The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1870-01-27
Hon. Thomas Ewing. or Ohio. ON


fhe CmBmm Question.
Doubtless our readers would be gratified
to hear what the Hon. Thomas Ewing, Of
Ohio. has to say ON the much mooted Gu
ban question. He is a veteran statesman
of the old Wing school, who filed his
place grandly in the Senate Of the Uni
ted States in the better days of the Re
public, when Clay, Calhoun, Webster,
Wright, Benton, and men of that class
filed the public eye. At present he is a
Conservative Republican, though he takes
but little part in politics. Addressing
himself to the inquiry, whether our gov
eminent should, by premature recogni-
ton Of the revolutionists, give them aid
and comfort in their effort to overthrow
the established rule in the Island, he says:
The revolution being the work of marau-
ders, its first effort will be to rob of their
possessions and drive from the island all, or
nearly all. its present white population
They will be robbed, as q matter OF course,
of all their wealth, and will fly by hundreds
of thousands to escape bodily infection, the
garrote or prison, and they will take with
last years of the war, while the result IL
doubtful. and the first of the new and un-
settled government, Agricultural labor and
production must cease. The sugar and cof-
fee plantations will be deserted for the want
of hands to cultivate them and gather the
crops, and for want of protection when gath
cred. Our importation from this great
storehouse of tropical production must cease,
and with it the sales there of our Northern
products, for money and changeable COM
nwnrfl ~ rfx toHn u.A -
destroyed in the progress of the revolution.
And this condition will not be improved
when the storm shall have spent its force,
and all things found their place under the
new formed government. The band OF out
laws, ii they get possession of the island
cannot In hundred years establish gov
eminent which will protect life and proper
ty; indeed, themselves. In the progress of
the revolution, the slaves will abandon the
plantations, form themselves into bands and
plumber all that may remain 20 be plundered,
and instead of labOring to enrich the bucca-
neers who have expelled their Spanish mas
tiers, they will set up negro government
in which, as in the Republic OF Hayti, no
man of white or mixed race will be allowed
the privileges of a freeman. Now, on prin-
ciple, see no objection to this. In the war
of races, the negro does well to fight stout
ly for his own. and he may thus secure to
himself in Cuba the one, half the last half,
of what the poet has so fondly anticipated !:
"Peace to the slave and vengeance on the
Free"
As to the "peace" promised to the slave re-
leased from bondage, we have no, where met
with it accompanied with the vengeance"
In Jamaica, a rich and populous island,
made worthless by emancipation, we have
':peace" and idleness TO the slave, without
the vengeance; for the British Government
secures life there, while IL has most humane
ly destroyed all the value of the once pro-
ductive property of the island. In the Re-
public of Hayti, where the negroes rule and
cut the Threats of each other as well as of
the white man and the mulatto, we have the
vengeance" without the "peace' and with
it all the luxury of idleness. Both tend
strongly to prove that if you emancipate
the negro slaves in a tropical region you
simply destroy production, whether you do
do or not give him political power. He will
not Voluntarily labor-and why should he !?
Life and what supports life and mere ami
NAL enjoyments content HIM. A hundred
cecOanuts will buy as much cotton cloth as
will wrap him from the shoulders to the
loins, and ten square rolls of bananas will
furnish him food for life. Why then should
he labor for the benefit of aluxurious world /?
He wants none of their luxuries; give him
food and sex and let the MONDAY sun shine
full on his woody head, and he is content
but make him ruler, stimulated by the
possession of power, and he is at once ty-
rant.
Jamaica and Hayti mark the difference be-
tween simple mAuumission and the same ac-
companied with negro government. jana
lea has a well-ordered Government, and her
commerce, answering to her surplus pro-
ceeds, is still nearly one-third of what il
was before emancipation, while the COM
merce of Hayti is in effect annihilated. Our
imports from the Republic (the most pro-
ductive half of the Island'of San Domingo)
was in 1860 less than $2,30O,0O0. So far as
the rest of the world is concerned this part
of the island would not be missed If sunk In
the ocean. 1t is the prototype of indepen
dent Cuba-its soil and climate something
better-its government and industry just
what that of Cuba will be when she shall
have fully attained the status of independ-
ence and negro government.