white people are allowed to carry swords, provided they are carried openly and in their scabbards.
The foregoing are sufficient to convey to the reader some idea of the ban of pains and penalties under which a resident is placed; at the same time it may be as well to inform him, that, except those enactments which bear upon espionage, they are about as much attended to as the laws with regard to the introduction of slaves, respecting which latter I will now give you a few of the regulations.
Slave owners are bound to give their slaves three meals a-day, and the substance thereof must be eleven ounces of meat or salt-fish, four ounces of bread, and farinaceous vegetables equal to six plantains; besides this, they are bound to give them two suits of clothes--all specified--yearly. Alas! how appropriate is the slang phrase ”Don't you wish you may get 'em?” So beautifully motherly is Spain regarding her slaves, that the very substance of infants' clothes under three years of age is prescribed; another substance from three to six; then comes an injunction that from six to fourteen the girls are to be s.h.i.+rted and the boys breeched. I am sure this super-parental solicitude upon the part of the Government must be admitted to be most touching. By another regulation, the working time is limited from nine to ten hours daily, except in the harvest or sugar season, during which time the working hours are eighteen a-day. No slave under sixteen or over sixty can be employed on task-work, or at any age at a work not suited to his or her strength and s.e.x.
Old slaves must be kept by their master, and cannot be freed for the purpose of getting rid of the support of them. Upon a plantation, the houses must be built on a dry position, well ventilated, and the s.e.xes kept apart, and a proper hospital provided for them. By another law, marriage is inculcated on moral grounds, and the master of the slave is required to purchase the wife, so that they may both be under one roof; if he declines the honour, then the owner of the wife is to purchase the husband; and if that fails, a third party is to buy both: failing all these efforts, the law appears non-plused, and leaves their fate to Providence. If the wife has any children under three years of age, they must be sold with her. The law can compel an owner to sell any slave upon whom he may be proved to have exercised cruelty; should any party offer him the price he demands, he may close the bargain at once, but if they do not agree, his value is to be appraised by two arbiters, one chosen by each party, and if either decline naming an arbiter, a law officer acts _ex officio_. Any slave producing fifty dollars (ten pounds) as a portion of his ransom-money, the master is obliged to fix a price upon him, at which his ransom may be purchased; he then becomes a _coartado_, and whatever sums he can save his master is bound to receive in part payment, and, should he be sold, the price must not exceed the price originally named, after subtracting therefrom the amount he has advanced for his ransom. Each successive purchaser must buy him subject to these conditions. In all disputes as to original price or completion of the ransom, the Government appoints a law officer on behalf of the slave. The punishments of the slave are imprisonment, stocks, &c.; when the lash is used, the number of stripes is limited to twenty-five.
The few regulations I have quoted are sufficient to show how carefully the law has fenced-in the slave from bad treatment. I believe the laws of no other country in regard to slaves are so merciful, excepting always Peru; but, alas! though the law is as fair as the outside of the whited sepulchre, the practice is as foul as the inside thereof; nor can one ever expect that it should be otherwise, when we see that, following the example of the treaty-breaking, slave-importing Queen Mother, every official, from the highest government authority down to the lowest petty custom-house officer, exposes his honesty daily in the dirty market of bribery.
A short summary of the increase of slave population may be interesting, as showing that the charges made against the Cubans of only keeping up the numbers of the slaves by importation is not quite correct. In the year 1835 a treaty was made with Spain, renewing the abolition of slave traffic, to which she had a.s.sented in 1817 by words which her subsequent deeds belied. At this latter date, the slave population amounted to 290,000, since which period she has proved the value of plighted faith by introducing upwards of 100,000 slaves, which would bring the total up to 390,000. The present slave population, I have before remarked, amounts to 600,000, which would give as the increase by births during nearly twenty years, 210,000. If we take into consideration the ravages of epidemics, and the serious additional labour caused by the long duration of the sugar harvest, we may fairly conclude, as far as increase by birth is admitted as evidence, that the treatment of slaves in Cuba will stand comparison with that of the slave in the United States, especially when it is borne in mind that the addition of slave territory in the latter has made the breeding of slaves a regular business.
