apprentices for themselves, the negroes fell into a way of thinking that
they could only work those eight hours anyhow, and must have an idle
time on the Saturday; and this notion continued to foster indolence for
a good while after they were their own masters. The short time, too,
which the planters knew they should have them at their control,
naturally stimulated them to make the most of them meanwhile. One
gentleman in Metcalfe, for instance, laid out a thousand acres of coffee
on a newly enlarged property, and gave orders to transfer a gang of
negroes from an estate of his some twelve miles distant. The negroes
cling like oysters to their birthplace, and they flatly refused to leave
their grounds and their friends. The master summoned policemen, and had
them cruelly flogged till they consented to go. Apprenticeship was
abolished two years earlier than he had reckoned on, and the laborers
thus forcibly transferred left him then in a body, and the thousand
acres of coffee went to ruin. Had some Trollope chanced then to be
travelling through that quarter, and been entertained by the
disappointed proprietor with all the noble bounteousness which
distinguished him, we can easily imagine how this fact would have
figured in his book, as a proof of unconquerable negro laziness.

It was peculiarly unfortunate for Jamaica at this juncture, that the
estates were mostly managed by attorneys and overseers for absentee
landlords. Middlemen, it is said, ruined Ireland, and it is certain that
they have helped mightily to ruin Jamaica. If attorneys had been ever so
honest, how could they be efficient, when one attorney had very commonly
the charge of four, six, ten, or even fourteen estates? If he paid a
hasty visit to each one once in two years he did well. And as to
overseers, how could honesty be expected when common morality was not
permitted? It was a rule, having almost the force of law, that an
overseer, if he married, was at once dismissed.[6] Loose licentiousness
and loose dishonesty are very apt to go hand in hand, and it is certain
that they did in Jamaica. A saying still in use among the whites of the
island illustrates the standard of integrity: 'Make me your executor,
and I do not ask you to make me your heir.' No wonder that estates went
down like a row of bricks, one after another, when they had such
managers. Had Jamaica been occupied at the time of emancipation by a
resident proprietary, it is not likely that even