The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-29 00:00:00

FRENCH COLONISATION.

( From the Times.)
A French colony is an unlucky child ; it won't
grow, it won't get well of any complaint it has got.
At the same time it catches all children's complaints
with fatal facility. Is the fault in the child or in
the mother ? What is it which invariably keeps a
French colony back, stunts and dwarfs it, represses
any natural principle of expansion, and makes it
look like a limb that has been tortured by some iron
mould into an unnatural shape, and has been artifi-
cially wizened from its birth ? France is a glorious,
brilliant, and fighting goddess, but is she a good
mother ? That homely word, which embodies so
much praise not trumpeted in gazettes, or accom-
panied by flags and flying colours, medals, and
plumes—is it characteristic of the temper of France?
Does she look upon a colony as a real child, as part
of herself, and a natural sharer in her own prospe-
rity and honours ? or does she look upon it as a
convenient drain to carry off her own morbid
humours, a distant receptacle for rebellious and
threatening spirits that she wants to get rid of ? Is
she a stepmother to her children, without any na-
tural affection for them or pride in them ? Does
she show any of that parent's feeling which brings
the child forward, and shows it off as an example?
or does she not rather keep a colony in the back-
ground, as grand houses do their back premises,
which they have not for show but only for the baser
uses ? Algeria has a more showy lot, indeed, but
even Algeria is little better than a convenient cock-
pit, kept going in order to train the true French
fighting breed, and sustain, if not the awe, at least
the apprehension, of Europe.
Whatever be the cause, a French colony is a
poor spectacle. French Guiana, of which a picture
was given in our foreign news yesterday, is now in
a sad state, without labour or capital, the land
groaning under mortgages and encumbrances,
and the labour prevented from coming into the
market by legal shackles. Did the Govern-
ment even let things alone and do nothing,
the colony might right itself in time and come
round of itself; but, unfortunately, the Govern-
ment just steps in to prevent the action of natural
remedies. Were the black labour left free to make
its own terms, the present landless class of liberated
blacks would in time buy out the mortgaged and
helpless landowners with the price of their own
labour, and the land, having attained the great
benefit of cultivation in the process, would pass into
the hands of men of capital. This is the natural
remedy; but the Government does not allow the
colony to right itself. The liberated blacks have
their legs tied by a tax which cuts off' all stimulus
to their exertion, and does not make it worth their
while to offer their labour. Their stimulus to exer-
tion is, of course, the prospect of buying land, but
they are practically prohibited the purchase of land
by a special "fiscal decree subjecting the sale or
exchange of small tracts of land to a transfer-tax
amounting to 200 or 300 per cent. of their value ;
while vast and rich estates are liable only to a duty
on sale of lor 2 per 1,000." This is the state of
things, then. The blacks, excluded from property,
will not work ; and the landowners cannot relieve
themselves from their embarrassments because the
land lies idle. The landowners are willing to sell,
the blacks are willing to buy, but the law inter-
feres. The French have commonly complained of
the insufficiency of black labour, as if that was the
cause of the pressure • but the real reason is that
they will step in with their artificial enactments,
and prevent the black labour from coming into the
market. Guiana seems to be suffering now from
no natural want whatever, but simply from bad
laws. And then, in crder to remedy the effects of
this gratuitous meddling and mischiefmaking, we
have that attempt at a practical revival of the
Slave Trade which was made a little time ago.
Such are the results of interference with the na-
tural course of things—first a want of labour made
artificially by the law in the midst of a real abun-
dance of that article ; and, secondly, a violent re-
medy to supply that want.
As for the lab Jur of the bagnes, which was to have
done miracles in French Guiana, it seems to have
turned out a dead failure. The convicts make trin-
kets and toys enough, and supply the officers' rooms
with elaborate tables and escritoires. " One man
gets curious boxes made, with secret drawers ; ano-
ther orders pieces of furniture composed of the
choicest woods ; a third has an elegant and costly
kiosk or summer-house constructed." But as for
digging and planting, or any work which requires
spades, ploughs, or wheelbarrows,—that does not
enter into the sphere of a French convict's labour.
Disease and death too, have made frightful havoc
in this miserable class ; the situations of the peni-
tentiaries have not been selected with a correct eye
to health, and the climate has done its work. The
management is deplorable, and the fifty millions of
francs which have been spent upon convict estab-
lishments have produced only as vet " a few veget-
ables for the use of the Staff," Establishment after
establishment has been abandoned in consequence
of the deadly effects of climate in bad situations.
Government employes, doctors, distributors, have
yielded to it, besides convicts. Military men are
not generally fit managers of such institutions—at
least, French military men seem not. The dash of
the officer may carry him through an African cam-
paign with eclat, but set him down in a remote spot,
where the eye of France is not on him, tie him to a
steady task, set him to conduct a routine of peace-
ful discipline, and he has not the stimulus he wants
to make him work. We greatly doubt even whether
the Government at Paris has its eye upon merit of
this kind, and whether it has a real place among
the recognized claims to honour and reward. Able
civilians would probably be better heads of such in-
stitutions than officers, but the French Government
would not hear of a civilian in such a post. So far
from adding by labour to the resources of the colony
the bagnes have brought so many additional mouths
to consume them, and, to the havoc of disease
and death, "a constant deficiency in the primary
articles of sustenance, periodically culminating in
a famine," afflicts French Guiana. The scene of
hardship, want, and sepulchral horrors has the
effect which those scenes so often have, and does
not soften and humanise, but brutalise the French
officer. An examination of the goods and arms of
the Military Governor of the Penitentiary of St.
Marie, at La Comte, showed that that high and
responsible officer occasionally wore a cuirass of
human skin. " A convict had died whose breast
was covered with exceedingly beautiful tattooing.
The commandant of the station knew this, and had
the man flayed before he was buried. For a mo-
ment it was thought that this human relic would
have been put up for auction with the officer's
other effects, but fortunately it occurred to some-
body that it was rather too disgusting." It is a
perfectly well-known fact that scenes of mortality
harden men ; indeed, there is a peculiar sort of
desperate and horrid callousness—a brutality sui
generis, which is fostered by them. The classical
historian has described the moral effects of the
plague at Athens, and Manzoni has imitated his
picture in his ghastly account of the plague at
Milan. But the horrors of Cayenne are not so
overwhelming as to produce such a piece of bruta-
lity as this, were a French colony properly under
the eye of the home Government. As it is, France
is, as we have said, no mother to her colonies; she
looks on them as no part of herself; she merely
11C3 a calory, where there is nobody to fight, as a
sing; ; her officers there feel themselves exiles, out-
casts from honourableeenu or. brillir.tnt. service,. ,and
ienraandkistant colon
drudges to
which
anctintrrirrienallydisheolpnlomuera.
honourable
y—for what can be a more
vhisoienteloiurable sphere of labour than a reformatory ?
holds, according to the French standard. These
men feel themselves, then, out of the world, with
no eye upon them, and left to do as they like.
They are not in France, and they do not trouble
themselves to behave as if they were. But every
officer in ayrench colony ought to feel as if he were
in France. It shows a great defect of administra-
tion if he does not, and a French colony never will
be what it ought to be till it is made to feel at
home in the Empire, and to be—what it is not now
—part of France.