INTRODUCTION. 17 



Mr. Martin, " when it is remembered that tracts of greater or 

 lesser extent of waste but rich land existed in the colonies, 

 excepting Barbadocs and Antigua; that the ci-devant slave 

 proprietors were, in most instances, impoverished, in many, 

 ruined and dependent on merchants and others, who made 

 annual advances at exorbitant rates of interest, to enable them 

 to cultivate the estates; in consideration of receiving all the 

 consignments of produce, for which accounts were rendered at 

 their own discretion : that communities thus situated and embar- 

 rassed were devoid of the ready money whereby wages could be 

 daily or weekly paid to several hundred thousand labourers ; and 

 that, in all the colonies, for at least nine or ten months of the 

 year, food and other requisites were obtained from America and 

 England ; it is surprising that sugar cultivation was continued at 

 all after emancipation ; and still more remarkable that, in the 

 efforts to provide for their daily bread, the negro population 

 should have raised themselves from their former degraded position." 

 Here is an admission that " merchants and others " were 

 greatly instrumental in the ruin of the colonists, by " making 

 advances at exorbitant rates, and receiving consignments of 

 produce for which accounts were rendered at their own dis- 

 cretion." Indeed, it is but too true that the planters who needed 

 advances, had to accept them at the rate of from 30 to 40 per 

 cent, ; nay, many of those who practised usury to that extent, 

 were the very parties to calumniate their victims. Here again, a 

 sort of parallel is drawn between the ci-devant slave proprietor 

 and the negro population, in which implicit blame is attached 

 to the former, and praise awarded to the latter. By far the 

 greater part of the compensation grant (1,039,119) had been 

 applied to liquidating the mortgage and other debts of the 

 planters, so that the majority of them began the new era free 

 from liabilities, many with reserve funds. But they were soon 

 afterwards involved in new difficulties, from the exorbitant 

 wages they were compelled to pay in order to obtain even a bare 

 modicum of labour, and from usurious rates of interest paid on 

 capital advanced by merchants, and others, residing in England. 

 " I could quote to Your Lordship," wrote Lord Harris to Earl 

 Grey, in April 1848, " I could quote estates, as far as their soil 

 is concerned, of great value, and giving, previously to emanci- 

 pation, a large income, on which the whole of the redemption 

 money was expended in improvements ; which were entirely free 

 from debt at the time, and which are now mortgaged almost 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 

 assistance from the mother country." 



B 