The increase of the produce of Cuba may very naturally be ascribed to the augmentation of slave labour, and to the improvements in machinery; but there is another cause which is very apt to be overlooked, though I think there can be no doubt it has exercised the most powerful influence in producing that result: I allude to the comparative monopoly of the sugar trade, which the events of late years have thrown into her hands.
When England manumitted the 750,000 slaves in the neighbouring islands, the natural law of reaction came into play, and the negro who had been forced to work hard, now chose to take his ease, and his absolute necessities were all that he cared to supply: a little labour sufficed for that, and he consequently became in his turn almost the master. The black population, unprepared in any way for the sudden change, became day by day more idle and vicious, the taxes of the islands increased, and the circulation issued by the banks decreased in an equally fearful ratio. When sugar the produce of slave labour was admitted into England, a short time after the emanc.i.p.ation, upon the same terms as the produce of the free islands, as a natural consequence, the latter, who could only command labour at high wages and for uncertain time, were totally unable to compete with the cheap labour and long hours of work in Cuba; nearly every proprietor in our West India colonies feel into deep distress,--some became totally ruined. One property which had cost 118,000l., so totally lost its value, owing to these changes in the law, that its price fell to 16,000l. In Demerara, the sugar produce sank from 104,000,000 lbs. to 61,000,000 lbs., and coffee from 9,000,000 lbs. to 91,000 lbs., while 1,500,000 lbs. of cotton disappeared entirely.
These are no fictions, they are plain facts, borne testimony to in many instances by the governors of the colonies; and I might quote an infinite number of similar statements, all tending to prove the rapid growth of idleness and vice in the emanc.i.p.ated slaves, and the equally rapid ruin of the unfortunate proprietor. The principles upon which we legislated when removing the sugar duties is a mystery to me, unless I accept the solution, so degrading to the nation, ”that humanity is a secondary consideration to _ s.d._, and that justice goes for nothing.”
If such were not the principles on which we legislated, there never was a more complete failure. Not content with demoralizing the slave and ruining the owner, by our hasty and ill-matured plan of emanc.i.p.ation, we gave the latter a dirty kick when he was falling, by removing the little protection we had all put pledged our national faith that he should retain; and thus it was we threw nearly the whole West India sugar trade into the hands of Cuba, stimulating her energy, increasing her produce, and clinching the fetters of the slave with that hardest holding of all rivets--the doubled value of his labour.
Perhaps my reader may say I am taking a party and political view of the question. I repudiate the charge _in toto_: I have nothing to do with politics: I merely state facts, which I consider it requisite should be brought forward, in order that the increase of Cuban produce may not be attributed to erroneous causes. For this purpose it was necessary to show that the ruin we have brought upon the free West Indian colonies is the chief cause of the increased and increasing prosperity of their slave rival; at the same time, it is but just to remark, that the establishment of many American houses in Cuba has doubtless had some effect in adding to the commercial activity of the island.
I have, in the preceding pages, shown the retrogression of some parts of the West Indies, since the pa.s.sing of the Emanc.i.p.ation and Sugar-Duty Acts. Let me now take a cursory view of the progression of Cuba during the same period.--Annual produce--
Previous to Emanc.i.p.ation. 1852.
Sugar 300,000,000 lbs. -- 620,000,000 lbs.
Mola.s.ses 125,000,000 ” -- 220,000,000 ”
Leaf Tobacco 6,000,000 ” -- 10,000,000 ”
Coffee 30,000,000 ” -- 19,000,000 ”
The sugar manufactories during that time had also increased from eight hundred to upwards of sixteen hundred. Can any one calmly compare this marvellous progression of Cuba with the equally astounding retrogression of our Antilles, and fail to come to the irresistible conclusion that the prosperity of the one is intimately connected with the distress of the other.