Volume II Part 55 (1/2)
”St. Mary's--On some estates in this parish we are informed, and particularly those under the charge of Richard Lewis, Esq. such as Ballard's Valley, Timperon's estates, Ellis' estates, &c. and of Charles Stewart, Esq. Trinity, Royal, Roslin Bremer Hall, &c., and also of James Geddes, Esq., the laborers are getting from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 4d. per day.
The same rates are paid upon many outer properties. On many estates the people have refused to labor, and urge objections against the managers, as a reason for so acting. They remain and will engage to labor, provided the obnoxious parties are removed.”
How could the people be blamed for refusing 10d. per day, while on ”many properties” they were getting from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 4d.? Such being also the valuation which the masters had uniformly placed upon their time during the apprentices.h.i.+p?
When the planters found that the free laborers could neither be prevailed upon to labor for half-price nor be driven to excesses by such paltry persecution, they turned their wrath, as had been long their custom, upon the Baptist Missionaries. Upon Mr. Knibb especially they laid the blame of giving mischievous advice to the peasantry. And for the obvious purpose of exciting the thousands of people warmly devoted to him, to acts of violence, they attempted to burn him in effigy and actually circulated the report that he had been murdered. Thousands of his people flocked into Spanish Town, threatening to destroy the town if the report proved true. But on learning its falsity were easily persuaded to retire, and did so without being guilty of any excess whatever. Unmeasured and unceasing have been the attacks of the Jamaica press upon the missionaries. Upon their shoulders has been laid ”the ruin of that fine island.”--They have corrupted the peasantry and put it in their heads to ask more wages than the estate can possibly give. To determine the value of the testimony of the missionaries in this case it is important to know the nature of their influence upon the laborers touching the question of wages. We are happily furnished with the required information from their own lips and pens in the Jamaica papers.
_From the Falmouth Post._
REV. W. KNIBB'S ADVICE TO THE NEGROES.
MEETING AT THE ”SUFFIELD SCHOOL-ROOM.”
On Friday evening last we attended the suffield School-room, in this town, which, at an early hour was crowded with apprentices and head people, from upwards of twenty properties, who had met for the purpose of receiving advice from the Rev. Wm. Knibb, and Special Justice Lyon, respecting the course of conduct it will be necessary for them to adopt, on taking their stand in society as freemen. Several gentlemen connected with the commercial and agricultural interests of the parish were present on the occasion.
The Rev. W. Knibb commenced by saying, that he attended a meeting of a similar nature at Wilberforce Chapel, on the preceding evening. He had thought it better to request the attendance this evening of the head people, who being the more intelligent would be able to explain to others, the advice which they would now receive themselves. ”I am glad,”
said the Rev. Gentleman, ”to see so many persons present, among whom I notice a few gentlemen who are not connected with my church: I am glad of the attendance of these gentlemen, for what I do, I do openly, and any one is at liberty to express his opinion at this meeting if he desires to do so.
You will shortly, my friends, be released from your present state of bondage; in the course of a very few weeks you will receive the boon of freedom, and I would therefore impress deeply on your minds the necessity of your continuing the cultivation of the soil on the receipt of fair and equitable wages. I am not aware myself of any complete scale of wages having been drawn up, but I have been on 10 or 12 different properties, I have conversed with several proprietors, and I am glad to say that with some of them there appears to be a disposition to meet the charge fairly and honorably. Those who are more conversant with figures than I am, will be enabled to show what the owner can afford to give for the cultivation of his property. In the mean time I would say to you, do not make any hasty bargain: take time and consider the subject, for it is one of vital interest and importance to all! If you demand too high a rate of wages, the proprietors will be ruined; if you consent to take too low a sum, you will not be able to provide for the wants of yourselves and families. In making your arrangement, if there be an attempt to grind you down, resist the attempt by all legal means; for you must consider that you are not acting for yourselves alone, but for posterity. I desire to see every vestige of slavery completely rooted out. You must work for money; you must pay money to your employers for all you receive at their hands: a fair scale of wages must be established, and you must be entirely independent of any one. If you continue to receive those allowances which have been given during slavery and apprentices.h.i.+p, it will go abroad that you are not able to take care of yourselves; that your employers are obliged to provide you with these allowances to keep you from starvation; in such a case you will be nothing more than slaves.--To be free, you must be independent; you must receive money for your work; come to market with money; purchase from whom you please, and be accountable to no one but that Being above, who I hope will watch over and protect you!--I sincerely trust that proper arrangements will be made before the 1st of August.--I have spoken to nearly four thousand persons connected with my church, and I have not yet learnt that there is any disposition among them to leave their present employers, provided they receive equitable wages.
