Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1857-07-24
WASHINGTON NEWS AND GOSSIP

britain very last scheme to destroy our ma
tiOnal prosperity based on our production and
expectation Of cotton, rice, and tobacco-the
new-fangled African ApprenticeI system. We
were then only able to show that it involves a
sweeping acknowledgment that the continuance
of African slavery is, after all her labors and
violations Of all international law, right and
justice to destroy it, absolutely necessary to the
condition of civilized society-to supply wants
of that society which long since became neces-
saries of life to it-cotton, coffee rice, tobacco,
sugar, &c. The world yet uncrazed with abo-
litionism will, in due time, come properly to ap-
preciate this gnod erat demonstrandum of the
arguments Of the London Times and all the
recent English commercial publications and
when appreciated, we look forward to find COM
mon sense upon the subject of African slavery
In our own country, again reasserting its empire
over the minds of the masses of the non-save-
holding States of this Union, who are proven
bially shrewd of apprehension where their own
material interests are directly concerned; as
they are, in the preservation of the great export
commerce Of the United States. three-fourths of
the profits of which eventually find their way
into their pockets. through our system of duties
on imports and laws regulating the coastwise
trade of the United States, and also by and
through the remarkable aptitude of our North
ern population for trade and the mechanical
arts, which would have nothing to feed on so as
to make it accomplish much more than the sup
ply of the home demand, but for the profits, OPP
pOrtunities, wants and inducements growing
out Of the fact that the Southern United States,
by and through the facilities and advantages
OF the existence of slavery within them, are we'll
nigh wholly and exclusively engaged in the
production of the exports of the country.
England, as We remarked yesterday, is al
ready engaged in q deep intrigue to compass
the adoption Of her new system in the Spanish
West India islands simultaneous with her con-
templated adoption Of it in hers-France hav-
ing already contracted for the delivery in Mar
Unique and Guadmloupe, of some thousands
of savages from the interior of Africa, to be
shipped from the present so well known slave
barracoOns, and to cost the planter, landed in
the West Indies, twelve francs a month for a
period of twelve years; when they are to be
sent back to Africa if surviving, which will not
be the case with five in a hundred of them
Two francs per month of their pay is to be re-
served to pay the expenses of their obtainment,
voyage out, &c So, the actual pay to the negro
Of ever realizing iD is to be two dollars per
month-abOut one-third of the interest (at G
per cent? on the average value of a grown
male field hand in the United States.
For centuries past, negroes have been ex-
ported from Africa for laborers In all that
time, if undisputed history tells the truth, not
one has left his native land voluntarily. Here
and there KroOman has performed a voyage
as seaman. But the Kroomen are not one of
the tribes ever enslaved. They are all brought
down to the coast as prisoners-slaves before
coming into possession of the whites Their
condition, without the intervention of the slave
trade with the whites, is precisely what it has
been since Pharaoh time-as far back as the
knowledge of man extends. This is made man.
ifest in the records Of the Pyramids, from which
time to the present, nearly every African of
the tribes in question taken prisoners in war by
neighboring tribes or other peoples, has been
enslaved when not mastered. Every effort of
the philanthropy of this and every past age to
gain a fOothold in the region of Africa where
the slaves shipped to America are taken in war,
has proved abortive. $this moment, as little
has been done by English and American phi
lanthropy towards changing the habits and Gus
toms of the tribes in the interior of Southern
and Central Africa, in this and any other re-
spect whatever, as on the day after that on which
the foolish idea OF the regeneration of those por-
tions of that continent, sealed against such cf-
forts by physical disabilities, decreed by an all
wise and inscrutable Providence
No more remarkable proof of the finite char
acter and impotence Of man, when compared
nth the wisdom and power of the Deity
Is In existence, than the invariable failure of
all efforts to change the characteristics and
status OF the negro race wherever it exists in
numbers. We mention these facts by way of
enforcing the truth of our declaration of yester.
day, that the proposed new scheme of supply.
ing the West Indies with African labor involves
the renewal Of the slave trade on a grander
scale than it has ever been carried on, even
when it was not piracy in the eye of the law, as
at present; and also a continuation of African
slavery under another name, and accompanied
by hardships and cruelties such as are not in
flcted on African slaves anywhere in America
at the present time; though some of them now
practised and suffered, are bad enough in all
conscience. Thus, the employers of the i'm
ported apprentices, not being their owners in
fee, will be utterly without inducement to care
for their comfort, health, reproduction, &c.
Their policy will be to get as much out of them
in the twelve years as possible.
Wherever, as in some employments in some
slavehOlding countries, the labor of the negro
for few years forced to his utmost capacity, is
worth more than the preservation of the CAPT.
tai invested in him and his reproduction, he is
worked, literally, to death. That is to say of
every hundred children born among them, not
five, or at most, ten, are reared, and the stocks
are kept up by new impOrtations. We have
seen this state Of things under our own eyes,
and know well that when all property in the
negro shall be abolished in the West Indies
and it shall be lawful to renew the supply at
will, the planter will, in the twelve years or
less time, so work him as to unfit him for any
profitable labor for his own sustenance there.