upon his first investment than let that investment perish altogether, suffer his machinery to lie idle, and turn the remains of his fortune to a pursuit in which he might make five per cent. This, we believe, is the only cause which keeps up the cultivation of sugar in Jamaica and Antigua. In Hayti this cause has ceased to operate. Most of the fixed capital necessary for the sugar-trade was destroyed by the war which followed the liberation of the negroes. The machinery which remained was employed as formerly. But it was not replaced as it fell to decay. This at once explains the gradual decrease of production. A similar decrease, from similar causes, is taking place in our oldest colonies. But let us even suppose that the cultivation of sugar was likely, under ordinary circumstances, to flourish in Hayti, it still remains to be considered what security capital invested in that business would have enjoyed. A short time back it seemed by no means improbable that France would assert her rights to the sovereignty of the island by arms. In the year 1814, the strongest apprehensions were entertained. A murderous and devastating war, a war in which quarter would neither have been given or taken, was to be expected. The plan of defence which the rulers of Hayti contemplated was suited to so terrible a crisis. It was intended to turn the coast into a desert, to set fire to the buildings, to fall back on the interior fastnesses of the country, and by constant skirmishes, by hunger, and by the effects of a climate so atal to Europeans, to wear out the invading army. This design was avowed by the Government in publications which have found their way to England. It was justified by cir cumstances, and it could scarcely have failed of success. But it is evident that the remotest prospect of such an emergency would alone have deterred any capitalist from sinking his property in the extensive and valuable machinery necessary to a sugar-planter. It is true that there is a diminution in the quantity of cof tee exported from Hayti. But the cause of the diminution is obvious. The taxes on that article are exorbitantly high The territorial impost raised on the plantation, and the customs which must be paid previous to exportation, make up a duty of sixty per cent. on the prime cost. If the Haytians are to be free, they must have an army. If they are to have an army, they must raise money; and this may pos sibly be the best way of raising it. But it is evidently im possible that a commodity thus burdened can maintain ? competition with the produce of countries where no taxes exist. We therefore think it by no means improbable that the Haytians may have abandoned the cultivation of sugar and coffee, not from idleness, but from prudence; that they may have been as industriously employed as their enslaved ancestors, though in a different manner. All the testimony which we have ever been able to procure tends to prove that they are at least industrious enough to live comfortably, and multiply rapidly under the weight of a very heavy tax ation. We have shown that the decrease in the exports of Hayti does not necessarily prove a decrease in the industry of the people. But we also maintain, that, even if we were to admit that the Haytians work less steadily than formerly, Major Moody has no right to attribute that circumstance to the influence of climate. His error in this and in many other parts of his work proceeds from an utter ignorance of the habits of labourers in the temperate zone. What those habits are, we have already stated. If an English labourer, who has hitherto been unable to obtain the enjoyments to which he is accustomed without working three hundred days a year, should find himself able to obtain those enjoyments by working a hundred days a year, he will not continue to work three hundred days a year. He will make some addition to his pleasures, but he will abate largely of his exertions. He will probably work only on the alternate days. The case of the Haytian is the same. As a slave he worked twelve months in the year, and received perhaps as much as he would have been able to raise in one month, if he had worked on his own account. He was liberated- - he found that, by working for two months, he could procure luxuries of which he had never dreamed. If he worked unsteadily, he did only what an Englishman, in the same circumstances; would have done. In order to prove that labour in Hayti follows a law different from that which is in operation among ourselves, it is necessary to prove, not merely that the Haytian works unsteadily, but that he will forego comforts to which he is accustomed, rather than work steadily. This Major Moody has not even asserted of the Haytiars Dr of any other class of tropical labourers. He has, there fore, altogether failed to show, that the natives of the torrid zone cannot be safely left to the influence of those principles which have most effectually promoted civilization in Europe. If the law of labour be everywhere the same, and he has said nothing which induces us to doubt that it is so, that un. steadiness of which he speaks will, at least in its extreme degree, last only for a time, which, compared with the life of a nation, is but as a day in the life of man. The luxu ries of one generation will become the necessaries of the next. As new desires are awakened, greater exertions will be necessary. This cause, coöperating with that increase of population of which the Major himself admits the effect, will, in less than a century, make the Haytian labourer what the English labourer now is. The last case which we shall consider is, that of the free negroes who emigrated from North America to Hayti. They were in number about six thousand. President Boyer undertook to defray the whole expense of their passage, and to support them for four months after their arrival -a clear proof that the people of Hayti are industrious enough to place at the disposal of the Government funds more than sufficient to defray its ordinary charges. We give the sixth and seventh articles of Boyer's instruction to the agent employed by him on this occasion, as Major Moody states them. It is on these that his whole argument turns. "Article VI. To regulate better the interests of the emigrants, it will be proper to let them know in detail, what the government of the republic is disposed to do, to assure their future well-being and that of their children, on the sole condition of their being good and industrious citizens. You are authorized, in concert with the agents of the different societies, and before civil authority, to make arrangements with heads of families, or other emigrants who can unite twelve people able to work, and also to stipulate that the government will give them a portion of land sufficient to employ twelve persons, and on which may be raised coffee, cotton, maize, peas and other vegetables and provisions; and after they have well improved the said quantity of land which will not be less than thirty-six acres in extent, or twelve carreaces, government will give a perpetual title to the said land to these twelve people, their heirs, and assigns. "Article VII.