An
European At His First Arrival Must Be Greatly Surprised When He Sees
The Elegance Of Their Houses, Their Sumptuous Furniture, As Well As
The Magnificence Of Their Tables.
Can he imagine himself in a
country, the establishment of which is so recent?
The three principal classes of inhabitants are, lawyers, planters,
and merchants; this is the province which has afforded to the first
the richest spoils, for nothing can exceed their wealth, their
power, and their influence. They have reached the ne plus ultra of
worldly felicity; no plantation is secured, no title is good, no
will is valid, but what they dictate, regulate, and approve. The
whole mass of provincial property is become tributary to this
society; which, far above priests and bishops, disdain to be
satisfied with the poor Mosaical portion of the tenth. I appeal to
the many inhabitants, who, while contending perhaps for their right
to a few hundred acres, have lost by the mazes of the law their
whole patrimony. These men are more properly law givers than
interpreters of the law; and have united here, as well as in most
other provinces, the skill and dexterity of the scribe with the
power and ambition of the prince: who can tell where this may lead
in a future day? The nature of our laws, and the spirit of freedom,
which often tends to make us litigious, must necessarily throw the
greatest part of the property of the colonies into the hands of
these gentlemen. In another century, the law will possess in the
north, what now the church possesses in Peru and Mexico.
While all is joy, festivity, and happiness in Charles-Town, would
you imagine that scenes of misery overspread in the country? Their
ears by habit are become deaf, their hearts are hardened; they
neither see, hear, nor feel for the woes of their poor slaves, from
whose painful labours all their wealth proceeds. Here the horrors of
slavery, the hardship of incessant toils, are unseen; and no one
thinks with compassion of those showers of sweat and of tears which
from the bodies of Africans, daily drop, and moisten the ground they
till. The cracks of the whip urging these miserable beings to
excessive labour, are far too distant from the gay Capital to be
heard. The chosen race eat, drink, and live happy, while the
unfortunate one grubs up the ground, raises indigo, or husks the
rice; exposed to a sun full as scorching as their native one;
without the support of good food, without the cordials of any
cheering liquor. This great contrast has often afforded me subjects
of the most conflicting meditation. On the one side, behold a people
enjoying all that life affords most bewitching and pleasurable,
without labour, without fatigue, hardly subjected to the trouble of
wishing. With gold, dug from Peruvian mountains, they order vessels
to the coasts of Guinea; by virtue of that gold, wars, murders, and
devastations are committed in some harmless, peaceable African
neighbourhood, where dwelt innocent people, who even knew not but
that all men were black. The daughter torn from her weeping mother,
the child from the wretched parents, the wife from the loving
husband; whole families swept away and brought through storms and
tempests to this rich metropolis! There, arranged like horses at a
fair, they are branded like cattle, and then driven to toil, to
starve, and to languish for a few years on the different plantations
of these citizens. And for whom must they work? For persons they
know not, and who have no other power over them than that of
violence, no other right than what this accursed metal has given
them! Strange order of things! Oh, Nature, where art thou? - Are not
these blacks thy children as well as we? On the other side, nothing
is to be seen but the most diffusive misery and wretchedness,
unrelieved even in thought or wish! Day after day they drudge on
without any prospect of ever reaping for themselves; they are
obliged to devote their lives, their limbs, their will, and every
vital exertion to swell the wealth of masters; who look not upon
them with half the kindness and affection with which they consider
their dogs and horses. Kindness and affection are not the portion of
those who till the earth, who carry the burdens, who convert the
logs into useful boards. This reward, simple and natural as one
would conceive it, would border on humanity; and planters must have
none of it!
If negroes are permitted to become fathers, this fatal indulgence
only tends to increase their misery: the poor companions of their
scanty pleasures are likewise the companions of their labours; and
when at some critical seasons they could wish to see them relieved,
with tears in their eyes they behold them perhaps doubly oppressed,
obliged to bear the burden of nature - a fatal present - as well as
that of unabated tasks. How many have I seen cursing the
irresistible propensity, and regretting, that by having tasted of
those harmless joys, they had become the authors of double misery to
their wives. Like their masters, they are not permitted to partake
of those ineffable sensations with which nature inspires the hearts
of fathers and mothers; they must repel them all, and become callous
and passive. This unnatural state often occasions the most acute,
the most pungent of their afflictions; they have no time, like us,
tenderly to rear their helpless off-spring, to nurse them on their
knees, to enjoy the delight of being parents. Their paternal
fondness is embittered by considering, that if their children live,
they must live to be slaves like themselves; no time is allowed them
to exercise their pious office, the mothers must fasten them on
their backs, and, with this double load, follow their husbands in
the fields, where they too often hear no other sound than that of
the voice or whip of the taskmaster, and the cries of their infants,
broiling in the sun.
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