Your employer will expect from you good crops of sugar and rum; and while you labour to give him these, he must pay you such wages as will enable you to provide yourselves with wholesome food, good clothing, comfortable houses, and every other necessity of life. Your wages must be such as to enable you to do this; to contribute to the support of your church; the relief of the distressed; the education of your children, and to put by something for sickness and old age. I hail the coming of the 1st August with feelings of joy and grat.i.tude. Oh, it will be a blessed day; a day which gives liberty to all; and my friends, I hope that the liberty which it will bring to you will by duly appreciated. I trust I may live to see the black man in the full enjoyment of every privilege with his white brethren, and that you may all so conduct yourselves as to give the lie direct to those who have affirmed that the only idea you have of liberty is that it will enable you to indulge in idle habits and licentious pursuits. When liberty casts her benignant smiles on this beautiful island, I trust that the employer and the laborer will endeavour to live on terms of friends.h.i.+p and good will with one another.--When the labourer receives a proper remuneration for his services--when the employer contemplates the luxuriance of his well-cultivated fields, may they both return thanks to a merciful G.o.d, for permitting the sun of liberty to s.h.i.+ne with bright effulgence! I need scarcely a.s.sure you, my friends, that I will be at all times ready to protect your rights. I care not about the abuse with which I may probably be a.s.sailed; I am ready to meet all the obloquy and scorn of those who have been accustomed to place the most unfavourable constructions on my actions. I am willing to meet the proprietors in a spirit of candour and conciliation. I desire to see you fairly compensated for your labor; I desire also to you performing your work with cheerful industry: but I would warn you _not to be too hasty in entering into contracts_. Think seriously before you act, and remember, as I have already old you, that you have now to act not only for yourselves, but for posterity.”
We give numerous doc.u.ments from these gentlemen, as among the best if not the greatest part of our fellow citizens; we trust their testimony will be deemed the best that could be offered.
LETTER OF EIGHT BAPTIST MISSIONARIES.
_To the Right Hon. Lord_ GLENELG, &c.
My Lord--We feel a.s.sured that no apology is necessary, in requesting your attention to the subject of this letter. The official connection which you hold with the colony, together with the peculiar circ.u.mstances in which its newly-emanc.i.p.ated population are placed, render it an imperative duty we owe to ourselves to lay before you our sentiments.
Having labored in the island for many years, and having been in daily intercourse with the objects of our solicitude, we do feel devoutly thankful to ALMIGHTY G.o.d, that he has spared us to see the disenthralment of our beloved flocks; while it gives us increased pleasure to a.s.sure your lords.h.i.+p that they received the boon with holy joy, and that the hour which made them men beheld them in thousands humbly prostrate at the footstool of mercy, imploring the blessing of HEAVEN upon themselves and their country, while, during the night and joyful day, not a single case of intoxication was seen.
To us, as their pastors, they naturally looked for advice, both as to the labor they should perform and the wages they should receive. The importance of this subject was deeply felt by us, and we were prepared to meet it with a full sense of the responsibility it involved, and happily succeeded in inducing them to accept of a sum lower than that which the representatives of the landowners had formerly a.s.serted was fair and just.
We regret to state, that a deep combination was formed by many of these _middlemen_ to grind the peasantry to the dust, and to induce, if possible, the acceptance of remuneration which, by affording no inducement to the peasant cheerfully to labor, would have entailed pauperism on him and his family, and ruin on the absentee proprietor. It was to this circ.u.mstance, and not in the least to any unwillingness in the free negro to work, or to demand more for his labor than it was fairly worth, that for one or two weeks, in some places, the cultivation of the soil was not resumed. Upon the planting attorneys, so long accustomed to tyranny and oppression, and armed with a power over the land which must prove inimical to the full development of the resources of this valuable colony, the blame entirely rests.
