OPPOSED BY THE PLANTERS. 



119 



fortunate white man of these tropical localities. He him- 

 self cannot work ; and his black neighbor, rich in pumpkin, 

 is in no haste to help him. Sunk to the ears in pumpkin, 

 imbibing saccharine juices, and much at his ease in the 

 Creation, he can listen to the less fortunate white man's 

 4 demand,' and take his own time in supplying it. Higher 

 wages, massa ; higher, for your cane-crop cannot wait ; 

 still higher,— till no conceivable opulence of cane-crop 

 will cover such wages 1" 



The estimate put upon voluntary black labor in the 1 

 above extract by Mr. Carlyle, is quite generally entertained 

 among the planters in Jamaica, and among the slave- 

 holders in the United States, and as it is entirely inconsist- 

 ent with my own, it is proper that I should give the result 

 of my observations of free negro labor here, and the extent 

 to which I have found it governed by the laws which 

 generally are found to control other kinds of labor. 

 Before doing so, however, I wish to say a word of the 

 communication from which the above extract is made. 



It is difficult for one who is acquainted with his earlier 

 writings, to believe that the " Occasional Discourse on 

 Negro Slavery," to which I have referred, is from the pen 

 of Carlyle. It lacks all the moral, and many of the in- 

 tellectual traits which have distinguished the writings of 

 that gifted man. The argument of the discourse is briefly 

 as follows. The negro has few wants, and those almost 