-Those of the emigrants who prefer applying themselves individually to the culture of the earth, either by renting landa already improved, which they will till, or by working in the field to share the produce with the proprietor, must also engage themselves by legal act that, on arriving in Hayti, they will make the above men tioned arrangements; and this they must do before judges of the peace; so that, on their arrival here, they will be obliged to apply themselves to agriculture, and not be liable to become vagrants." On these passages the Major reasons thus "In Hayti, even at present, under the judicious government of Pres. ident Boyer, we find the free and intelligent American Blacks receiving land for nothing, having their expenses paid, and the produce of the land to be for their own advantage, obliged, by a legal act, to apply themselves to a kind of labour which is manifestly and clearly intended to better their condition. Why should a free man be thus obliged to act in a manner which the most ignorant person might discover was a duty incumbent on him, and that the result would be for his advantage? The legal act and its penalties, after such a grant of land, would appear pre-eminently absurd in England." 2 We, for our own parts, can conceive nothing more preeminently absurd, than for a man to quote and comment on what he has never read. This is clearly the case with the Major. The emigrants who were to be obliged by a legal act to apply themselves to labour, were not those who were to receive land for nothing, but those who were to rent it, or to hire themselves out as labourers under others. The Major has applied the provisions of the Seventh Article to the class mentioned in the Sixth. So disgraceful an instance of carelessness we never saw in any official document. Whether the President acted well or ill, is not the question. The principle on which he proceeded cannot be mistaken. He was about to advance a considerable sum for the purpose of transporting these people to Hayti. He appears, as far as we can judge from these instructions, to have exacted no security from the higher and most respectable class. But he thought it probable, we suppose, that many of those idle and profligate persons who abound in all great cities, and who are peculiarly likely to abound in a degraded caste, beggars and thieves, the refuse of the North American bridewells, might accept his proposals, merely that they might live for some months at free costs, and then return to their ld habits. He therefore naturally required some assurance that the poorer emigrants intended to support themselves by their industry before he would agree to advance their subsistence. 1 Second Part of Major Moody's Report, p. 30 The Major proceeds thus: "Your Lordship may observe, in the instructions o' the President, that only certain modes of rewarding the labour of the free Americar Black are mentioned, viz. renting land already improved, working in the field to share the produce with the labourer, or, by being proprietors of land, to cultivate on their own account without either rent or purchase, having land from the free gift of the Government. "The ordinary mode of rewarding the labourer by the payment of wages, as in England or the East Indies, where the country is fully peo pled, is never once mentioned or alluded to by President Boyer, wha may be fairly supposed to understand the situation of the country which he governs." 1 For the sake of the Haytians, we hope that Boyer understands the country which he governs better than the Major understands the subject on which he writes. Who, before, ever thought of mentioning the renting of land as a mode of rewarding the labourer? The renting of land is a transac tion between the proprietor of the soil and the capitalist. Can Major Moody possibly imagine, that, in any part of the world, the labourer, as a labourer, pays rent, or receives it? He surely must know, that those emigrants who rented land, must have rented it in the capacity, not of labourers, but of capitalists; that they must have paid the rent out of the profits of their stock, not out of the gains of their labour; that even when a man works on his own account, the gains of hi labour, though not generally called wages, are wages to all intents and purposes, and, though popularly confounded with his profits, follow a law altogether different. But Boyer, says Major Moody, never mentions wages. How can wages be better defined, than as the share of the produce allowed to the labourer? Does Major Moody conceive that wages can be paid only in money, or that money wages represent any thing but that share of the produce of which the President speaks? He goes on, however, floundering deeper and deeper in absurdity at every step. "In the present constitution of Hayti, as administered by President Boyer, in Titre sur l'Etat Politique des Citoyens," I find, under the 47th act, that the rights of citizenship are suspended, as regards domes ties working for wages ('par l'état de domestique à gages', in thui very republican country, where a person, ignorant of the effect of phys ical causes, would naturally conclude that it would be most unjust to Seprive a man of his right of citizenship, because he preferred one mode of subsisting himself to another, which the Government wished encourage."2 1 Second Part of Major Moody's Report, p. 32. |