We suppose that your lords.h.i.+p is fully aware, that the laws under which the laborer is now placed are tyrannical and unjust in the extreme; laws, we hesitate not to affirm, which are a disgrace to those who framed them, and which, if acted upon by a local magistracy, will entail upon the oft-cheated, over-patient negro some of the worst features of that degrading state of va.s.salage from which he has just escaped. We particularly refer to ”An Act to enlarge the Powers of Justices in determining complaints between Masters and Servants, and between Masters, and Apprentices, Artificers, and others,” which pa.s.sed the a.s.sembly the 3rd day of July, 1834, while by police acts, especially one regulating the town of Falmouth, our people will be daily hara.s.sed and annoyed.
We think it right to inform your lords.h.i.+p, that the greater part of those who hold the commission of magistrates are the very persons who, by their connection with the soil, are the most unfit, because the most interested, honestly to discharge their important duties; while their ignorance of the law is, in too many cases, equalled only by their love of tyranny and misrule. Time must work a mighty change in the views of numbers who hold this office, ere they believe there is any dereliction of duty in daily defrauding the humble African. We cannot but entreat your lords.h.i.+p to use those means which are in your power to obtain for the laborer, who imploringly looks to the Queen for protection, justice at the hands of those by whom the law is administered. We must, indeed, be blind to all pa.s.sing events, did we not see that, without the watchful care of the home government, the country district courts, held sometimes in the very habitations of those who will have to make the complaints, will be dens of injustice and cruelty, and that our hearts will again be lacerated by the oppressions under which our beloved people will groan.
We beg to apprise your lords.h.i.+p, that we have every reason to believe that an early attempt will be made to deprive the peasantry of their provision grounds--that they will not be permitted, even to rent them; so that, by producing starvation and rendering the population entirely dependent upon foreign-supplies for the daily necessaries of life, a lower rate of wages may be enforced. Cruel as this may appear to your lords.h.i.+p, and unlikely as it may seem, long experience has taught us that there is no possible baseness of which a slave-owner will not be guilty, and no means of accomplis.h.i.+ng his purposes, however fraught with ruin to those around him, which he will not employ.
Should the peasantry be thus treated, we shall feel it our duty humbly to implore that the lands belonging to the crown may be made available for their use. Your lords.h.i.+p will remember that these ill-treated people became not the subjects of her Majesty by choice, though they are now devotedly attached to her government. Their fathers were stolen and brought hither. On their native sh.o.r.es they had lands and possessions capable of supplying all their wants. If, then, after having toiled without remuneration, they are prevented even renting a portion of land which has. .h.i.therto been esteemed as their own, we shall ask, and shall feel a.s.sured that the boon will not be withheld, that her Most Gracious Majesty will throw open the lands belonging to the crown, where we may retire from the tyranny of man, and with our people find a peaceful and quiet home.
Though still surrounded by obloquy and reproach, though the most abusive epithets and language disgracefully vulgar has been employed to a.s.sail us, especially by a newspaper known to be under the patronage of a bishop, and in which all official accounts of his diocese are given to the world, yet we a.s.sure your lords.h.i.+p that, in endeavouring to promote the general interests and welfare of this colony, we shall still pursue that line of conduct which is the result of our judgment, and in accordance with the dictates of our conscience.
In no part of the island are arrangements made so fully or so fairly, as in those districts where our congregations reside, and in no part are the laborers more faithfully performing their duty. We deeply feel our responsibility at the present crisis, and pledging ourselves to your lords.h.i.+p and the British Government by the sacred office we hold, we a.s.sure you that ceaseless efforts shall still be exerted, as they have ever been, to promote the peace and happiness of those around us.
In the name and on the behalf of our churches, for the sacred cause of freedom throughout the world, we unitedly implore your lords.h.i.+p to throw the s.h.i.+eld of Britain's protection over those who are just made her loyal subjects. All they want, and all they ask, is, that, as they are raised to the dignity, so they may receive all the rights of man, and that the nation who purchased them from bondage may fully secure to them that civil and religious liberty, to which both their unparalleled sufferings and their unexampled patience so richly ent.i.tle them.
We cannot conclude this letter, without expressing the high sense we entertain of the n.o.ble and disinterested conduct pursued by his excellency Sir Lionel Smith, the Governor of this colony. But for his firmness, Jamaica would have presented all the horrors of a civil war.