The prairie news. [volume] (Okolona, Miss.) 1851-1875, 1859-09-01

1
The following article from the London
Times indicates that our brethren across
the water are beginning to come to their
senses, and We predict that but few years
will elapse before the Abolitionists on
this side of the Atlantic will begin to
take the same sensible view of things,
and turn their attention to. more prolita-
bic and more Christian subjects than ne
gro emancipation
There is no blinking the truth
Years of bitter experience--ycars Of hope
deferred, of selfdeyotion unrequited, Of
poverty, OF humiliation, Of prayers unan.
swered, of sufferings derided, of insults
unresented, Of contumely patiently en-
dured-have convinced us Of the truth.
1t must be spoken out, loudly and ener-
getically, despite the wild mockings of
"howling cant" The freed West India
slave will not till the soil for wages; the
free son of the ex-slave is as obstinate
as his sire. He will cultivate lands
which he has not bought for his own
yams, mangoes and plantaius. These
satisfy his wants; he does not care for
yours. Cotton, and sugar, and coffee,
and tobacco, be cares little for them
And what matters it to him that the Eng
lishman has sunk his thousands and tens
of thousands on mills, machinery and
plants, which now totter on the languish-
ing estate that for yeaw has only return
ed beggary and debts He eats bis
yams and sniggers at " Buckra.''
"We know not why this should be /;
butt is so. The negro has been bought
with price--the price Of English taxa
tion and English toll. He has been re-
deemed from bondage by the sweat and
travail of some millions of hardworking
Englismen. Twenty millions of pounds
sterling g--one hundred millions Of dollars
have been distilled from the brains and
muscles of the free English laborer, of
every degree, to fashion the West Indian
negro into free and independent labor
err Free and independent enough he
has become, God knows; but laborer he
is not; and. so far as we can see, never
will be-. He will sing hymns and quote
texts, but honest. steady, industry, he
not only detests but despises. We wish
to Heaven that some people in England
neither government people, nor par
sons, nor clergymen-but some just-min-
ded, honest-hearted and clear-sighted
men, would go out to some of the islands
say Jamaica, Dominica or Antigua
not for month or three months, but for
year-would watch the precious pro-
tege Of English philanthropy, the freed
negro in his daily habits; would watch
him as he laziy plants his little squat
ting would see him as he proudly re-
jects agricultural or domestic service, or
accepts it only at wages ludicrously dis
proportiopate to the value of his work.
We wish, too, they would watch him
while, with hide thicker than that of
hippopotamus and body to which fervid
heat is comfort rather than an annoy
ance, he droningly lounges over the pre-
scribed task on which the intrepid Eng
lishmen, uninured to the burning sun,
sacrifices his life. We wish they wonld
go out and view the negro in all the bla-
zonry of his idleness, his pride, bis in
gratitude, contemptuously sneering at
the industry of that race which made him
free, and then come home and teach the
memorable lesson Of their experience to
the fanatics who have perverted him into
what he is"