INTRODUCTION. 11 



at the time, and which are now mortgaged to their full value ; 

 and their proprietors, resident Creoles too, from being in good 

 circumstances, reduced to the last extremities. In those cases, 

 the want of labour at a fair rate has been the chief cause of 

 their embarrassments ; they surely have some claims for assis- 

 tance from the mother country/'' 



Every one plainly foresaw that the immediate result of 

 emancipation would be a complete disturbance of the labour 

 market, and consequently a paralysis — at least momentary — of 

 the productive powers of these islands. That a fair remunera- 

 tion would operate as an inducement to exertion was true, but 

 superficial was the mind that would have trusted to that agency 

 alone to continue the active industry of the emancipated. The 

 much misunderstood, because distrusted, planter, coveted not — 

 thought not of the renewal of any law unjust or unfair to the 

 labourer ; he called for the interposition of legislative authority 

 to complete the work of emancipation, to exercise a parental 

 interest in the welfare of those who had been snatched from the 

 fetters of slavery to be delivered to the grievous thraldom of 

 their own ignorant and improvident habits. Certainly the 

 planters contemplated a benefit to themselves. And what was 

 that benefit ? That the emancipated should continue to labour 

 according to God's divine commands ; to labour for their own 

 advantage, by maintaining the agricultural prosperity of the 

 country of which they were resident inhabitants ; to labour 

 consequently for the general prosperity of the country with 

 whose progress or decline their own well-being or misery was 

 inseparably interwoven. 



There is no doubt that had cane cultivation been discon- 

 tinued in the West Indies, they would have suffered still more ; 

 for, as judiciously observed by the Governor of Jamaica, "the 

 progress and prospects of civilisation in these islands are closely 

 interwoven with the continuation of a branch of industry to 

 which European capital and skill have, from the earliest period 

 of its history, been mainly devoted, and because it seems clear 

 that the same economical conditions required to restore a fair 

 ratio of profit to sugar-planting would be necessary to render 

 any other species of cultivation whatever remunerative." And 

 I will add, because cane cultivation is, from its very nature, 

 better calculated than any other agricultural pursuit in this 

 climate to induce industry and create habits of steadiness, as 

 well as to keep up regular and profitable commercial intercourse 

 with those countries, the influence of which all sensible men 

 must concede is, and will for a long period be, necessary to the 

 development of civilisation in these islands. 



After what I have said of the dispositions of the emancipated 



