hat from the time voluntary
labor began, there was no want of men to work for hire, and that
there was no difficulty in getting those who as apprentices had to
give the planters certain hours of work, to extend, upon emergency,
their period of labor, by hiring out their services for wages to
strangers. I have the authority of my noble friend behind me, (the
Marquis of Sligo,) who very particularly, inquired into the matter,
when I state that on nine estates out of ten there was no difficulty
in obtaining as much work as the owners had occasion for, on the
payment of wages. How does all this contrast with the predictions of
the "practical men?" "Oh," said they, in 1833, "it is idle talking;
the cart-whip must be used--without that stimulant no negro will
work--the nature of the negro is idle and indolent, and without the
thought of the cartwhip is before his eyes he falls asleep--put the
cartwhip aside and no labor will be done." Has this proved the case?
No, my lords, it has not; and while every abundance of voluntary
labor has been found, in no one instance has the stimulus of the
cartwhip been found wanting. The apprentices work well without the
whip, and wages have been found quite as good a stimulus as the
scourge even to negro industry. "Oh, but" it is said, "this may do
in cotton planting and cotton picking, and indigo making; but the
cane will cease to grow, the operation of hoeing will be known no
more, boiling will cease to be practised, and sugar-making will
terminate entirely." Many, I know, were appalled by these
reasonings, and the hopes of many were dissipated by these confident
predictions of these so-deemed experienced men. But how stands the
case now? My lords, let these experienced men, come forth with their
experience. I will plant mine against it, and you will find he will
talk no more of his experience when I tell him--tell him, too,
without fear of contradiction--that during the year which followed
the first of August, 1834, twice as much sugar per hour, and of a
better quality as compared with the preceding years, was stored
throughout the sugar districts; and that one man, a large planter,
has expressly avowed, that with twenty freemen he could do more work
than with a hundred slaves or fifty indentured apprentices. (Hear,
hear.) But Antigua!--what has happened