M'arthur Democrat. (McArthur, Vinton County, Ohio) 1853-1865, 1858-03-25
From the London Times.
The Con- sequences OF Negro
Emancipation i'm the British
West Indies.

W NSS
After the elapse of a quarter of a
century since the final emancipation
Of the negro, we ought to find our
selves in a position to speak with some
confidence on several points connected
with that important question. The
facts, indeed, are clear enough, but
the conclusion is not satisfactory, nor
tile escape very easyto find. The phi
lanthropists can undoubtedly appeal
to one great achievement. The liber-
alton Of the black has been complete,
unqualified and permanent. All the
cruelties or miseries which may have
accompanied the institution of slavery
in our colonies, whether avoidable or
otherwise, have absolutely ceased; no
British planter any longer possesses
human property, nor can it be said
that any vestige of the old system is
now discernible. What the anti-sla.
very agitators sought to abolish, they
have abolished utterly, and the shame
and the scandal have disappeared
from our territories as entirely as if
they had never been known. With this
admission, howerer. we fear the ap.
proVal Of our policy must be termina.
ted. On every other point predictions
have been falsitied and expectations
disappointed. The negro himself, tho
he has become free, has not become
wise or industrious. Our planters
have not found that free blacks make
good laborers; our colonies have not
risen in prosperity and affluence above
the slaveholding colonies of other
States, and, though the trade in slaves
has decreased upon the whole, its vi
tality is 80 plain and strong, that at
this very moment we are making a
considerable addition to the force of
our African squadron. Everything,in
short, has failed, except emancipation
itself. Negroes are free, but they are
also brutalized; the West Indies have
been ruined; immense tracts Of the
most productive soil in the world are
left uncultivated for the want of labor,
and other nations, discerning in our
policy warning rather that an exam.
pie, are pushing the opportunities OF
slavery to the utmost, and making
fortunes oyer the heads of British col
onists.
These results are traceable in the
main to the spirit Of legislation di-
rected exclusively to the eradication of
slavery, without regard to any of the
functions which slaves had until then
discharged. The agricalturists of our
tropical colonies were suddenly de-
priVed Of the labor by the aid Of which
their crops were produced, and the
controlling authorities, instead Of as
sisting them in replacing the lost ele-
ment. appeared to charge themselves
only with the duty of scrutinizing and
impeding all efforts in this direction,
lest anything resembling slavery
should be introduced in another form.
This was not unnatural, nor perhaps
unnecessary, but in the mean time cul-
tivation was suspended and property
destroyed, while British consumers
repaired to foreign markets for the
very commodities which our own
countrymen had been forbidden to
produce. The emaucipated negro
would do no work at all. No at.
teNptS have succeeded in inspiring
him with the wants and yearnings o.
civilized life, and, as his needs are
small, his exertions are small also.-
The climate enables him to dispense
with refnements of shelter or apparel
the soil provides him with sustenance
and vagrancy and Incidence leave hin
at least as much like beast as ever
though he is no longer beast o
burden. The obligation of labor nc
longer rests on these members of The
race Of. Ham. The West India squat
ter can yegetate ID absolute idlenesl
without compulsion or enticement t
employ his faculties in work. i) vi
nPEcho is the shadow of sound,