Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question

The West India islands are still full of waste fertility, produce abundant pumpkins; pumpkins.

No! for a pig they are the one thing needful – but for a man, they are only the first of several things needful. And now, as to the right of chief management in cultivating those West India lands – as to the “right of property” so called, and of doing what you like with your own. The question is abstruse enough. Who it may be that has a right to raise pumpkins and other produce on those islands, perhaps none can, except temporarily, decide.

The islands are good withal for pepper, for sugar, for sago, arrowroot, for coffee, perhaps for cinnamon and precious spices-things far nobler than pumpkins, and leading toward commerces, arts, politics, and social developments, which, alone, are the noble product, where men (and not pigs with pumpkins) are the parties concerned! Well, all this fruit, too, fruit spicy and commercial, fruit spiritual and celestial, so far beyond the merely pumpkinish and grossly terrene, lies in the West India lands; and the ultimate “proprietorship” of them – why, I suppose, it will vest in him who can the best educe from them, whatever of noble produce they were created fit for yielding. He, I compute, is the real [p.533] “Vicegerent of the Maker” there; in him, better and better chosen, and not in another, is the “property” vested by decree of Heaven’s chancery itself!

Up to this time, it is the Saxon British mainly; they hitherto have cultivated with some manfulness; and when a manfuller class of cultivators, stronger, worthier to have such land, abler to bring fruit from it, shall make their appearance, they, doubt it not, by fortune of war, and other confused negotiation and vicissitude, will be declared by nature and fact to be the worthier, and will become proprietors, perhaps, also, only for a time. That is the law, I take it, ultimate supreme, for all lands, in all countries, under this sky. The one perfect, Eternal Proprietor, is the Maker who created them; the temporary, better or worse proprietor, is he whom the Maker has sent on that mission; he who the best hitherto can educe from said lands the beneficent gifts the Maker endowed them with – or, which is but another definition of the same person, he who leads hitherto the manfullest life on that bit of soil, doing better than another yet found can do, the Eternal Purpose and Supreme Will there. And now observe, my friends. it was not Black Quashee, or those he represents, that made those West India islands what they are, or can, by any hypothesis, be considered to have the right of growing pumpkins there.

For countless ages, since they first mounted oozy on the back of earthquakes, from their dark bed in the ocean deeps, and reeking, saluted the tropical sun, and ever onward, till the European white man first saw them, some three short centuries ago, those islands had produced mere jungle, savagery, poison reptiles and swamp malaria till the white European first saw them, they were, as if not yet created; their noble elements of cinnamon – sugar, coffee, pepper, black and gray, lying all asleep, waiting the white Enchanter, who should say to them, awake! Till the end of human history, and the sounding of the trump of doom, they might have lain so, had Quashee, and the like of him, been the only artists in the game.

Swamps, fever-jungles, maneating caribs, rattle-snakes, and reeking waste and putrefaction: this had been the produce of them under the incompetent caribal (what we call cannibal) possessors till that time; and Quashee knows, himself, whether ever he could have introduced an improvement. Him, had he, by a miraculous chance, been wafted thither, the caribals would have eaten, rolling him as a fat morsel under their tongue-for him, till the sounding of the trump of doom, the rattlesnakes and savageries would have held on their way.

It was not he, then – it was another than he! Never, by art of his, could one pumpkin have grown there, to solace any human throat; nothing but savagery, and reeking putrefaction could have grown there! These plentiful pumpkins, I say, therefore, are not his; no, they are another’s; they are only his under conditions – conditions which Exeter Hall, for the present, has forgotten; but which nature, and the Eternal Powers, have, by no manner of means, forgotten, but do, at all moments, keep in mind; and, at the right moment, will, with the due impressiveness, perhaps in rather a terrible manner, bring again to our mind also! If Quashee will not honestly aid in bringing out those sugars, cinnamons, and nobler products of the West India islands, for the benefit [p.534] of all mankind, then, I say, neither will the powers permit Quashee to continue growing pumpkins there for his own lazy benefit, but will sheer him out, by and by, like a lazy gourd overshadowing rich ground – him, and all that partake with him – perhaps in a very terrible manner.

