The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-29 00:00:00

Dr. Underhill on Jamaica
At a meeting held on Monday night in the Bap-
tist Chapel, Maidstone, Dr. Underhill delivered an
address on the subject of Jamaica, in which he en-
tered at length into the facts connected with the
recent outbreak in that island. The ReV. H. H.
Dobney presided, and having made a few opening
remarks he briefly introduced
Dr. UNDERHILL, who was warmly greeted by the
meeting, which was very numerous. Silence being
restored, he said—Mr. Chairman, and ladies and
gentlemen, I certainly should not feel myself justi-
fied in keeping the whole time of the meeting with
the concerns of Jamaica were it not for the pecu-
liarity of the circumstances in which I feel myself
placed. It would indeed be my duty, as the re-
presentative of the Baptist Missionary Society, to
carry your minds to other parts of the earth ; and
certainly, when invited a few weeks ago, I did not
expect to meet you under the special circumstances
of this evening. But I feel lam justified in taking
up those points for the reasons I have stated—those
points, in order to elucidate some of the difficulties,
the perplexities, and some of the facts of this most
lamentable and painful event which has just
occurred in the island of Jamaica. The past
week, to me, has been one of great anxiety and
labour and fatigue, as my own mind has not cleared
its way to the conclusion to which this great event
must lead. We have not received any very authentic
account of the origin of the rebellion, and we can
only come to the remotest conclusion by a compari-
son of statements. Dr. Underhill then proceeded to
narrate the events in the order in which they oc-
curred. He then proceeded to say : You cannot
read these despatches as to the suppression without
being struck at the tone and the temper of the man
who put it down. It has been remarked how those
English officers seem to gloat with savage delight
over the way in which it was quelled. There are
some instances so extraordinarily singular, and so
strangely painful, that I cannot wonder that Eng-
lish people throughout the land have risen up with
unanimous voice to condemn the men who have the
heart to perpetrate such deeds as were taken in re-
taliation. Having shown the acts of the rebellion
and the methods taken, the Governor of Jamaica
enters up the causes and origin of this terrible
event. He began by telling us that there was no
assignable cause ; and in the speech he made at
Kingston before he left he said there was no
organisation in the rebellion. And yet he says
this rebellion is due to a letter which I
wrote nine months ago to the Colonial Sec-
retary. I do not profess to reconcile the two
statements. (The speaker here repeated the
circumstances under which that letter was written,
and stated that Gordon was a native of Glasgow,
born of a mulatto mother, a man of good education
and considerable station, who took an active interest
in the welfare of the black people. He then pro-
ceeded to speak of the condition of the island.] The
produce of the island is not so large as it was three
years ago. Droughts have prevailed, especially last
year ; and when there is a great extent of distress
there is always a great amount of dissatisfaction
and discontent. Besides that there is a great want
of employment in the island. There are about 300
sugar estates in the island ; and taking the
average number of persons employed on these
estates, they do not exceed 30,000 ; another
30,000 in the coffee plantations, and about the
same number for other occupations, and we have
a total of about 90,000 or 100,000. But what is
to become of those other 350,000 people? Unless
they have other sources of livelihood they must
go away. As regards the outcry that there is
a want of labour in Jamaica, it is an utterly
false thing. There is a want of continuous labour.
It has been said that the negro will not work
more than five days in the week. Now that is due
to the planters. When the negro was a slave, and
the planters seized the whole labour of the man, he
gave him Sunday and then the Saturday to work on
the little plot of land which he appropriated to him,
and so made him work only one or two days to feed
himself. You can understand that when theybecame
free they.took care to keep the Saturday and the
Siinday. It has long been the law not to work on
Saturday—it is the great market day of the island.
You see on Saturday hundreds and thousands pro-
ceeding to the markets of the island, partly to dis-
pose of their own produce and partly to purchase
the things they need. Now, the reason why they
do not work continuously is because they do not
have continuous labour to do. This is just the
thing the planter does not do. There is so much
labour unemployed that the planter can get
labour any time he wants it, and so if
a shower of rain comes he dismisses his men.
One planter said he employed during the crop
time about 200 hands, but in the hot months less
than 200. Now, these people who were unem-
ployed took land themselves, and cultivated it, and
when the crop time of the planter comes, the crop
time of the men comes also. Therefore, it is evident
that the planter cannot have hands simply because
he does not take the means of securing continuous
labour by employing them all the year round. It
is a matter of political economy that the supply of
labour, as of everything else, depends upon the de-
mand ; and it is a fact that, since slavery, wages in
Jamaica have gone down, and were never lower in
the island than at this moment, and people cannot
live on the wages that they get. You can't live on
a shilling a day in Jamaica. If they can only
work half of the year, that reduces it practically
to 6d. These wages do not always get fairly
and honourably paid. There is one very singu-
lar passage of the despatch. It there states
that one of the men having an estate in this
very Morant Bay district, immediately he heard
of the outbreak sent up the wages of the
people, for it is a habit by many planters to keep
back the wages of the people, and a great amount
of dissatisfaction arises among them from the fact
that they are not regularly, constantly, and fairly
paid. So, to escape the consequence of his own
neglect, we have seen that he hastens to pay them
that they may not express their discontent by
destroying the crops of their employer. There is
one more feature I will refer to. It is said that the
negroes have equal privileges with the white man.
A £6 freehold entitles the black man to vote ; but
until last year there was an obstacle in the way of
the negro exercising that privilege. His name
must be registered. He must pay 10s. every
year ; and we know how a fee of only ls. precluded
people from exercising the privilege lxi our own coun-
try only a few years ago. That fee of 10s. is the key
which explains why out of 441,000 people only 2,000
are voters to supply the Assembly with its forty-
seven members. To show that they do not possess
political privileges we have only to go back to last
year, when it was enacted that not only must they
have the £6 franchise, but must pay yearly 20s. or
30s. for having their name kept on the register.
That House of Assembly was one of the bad fea-
tures mentioned in their despatches by the Gover-
nors of Jamaica. A large proportion of them are
pla,cemen, and they all hold office under Govern-
generally, and have
ment. They are planters
planters' interests at heart--just the same as in
England, where men brought up for poaching stand
but little chance of leniency from a game-preserving
bench of magistrates. There are three classes of
black men in the island those who work on the
sugar estates, who are generally the most weak,
licentious, and dissolute people in the neighbourhood.
Another class may be called idle; they havegrown up
since freedom—children, they are, of parents who died
in cholera. Even if they come to work, they can't
earn enough ; their work is not sufficiently remune-
rative to make it worth a man's while to work.
There is another class who do not reside on the
sugar estates. They live on the mountains, and are
assiduous, diligent, and industrious. From their
labour comes all the coffee, and pimento and ginger
are nearly all their producing. They are a numerous
class, comprising between 30,000 and4o,ooo. These
are the men you hear little of—perhaps nothing at
all—for they live apart. Among these people is
growing up a large body of well-to-do peasantry.
Though they do not possess riches they are well off.
There is much done to repress their energies by the
white man, who generally eyes the black with dis-
favour. (Having expressed an opinion that the
Governor of Jamaica would meet with his deserts,
and that a commission of English gentlemen should
be sent to Jamaica, the speaker resumed his seat
amidst much applause.)
The meeting was shortly afterwards brought to a
close.