We are always in such a hurry; although, as regards the progress of races, history so plainly tells us how vain such hurry is! At thirty, a man devotes himself to proselytizing a people; and if the people be not proselytized when he has reached forty, he retires in disgust. In early life we have aspirations for the freedom of an illused nation; but in middle life we abandon our protégé to tyranny and the infernal gods. The process has been too long. The nation should have arisen free, at once, upon the instant. It is hard for man to work without hope of seeing that for which he labors.

But to return to our sable friends. The first desire of a man in a state of civilization is for property. Greed and covetousness are no doubt vices; but they are the vices which have grown from cognate virtues. Without a desire for property, man could make no progress. But the negro has no such desire; no desire strong enough to induce him to labor for that which he wants. In order that he may eat to-day and be clothed to-morrow, he will work a little; as for anything beyond that, he is content to lie in the sun.

Emancipation and the last change in the sugar duties have made land only too plentiful in Jamaica, and enormous tracts have been thrown out of cultivation as unprofitable. And it is also only too fertile. The negro, consequently, has had unbounded facility of squatting, and has availed himself of it freely. To recede from civilization and become again savage—as savage as the laws of the community can permit-has been to his taste. I believe that he would altogether retrograde if left to himself.

I

I shall now be asked, having said so much, whether I think that emancipation was wrong. By no means. think that emancipation was clearly right; but I think

that we expected far too great and far too quick a result from emancipation.

These people are a servile race, fitted by nature for the hardest physical work, and apparently at present fitted for little else. Some thirty years since they were in a state when such work was their lot; but their tasks were exacted from them in a condition of bondage abhorrent to the feelings of the age, and opposed to the religion which we practised. For us, thinking as we did, slavery was a sin. From that sin we have cleansed ourselves. But the mere fact of doing so has not freed us from our difficulties. Nor was it to be expected that it should. The discontinuance of a sin is always the commencement of a struggle.

Few, probably, will think that Providence has permitted so great an exodus as that which has taken place from Africa to the West without having wise results within view. We may fairly believe that it has been a part of the Creator's scheme for the population and cultivation of the earth; a part of that scheme which sent Asiatic hordes into Europe, and formed, by the admixture of nations, that race to which it is our pride to belong. But that admixture of blood has taken tens of centuries. Why should we think that Providence should work more rapidly now in these latter ages ?

No Englishman, no Anglo-Saxon, could be what he now is but for that portion of wild and savage energy which has come to him from his Vandal forefathers. May it not then be fair to suppose that a time shall come when a race will inhabit those lovely islands, fitted by nature for their burning sun, in whose blood shall be mixed some portion of northern energy, and which shall owe its physical powers to African progenitors.-a race that shall

ミミ

be no more ashamed of the name of negro than we are of the name of Saxon?

But, in the meantime, what are we to do with our friend, lying as he now is at his ease under the cottontree, and declining to work after ten o'clock in the morning? "No, tankee, massa, me tired now; me no want more money." Or perhaps it is, "No; workee no more; money no 'nuff; workee no pay." These are the answers which the suppliant planter receives when at ten o'clock he begs his negro neighbors to go a second time into the cane-fields and earn a second shilling, or implores them to work for him more than four days a week, or solicits them at Christmas-time to put up with a short ten days' holiday. His canes are ripe, and his mill should be about; or else they are foul with weeds, and the hogsheads will be very short if they be not cleansed. He is anxious enough, for all his world depends upon it. But what does the negro care? No; me no more workee

now."

The busher (overseer; elide the o and change v into b, and the word will gradually explain itself)—The busher, who remembers slavery and former happy days, d—s him for a lazy nigger, and threatens him with coming starvation, and perhaps with returning monkeydom. "No, massa; no starve now; God send plenty yam. No more monkey now, massa." The black man is not in the least angry, though the busher is. And as for the canes, they remain covered with dirt, and the return of the estate is but one hundred and thirty hogsheads instead of one hundred and ninety. Let the English farmer think of that; and in realizing the full story, he must imagine that the plenteous food alluded to has been grown on his own ground, and probably planted at his own expense. The busher was wrong to curse the man, and wrong to

NEGRO INDOLENCE.

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threaten him with the monkey's tail; but it must be admitted that the position is trying to the temper.

And who can blame the black man? He is free to work, or free to let it alone. He can live without work and roll in the sun, and suck oranges and eat breadfruit; ay, and ride a horse perhaps, and wear a white waistcoat and plaited shirt on Sundays. Why should he care for the busher? I will not dig cane-holes for half a crown a day; and why should I expect him to do SO ? I can live without it; so can he.

But, nevertheless, it would be very well if we could so contrive that he should not live without work. It is clearly not Nature's intention that he should be exempted from the general lot of Adam's children. We would not have our friend a slave; but we would fain force him to give the world a fair day's work for his fair day's provender if we knew how to do so without making him a slave. The fact I take it is, that there are too many good things in Jamaica for the number who have to enjoy them. If the competitors were more in number, more trouble would be necessary for their acquirement.

And now, just at this moment, philanthropy is again busy in England protecting the Jamaica negro. He is a man and a brother, and shall we not regard him? Certainly, my philanthropic friend, let us regard him well. He is a man; and, if you will, a brother; but he is the very idlest brother with which a hardworking workman was ever cursed, intent only on getting his mess of pottage without giving anything in return. His petitions about the labor market, my excellently-soft-hearted friend, and his desire to be protected from undue competition are Oh, my friend, I cannot tell you how utterly they are―gammon. He is now eating his yam without work, and in that privilege he is anxious to be

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maintained.

his views ?

And

SLAVERY.

you, are you willing to assist him in

The negro slave was ill-treated-ill-treated, at any rate, in that he was a slave; and therefore, by that reaction which prevails in all human matters, it is now thought necessary to wrap him up in cotton and put him. under a glass case. The wind must not blow on him too roughly, and the rose-leaves on which he sleeps should not be ruffled. He has been a slave; therefore now let him be a Sybarite. His father did an ample share of work; therefore let the son be made free from his portion in the primeval curse. The friends of the negro, if they do not actually use such arguments, endeavor to carry out such a theory.

But one feels that the joke has almost been carried too far when one is told that it is necessary to protect the labor market in Jamaica, and save the negro from the dangers of competition. No immigration of laborers into that happy country should be allowed, lest the rate of wages be lowered, and the unfortunate laborer be made more dependent on his master! But if the unfortunate laborers could be made to work, say four days a week, and on an average eight hours a day, would not that in itself be an advantage? In our happy England, men are not slaves; but the competition of the labor market forces upon them long days of continual labor. In our own country, ten hours of toil, repeated six days a week, for the majority of us will barely produce the necessaries of life. It is quite right that we should love the negroes; but I cannot understand that we ought to love them better than ourselves.

But with the most sensible of those who are now endeavoring to prevent immigration into Jamaica the argument has been, not the protection of the Jamaica negro,