The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1839-05-25


whip as motives to labor, there is no intermediate
stage.
b Many of the West India planters, but especial
y the hired managers and attorneys of absentee
Iproprietors, have submitted to the necessity Of
emancipation with very i'll grace, and have en-
deavored to make freedom more intolerabe than
slavery, by refusing adequate wages and eXtQrtng
exorbitant rent. Sir Lionel Smith, the Governor
of Jamaica, said to public assembly of planters
attornes and managers in the island You are
anxious to produce panic to reduce the value OF
property; to create dsmay in order that you may
speculate 1t was not denied Here we have
the origin of those evil reports which seem so
much to the taste of most of our editors. That
notwithstanding ALL abolition has worked we'll for
all the parties concerned-s as clear as the sun
at noon in an unclouded sky. Real estate has
risen in all the colonies, and sales have been made
at great advances upon the prices asked six
months before emancipation. Crime has dimin-
ished. In Barbadoes the punishments for all de-
scriptions of offences for the two and a half
months Immediately preceding the LIST of August,
1927, were 1925, for the same period Immediately
succeeding emancipation in 1888, they were 657.
At later period, Barbados newspaper asserted
that IN the country prisons, among population Of
SOO,OO0, but two prisoners were confined for any
cause whatever. So great has been the rivalry
among the various colonies, to procure the services
of free laborers that they have almost proceeded
from war of words to one of blows. The most
thnly populated colonies have passed laws giving
special inducements to immigration, and some of
them have even endeavored to obtain free colored
la6orers from oar oaon country. Public improve
ment has remarkably advanced in all the important
colonies and Banks, Insurance Companies, Rail
road Companies, institutions quite unknown in
H. a. Il
10 flourish. Even Savings Banks have been es-
tablished in Jamaica. and are receiving the wages
of the freed laborers, proof that foresight and
economy return with reviving manhood. The
emancipated population are eager for education,
and crowd into schools and chapels of the mission
aries. These are facts of general nature which
cannot De denied. On the other hand all the diff
fculties that have attended the change may be
fairly imputed to the avaricious desire of the plan
tiers to procure labor for less than It's value or bring
the new system into disrepue.
1t is too late to talk of the failure of the Brit
ish experiment. The visions of blood and desola-
ton have all passed away. The working Of free
dom among the colonial aborers of the West In
dies, is now no more matter of doubt, than it is
among the freemen of New York and Pennsylva-
mia. What the malcontent planters may do to
restore despotsm it is not easy say, but that the
ldUOTSTS Will CUutHuG pcdISluliy W WIN "iSh vi
fered fair wages, one may predict as safely as the
rising of tomorrows sun.
IF liberty under law is safe in the West Indies,
where the colored so vastly outnumber the white
population why should it be unsafe in the United
States, where the whites in the slave States are
two to one? Our republican advocates of slavery
have settled this question in advance, for they
have always claimed that our slaves were in a
better condition than those of the British, both
and morally. Up to the date of the
British Abolition Act, standing self-justlhca-
ton was comparison with the West lndies.-
That our shareholders may be safely defed to show
any reason why freedom will not work well in
the United States as in the West Indies, is evil
dent from the fact that no less an orator than Hen
ny Clay could only meet the argument by preten-
ding to have gloomy forebodings' Of an ultimate
failure in the experiment, and by showing want
of analogy between the poarerS of the two govern
ments That the great problem whether the eman-
cipated slave will peaceably labor for wages has
been worked out in favor of freedom Mr.. Clay
dared not deny.
If the obstinate adherence of the South to the
doctrines and practice of despotism be taken for
proof that the glorious facts of the West Indies
are making no impression upon southern minds,
a great mistake will be committed. 1t is to be re-
that the minds of the whites as we'll as
the bodies OF the blacks are enslaved. No favor
able change of public opinion will be perceived
till it becomes equivalent to the REFRESHING power,
and, indeed, breaks out in a moral insurrection.-
That the change is proceeding and notslowly, we
have evidence which cannot now be produced
without endangering the lives of parties at the
South.
The committee are rejoiced to say, that the
sound anti-savery sentiments expressed in minor
religious bodies of various denominations have
been, during the past year, too numerous to be
embodied in report, These expressions have
,ome from Christs visible church which are most
active in every branch of true Christian charity at
lome and abroad-whose religion benefits their
1ext door neighbors as well as their anlipodes-
md may we'll be taken the voice of true Chris
ianity. 1t is to be deplored, however, that the
spirits which lead the chief ecclesiastical organza-
ions are, most of them still hostile to immediate
Justice on the soil. They still copy the policy S
which, in Congress, gags discussion and tramPles
IN the right of petition. Not only are they deaf
o the crV of the two and half millions who t
lave fallen among thieves but they seem resolved {
IN expelling from their pales all sympathy for t
hem-as near as may be in republic, by hur G
NC bolts after the manner of the great spiritual /
power of Europe. All such ecclesiastical pro- h
crption the committee cannot but regard as the G
&c hat boir labo uha