DEGRADATION OF LABOR. 



75 



An American has but to glance his eye over the indus- 

 try of this island, to discern ample causes for its declining 

 condition, which are quite independent of those to which 

 it has been charged. While those continue, no home 

 legislation, in my judgment, can make the island perma- 

 nently prosperous. If they are removed, I might say with 

 almost equal confidence, that no home legislation could 

 prevent their becoming prosperous. I will mention some of 

 these causes which most impressed me, and were most fre- 

 quently forced upon my attention. 



First in importance I reckon the degrading estimate 

 placed upon every species of agricultural labor by the white 

 population. It is well known that the laborer belongs to 

 a proscribed class throughout the British dominions, and 

 that no merit or accomplishment will wipe out the dis- 

 grace of such a connexion. That feeling, of course, 

 is very much more inexorable here among the planters, 

 who have been accustomed mainly to slave labor. They 

 would, as a class, sooner beg than hold the plough or ply 

 the hoe. Of course one never sees a white laborer on their 

 estates, and the colored people have no competition for 

 wages except with persons of their own complexion. It is 

 unnecessary to add, that such an estimate of labor among the 

 whites has a most pernicious effect upon the blacks. They, 

 with the average sequence of negro logic, infer that if gen- 

 tlemen never work, they have only to abstain from work to 



