The Portable Edmund Burke (Portable Library) (44 page)

His Grace’s landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to an agrarian experiment. They are a downright insult upon the rights of man. They are more extensive than the territory of many of the Grecian republics; and they are without comparison more fertile than most of them. There are now republics in Italy, in Germany, and in Switzerland, which do not possess anything like so fair and ample a domain. There is scope for seven philosophers to proceed in their analytical experiments, upon Harrington’s seven different forms of republics, in the acres of this one duke. Hitherto they have been wholly unproductive to speculation; fitted for nothing but to fatten bullocks, and to produce grain for beer, still more to stupify the dull English understanding. Abbé Sieyes has whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitutions ready made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered ; suited to every season and every fancy; some with the top of the pattern at the bottom, and some with the bottom at the top; some plain, some flowered; some distinguished for their simplicity, others for their complexity; some of blood colour; some of
boue de Paris;
some with directories, others without a direction; some with councils of elders, and councils of youngsters; some without any council at all. Some where the electors choose the representatives; others, where the representatives choose the electors. Some in long coats, and some in short cloaks; some with pantaloons; some without breeches. Some with five-shilling qualifications ; some totally unqualified. So that no constitution-fancier may go unsuited from his shop, provided he loves a pattern of pillage, oppression, arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation, exile, revolutionary judgment, and legalized premeditated murder, in any shapes into which they can be put. What a pity it is, that the progress of experimental philosophy should be checked by his Grace’s monopoly! Such are their sentiments, I assure him; such is their language, when they dare to speak; and such are their proceedings, when they have the means to act.

Their geographers and geometricians have been some time out of practice. It is some time since they have divided their own country into squares. That figure has lost the charms of its novelty. They want new lands for new trials. It is not only the geometricians of the republic that find him a good subject, the chemists have bespoken him after the geometricians have done with him. As the first set have an eye on his Grace’s lands, the chemists are not less taken with his buildings. They consider mortar as a very anti-revolutionary invention in its present state; but properly employed, an admirable material for overturning all establishments. They have found that the gunpowder of
ruins
is far the fittest for making other
ruins
, and so
ad infinitum.
They have calculated what quantity of matter convertible into nitre is to be found in Bedford House, in Woburn Abbey, and in what his Grace and his trustees have still suffered to stand of that foolish royalist Inigo Jones, in Covent Garden. Churches, play-houses, coffee-houses, all alike are destined to be mingled, and equalized, and blended into one common rubbish; and, well sifted and lixiviated, to crystallize into true, democratic, explosive, insurrectionary nitre. Their academy del
Cimento
(per antiphrasin) with Morveau and Hassenfrats at its head, have computed that the brave sans culottes may make war on all the aristocracy of Europe for a twelve-month, out of the rubbish of the Duke of Bedford’s buildings.

While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceeding with these experiments upon the Duke of Bedford’s houses, the Sieyes, and the rest of the analytical legislators, and constitution-venders, are quite as busy in their trade of decomposing organization, in forming his Grace’s vassals into primary assemblies, national guards, first, second, and third requisitioners, committees of research, conductors of the travelling guillotine, judges of revolutionary tribunals, legislative hangmen, supervisors of domiciliary visitation, exactors of forced loans, and assessors of the maximum.

The din of all this smithery may some time or other possibly wake this noble Duke, and push him to an endeavour to save some little matter from their experimental philosophy. If he pleads his grants from the Crown, he is ruined at the outset. If he pleads he has received them from the pillage of superstitious corporations, this indeed will stagger them a little, because they are enemies to all corporations, and to all religion. However, they will soon recover themselves, and will tell his Grace, or his learned council, that all such property belongs to the
nation;
and that it would be more wise for him, if he wishes to live the natural term of a
cit
izen, (that is, according to Condorcet’s calculation, six months on an average,) not to pass for an usurper upon the national property. This is what the
serjeants
at law of the rights of man will say to the puny
apprentices
of the common law of England.