For, under favor of Exeter Hall, the “terrible manner” is not yet quite extinct with the destinies in this universe; nor will it quite cease, I apprehend, for soft-sawder or philanthropic stump-oratory, now, or henceforth. No! the gods wish, besides pumpkins, that spices and valuable products be grown in their West Indies; thus much they have declared in so making the West Indies; infinitely more they wish – that manful, industrious men occupy their West Indies, not indolent, two-legged cattle, however “happy” over their abundant pumpkins! Both these things, we may be assured, the immortal gods have decided upon – passed their eternal act of parliament for; and both of them, though all terrestial parliaments and entities oppose it to the death, shall be done. Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little less ugly than his present one), and with beneficient whip, since other methods avail not, will be compelled to work. Or, alas, let him look across to Hayti, and trace a far sterner prophecy! Let him, by his ugliness, idleness, rebellion, banish all white men from the West Indies, and make it all one Hayti, with little or no sugar-growing, black Peter exterminating black Paul, and, where a garden of the Hesperides might be, nothing but a tropical dog-kennel and pestiferous jungle – does he think that will forever continue pleasant to gods and men? I see men, the rose-pink cant all peeled away from them, land one day on those black coasts; men sent by the laws of this universe, and the inexorable course of things; men hungry for gold, remorseless, fierce as old buccaneers were – and a doom for Quashee, which I had rather not contemplate! The gods are long-suffering; but the law, from the beginning, was, He that will not work shall perish from the earth – and the patience of the gods has limits!

Before the West Indies could grow a pumpkin for any negro, how much European heroism had to spend itself in obscure battle; to sink, in mortal agony, before the jungles, the putrescences and waste savageries could become arable, and the devils be, in some measure, chained there! The West Indies grow pineapples, and sweet fruits, and spices; we hope they will, one day, grow beautiful, heroic human lives too, which is surely the ultimate object they were made for; beautiful souls and brave; sages, poets, what not – making the earth nobler round them, as their kindred from of old have been doing; true “splinters of the old Hartz Rock;” heroic white men, worthy to be called old Saxons, browned with a mahogany tint in those new climates and conditions. But under the soil of Jamaica, before it could even produce spices, or any pumpkin, the bones of many thousand British men had to be laid. Brave Colonel Fortescue, brave Colonel Sedgwick, brave Colonel Brayne – the dust of many thousand strong old English hearts lies there, worn down swiftly in frightful travail, chaining the devils, which were manifold. Heroic Blake contributed a bit of his life to that Jamaica. A bit of the great Protector’s own life lies there – beneath those pumpkins lies a bit of the life that was Oliver Cromwell’s. How [p.535] the great Protector would have rejoiced, to think that all this was to issue in growing pumpkins, to keep Quashee in a comfortably idle condition! No, that is not the ultimate issue, not that!

The West Indian whites, so soon as this bewilderment of philanthropic and other jargon abates from them, and their poor eyes get to discern a little what the facts are and what the laws are, will strike into another course, I apprehend! I apprehend they will, as a preliminary, resolutely refuse to permit the black man any privilege whatever of pumpkins till he agrees for work in return. Not a square inch of soil in those fruitful isles, purchased by British blood, shall any black man hold to grow pumpkins for him, except on terms that are fair toward Britain. Fair; see that they be not unfair, not toward ourselves, and still more, not toward him. For injustice is forever accursed; and precisely our unfairness toward the enslaved black man has – by inevitable revulsion and fated turn of the wheel – brought about these present confusions. Fair toward Britain it will be, that Quashee give work for privilege to grow pumpkins. Not a pumpkin, Quashee, not a square yard of soil, till you agree to do the state so many days of service. Annually that soil will grow you pumpkins; but annually also without fail, shall you, for the owner thereof, do your appointed days of labor. The state has plenty of waste soil; but the state will religiously give you none of it on other terms. The state wants sugar from these islands, and means to have it; wants virtuous industry in these islands, and must have it. The state demands of you such service as will bring these results, this latter result which includes all. Not a black Ireland, by immigration, and boundless black supply for the demand; not that – may the gods forbid! – but a regulated West Indies, with black working population in adequate numbers; all “happy,”’ if they find it possible; and not entirely unbeautifutl to gods and men, which latter result they must find possible! All “happy” enough; that is to say, all working according to the faculty they have got; making a little more divine this earth which the gods have given them. Is there any other “happiness” – if it be not that of pigs fattening daily to the slaughter? So will the state speak by and by.

Any poor, idle black man, any idle white man, rich or poor, is a mere eye-sore to the state; a perpetual blister on the skin of the state. The state is taking measures. some of them rather extensive, in Europe at this very time, and already, is in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere, rather tremendous measures, to get its rich white then set to work; for, alas. they also have sat, negro-like, up to the ears in pumpkin, regardless of “work,” and of a world all going to waste for their idleness! Extensive measures, I say; and already (as, in all European lands, this scandalous fear of street-barricades and fugitive sham-kings exhibits) tremendous measures for the thing is instant to be done.

The thing must be done everywhere: must is the word. Only it is so terribly difficult to do; and will take generations yet, this of getting our rich European white men “set to work!'”

But yours in the West Indies, my obscure black friends, your work, and the getting of you set to it, is a simple affair; and by diligence, the West Indian legislatures, and royal governor, setting their faces fairly to the problem, will get it done.

