The Fall of the Confederacy. 611 
It is by no means settled that the West Indies would have 
been prosperous without emancipation, for their prosperity 
was on the wane before emancipation. The negro in the 
West Indies has acted precisely as any other race would 
have acted. We will take the unfavourable report of an 
enemy. The negro is represented as refusing to work 
after his few wants are satisfied. Well, this is not peculiar 
to the negro, but is common to all races. Labour, mere 
brow-sweating, is not in itself a blessing, but rather a curse, 
and no man labours without a motive, that is, without the 
desire to satisfy a want or aspiration. The Irish are an in- 
dustrious people. In America, for example, they are sin- 
gularly prosperous. How are they at home? How many 
of them are content with a hovel, a pig, and a patch of 
potatoes? They emigrate, they engender new wants and 
new aspirations, and become industrious. The negro in the 
West Indies had to contend against an enervating climate, 
and no pains were taken to stimulate his industry. He has 
_ done as well as Irishmen or Scotchmen would have done 
under the circumstances. 
Is the negro race prone to idleness? What better evi- 
dence can we have of his human brotherhood? In all 
communities there are men who will not work except 
under compulsion. What country is without vagrant laws? 
It is lawful to compel a man to labour, though it is not 
lawful to take from him the product of his toil. If, then, 
there was a class in the United States exceptionally prone 
to idleness—that is, the negro race—the remedy was easy. 
It was only necessary to adopt stringent vagrant laws; 
with this special provision, that they were applicable to 
white as well as to coloured people. It was certain that 
the power of the State would be as efficacious as the 
power of an owner, and there would have been no difficulty 
in compelling the negro to fulfil his labour contract. Be- 
sides there was evidence in America that the free negro 
would work on the usual conditions. Few employments 
were open to free negroes, but in those they excelled. As 
waiters, barbers, and cooks, they were unsurpassed. In the 
Southern States they were employed as overseers, and no 
plantations were more profitable than those managed by 
coloured men. But it is a sufficient reply to the charge of 
inherent idleness that the negro did work as a slave. The 
authority of the slave-owner could not be greater than the 
authority of the State, and a vagrant law and laws enforcing 
the fulfilment of labour contracts will be found far more 
NEW SERIES.—VOL, I. 3; B 