Is the genius of philosophy not yet known? You may as well think the garden of the Tuilleries was well protected with the cords of ribbon insultingly stretched by the National Assembly to keep the sovereign canaille from intruding on the retirement of the poor king of the French, as that such flimsy cobwebs will stand between the savages of the Revolution and their natural prey. Deep philosophers are no triflers; brave sans-culottes are no formalists. They will no more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Woburn will not be more respectable in their eyes than the Prior of Woburn; they will make no difference between the superior of a Covent Garden of nuns, and of a Covent Garden of another description. They will not care a rush whether his coat is long or short; whether the colour be purple or blue and buff. They will not trouble their heads, with what part of
his
head his hair is cut from; and they will look with equal respect on a tonsure and a crop. Their only question will be that of their
Legendre,
or some other of their legislative butchers, how he cuts up? how he tallows in the cawl, or on the kidneys?

Is it not a singular phenomenon, that whilst the sans-culotte carcass-butchers, and the philosophers of the shambles, are pricking their dotted lines upon his hide, and, like the print of the poor ox that we see in the shop-windows at Charing Cross, alive as he is, and thinking no harm in the world, he is divided into rumps, and sirloins, and briskets, and into all sorts of pieces for roasting, boiling, and stewing, that all the while they are measuring
him,
his Grace is measuring
me;
is invidiously comparing the bounty of the Crown with the deserts of the defender of his order, and in the same moment fawning on those who have the knife half out of the sheath—poor innocent!

 

SINCE I HAVE INDULGED MYSELF so long in a speculation which appears to me very material to the welfare of these colonies, I shall venture to say something further concerning another part of the inhabitants, though it may perhaps meet no warm reception from those who are the most nearly concerned.

The negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more complete, and attended with far worse circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time. Proofs of this are not wanting. The prodigious waste which we experience in this unhappy part of our species, is a full and melancholy evidence of this truth. The island of Barbadoes (the negroes upon which do not amount to eighty thousand) notwithstanding all the means which they use to increase them by propagation, notwithstanding that the climate is in every respect, except that of being more wholesome, exactly resembling the climate from whence they come; notwithstanding all this, Barbadoes lives under a necessity of an annual recruit of five thousand slaves to keep up the stock at the number I have mentioned. This prodigious failure, which is at least in the same proportion in all our islands, shows demonstratively that some uncommon and insupportable hardship lies upon the negroes, which wears them down in such a surprising manner; and this, I imagine, is principally the excessive labor which they undergo. For previously, I suppose, that none of the inhabitants of the countries between the tropics are capable, even in their own climates, of near so much labor, without great prejudice to them, as our people are in ours. But in our plantations the blacks work severely for five days, without any relaxation or intermission, for the benefit of the master, and the other two days they are obliged to labor for their own subsistence, during the rest of the week; and this, I imagine, with the other circumstances of great severity which depress their spirits, naturally cuts off great numbers, as well as disqualifies those who remain from supplying this waste by natural propagation.

The planter will say, that, if he is to allow his negroes more recreation and to indulge them in more hours of absence from their work, he can never reimburse himself for the charge he has been at in the purchase of the slave, nor make the profits which induced him to go to that expense. But this, though it appears plausible enough at first, because the slaves are very dear, and because they do not yield above ten or twelve pounds a head annually clear profit by their labor, is notwithstanding very fallacious. For let it be considered, that, out of their stock of eighty thousand in Barbadoes, there die every year five thousand negroes more than are born in that island: in effect, this people is under a necessity of being entirely renewed every sixteen years; and what must we think of the management of a people, who, far from increasing greatly, as those who have no loss by wars ought to do, must, in so short a space of time as sixteen years, without foreign recruits, be entirely consumed to a man? Let us suppose that these slaves stand the Barbadians in no more than twenty pounds a head out of the ship; whereas, in reality, they cost a great deal more; this makes one hundred thousand pounds every year, and in sixteen years, one million six hundred thousand pounds. A sum really astonishing, and amounting to a fourth of the value of every thing they export.

