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Untitled Article
prepared by instruction for the advantages of freedom , no rational being would object to it , but it must be shown that such delay would be for the advantage of the slaves themselves , and not for the advantage of the masters . Many of the advocates for abolition are very anxious to prove , that those who now depend upon
slavelabour will be quite as well off , so far as pecuniary profits go , after the abolition as before . This cannot be , unless some efficient means shall be found of inducing the negroes to work . At present , it would seem by the evidence , that the whole provision which the slave-owner makes for his slave is some fifty shillings
per annum , in clothes , salt-fish , &c , and in addition , the privilege of cultivating a patch of ground to feed himself and family . There ^ fore , beyond that , all the work which the whip extracts must be clear profit to the planter , if he dispose of its produce . Of course , the amount of labour each man would perform would be less than a free labourer would get through , if united by interest ; but then the latter could be paid for , and consequently it would not be profit ,
or at least but a small proportion of it . But for the reasons before given , the probability is , that the field negroes would not work if they could avoid it . And then comes the question , what in the absence of the whip are the means of impelling them to work ? There is but one mode—starving them into it . The land in the West Indies is , I believe , all the property of individual owners , or if not , the ownership must reside in the Crown . There is ,
therefore , no room for the negroes to * ' squat , and thus lead a lazy life , as they would gladly do if let alone , t . e . supposing them scrupulously to regard the rights of property . In such a case we may suppose that the landholders would drive them to any terms they might think proper , by depriving them of food , unless they agreed to cultivate sugar . This all sounds very plausibly ; but the fact is , that the negroes have no especial regard for the rights
of property . Their moral training has not been of the kind likely to inculcate a scrupulous regard to the property of others , when their own property , even in their own bodies , has been disregarded by the whites . Therefore they will only reason upon the obvious principle , that all who exist upon the soil have a claim to be maintained upon the noil , and will not follow it out into those details which may be for the especial advantage of the legal owners of the soil . The legal claim upon them for rent , on
account of the land they may occupy , may be undeniable , but who is to enforce the legal sanction if they break the law ? They will squat wherever they may find an eligible spot of land , and although a small number might be driven off , who is to drive off a whole population ? It would be a more hopeless task than the collection of tithes in Ireland by the military . The negroes would
plant their crops in defiance of the law , and who would root them up again ? How many troops , how many policemen , would be requisite to maintain the ascendency of the law under such cir-
Untitled Article
466 On the Ministerial Plan for the
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1833, page 466, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2618/page/26/
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