Now suppose, that, by allowing a more moderate labor and some other indulgences, a great number of these deaths might be prevented (and many I think it is probable would so be prevented,) and that they could keep up within a thousand of their stock (and why they could not entirely keep it up by such means, I cannot possibly guess) they would save in this way eighty thousand pounds every year. But from thence we must deduct the time in which these slaves have been unemployed. I suppose that all reasonable indulgences might be given of every sort for the difference of forty thousand pounds, which is the labor of four thousand slaves. This will be far from a small allowance, especially as in this way less time will be lost by sickness, and the surgeon will have less employment. Then, after all deductions, by behaving like good men, good masters, and good Christians, the inhabitants of this one island would save forty thousand pounds a year; which if, instead of being saved, it were lost by such a proceeding, it ought to be considered as a necessary loss, and borne accordingly.

This matter, though not, I think, before shown in this same light, seems in itself extremely clear; but if it were yet clearer, there are several gentlemen of the West Indies who could not comprehend it; though a wagoner in England will comprehend very clearly, that, if he works his horse but moderately and feeds him well, he will draw more profit from him in the end, than if he never gave him an hour’s respite in the day from his work, and at night turned him upon the common for his subsistence. I am far from contending in favor of an effeminate indulgence to these people. I know that they are stubborn and intractable for the most part, and that they must be ruled with the rod of iron. I would have them ruled, but not crushed with it. I would have a humanity exercised which is consistent with steadiness. And I think it clear from the whole course of history, that those nations which have behaved with the greatest humanity to their slaves were always best served, and ran the least hazard from their rebellions. And I am the more convinced of the necessity of these indulgencies, as slaves certainly cannot go through so much work as freemen. The mind goes a great way in every thing; and when a man knows that his labor is for himself, and that the more he labors, the more he is to acquire, this consciousness carries him through, and supports him beneath fatigues, under which he otherwise would have sunk.

The prejudice this saving would be to the African trade is, I know, an objection which to some would appear very plausible. But surely, one cannot hear without horror of a trade which must depend for its support upon the annual murder of several thousands of innocent men; and indeed nothing could excuse the slave trade at all, but the necessity we are under of peopling our colonies, and the consideration that the slaves we buy were in the same condition in Africa, either hereditary or taken in war. But, in fact, if the waste of these men should become less, the price would fall; then, if a due order were taken, the same demand might be kept, by extending our colonies, which is now produced by the havoc made of the people. This is the case on the continent, where, though the slaves increase, there is an annual call for seven thousand at least.

The principal time I would have reserved for the indulgence I propose to be granted to the slaves is Sunday, or the Lord’s day; a day which is profaned in a manner altogether scandalous in our colonies. On this day, I would have them regularly attend at church; I would have them, particularly the children, carefully (full as carefully as any others) instructed in the principles of religion and virtue, and especially in the humility, submission, and honesty, which become their condition. The rest of the day might be devoted to innocent recreation; to these days of relaxation, and with the same exercises, should be added some days in the grand festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and perhaps, four or five days in the year besides. Such methods would by degrees habituate their masters, not to think them a sort of beasts, and without souls, as some of them do at present, who treat them accordingly; and the slaves would of course grow more honest, tractable, and less of eye-servants; unless the sanctions of religion, the precepts of morality, and all the habits of an early institution, be of no advantage to mankind. Indeed I have before me an author, if he may be so called, who treats the notion of bringing the negroes to Christianity with contempt, and talks of it at the best, as a thing of indifference. But, besides that, he appears to me a writer of very little judgment, I cannot conceive with what face any body, who pretends to inform the public, can set up as an advocate for irreligion, barbarism, and gross ignorance....