You are not " slaves" now; nor do I wish, if it can be [p.536] avoided, to see you slaves again; but decidedly you will have to be servants to those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you – servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt they are?) born wiser than you. That, you may depend upon it, my obscure black friends, is and was always the law of the world, for you and for all men; to be servants, the more foolish of us to the more wise; and only sorrow, futility and disappointment will betide both, till both, in some approximate degree, get to conform to the same. Heaven’s laws are not repealable by earth, however earth may try and it has been trying hard.

in some directions, of late! I say, no well being, and in the end no being at all, will be possible for you or us, if the law of heaven is not complied with. And if “slave” mean essentially “servant hired for life,” or by a contract of long continuance, and not easily dissoluble – I ask, Whether in all human things, the “contract of long continuance” is not precisely the contract to be desired, were the right terms once found for it? Servant hired for life, were the right terms once found, which I do not pretend they are, seems to me much preferable to servants hired for the month, or by contract dissoluble in a day. An ill-situated servant, that – servant grown to be nomadic; between whom and his master a good relation cannot easily spring up!

To state articulately, and put into practical law books, what on all sides is fair from the West India white to the West India black;

What relations the Eternal Maker has established between these two creatures of His: what he has written down, with intricate but ineffaceable record, legible to candid human insight, in the respective qualities, strengths, necessities and capabilities of each of the two; this will be a long problem; only to be solved by continuous human endeavor, and earnest effort gradually perfecting itself as experience successively yields new light to it.

This will be to “find the right terms” of a contract that will endure, and be sanctioned by Heaven and obtain prosperity on earth, between the two. A long problem, terribly neglected hitherto; whence these West Indian sorrows; and Exeter Hall monstrosities.

But a problem which must be entered upon, and by degrees be completed. A problem which, I think, the English people, if they mean to retain human colonies, and not black Irelands in addition to the white, cannot begin too soon!

What are the true relations between negro and white, their mutual duties under the sight of the Maker of them both; what human laws will assist both to comply more and more with these?

The solution, only to be gained by earnest endeavor and sincere experience, such as have never yet been bestowed on it, is not yet here.

The solution is still distant.

But some approximation to it, various real approximations, could be made. and must be made; this of declaring that negro and white are unrelated, loose from one another, on a footing of perfect equality, and subject to no law but that of supply and demand according to the Dismal Science;

This contradicts facts. Every hour we persist in this is leading us away from a solution.

We should cut loose from the “immigration loan” “happiness of black peasantry” and the other melancholy stuff that has followed from it.

Black Adscripti glebae seems a promising arrangement.

The Dutch blacks in Java are already a kind of Adscripts after the manner of the old European serfs.

They are bound by royal authority, to give so many days of work a year.

Is not this something like a real approximation; the first step toward all manner of such?

Wherever, in British territory, there exists a black man, and needful work to the just extent is not to be got out of him, such a law, in defect of better, should be brought to bear upon said black man!

How many laws of like purport, conceivable some of them, might be brought to bear upon the black man and the white, with all despatch, by way of solution instead of dissolution to their complicated case just now! On the whole, it ought to be rendered possible, ought it not, for white men to live beside black men, and in some just manner to command black men, and produce West Indian fruitfulness by means of them? West Indian fruitfulness will need to be produced.

If the English cannot find the method for that, they may rest assured there will another come (brother Jonathan or still another) who can. He it is whom the gods will bid continue in the West Indies, bidding us ignominiously, Depart, ye quack-ridden. incompetent!–

One other remark. as to the present trade in slaves, and to our suppression of the same. If buying of black war-captives in Africa, and bringing them over to the sugar-islands for sale again, be, as I think it is, a contradiction of the laws of this universe, let us heartily pray to Heaven to end the practice; let us ourselves help Heaven to end it, wherever the opportunity is given.

If it be the most flagrant and alarming contradiction to the said laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant and alarming that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs in the same planet with it; why, then indeed —-. But is it, quite certainly, such? Alas, look at that group of unsold; unbought, unmarketable Irish “free” citizens, dying there in the ditch, whither my lord of rackrent and the constitutional sheriffs have evicted them; or at those “divine missionaries,” of the same free country, now traversing, with rags on back and child on each arm, the principal thoroughfares of London, to tell men what “freedom " really is; – and admit that there may be doubts on that point! But if it is, I say, the most alarming contradiction to the said laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant a contradiction that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs in the same planet with it, then, sure enough, let us, in God’s name, fling aside all our affairs, and hasten out to put an end to it, as the first thing the Heavens want us to do. By all manner of means; this thing done, the Heavens will prosper all other things with us! Not a doubt of it – provided your premise be not doubtful.

But now furthermore give me leave to ask: Whether the way of doing it is this somewhat surprising one, of trying to blockade the con-[p.538]tinent of Africa itself, and to watch slave-ships along the extremely extensive and unwholesome coast? The enterprise is very gigantic and proves hitherto as futile as any enterprise has lately done. Certain wise men once, before this, set about confining the cuckoo by a big circular wall; but they could not manage it! Watch the coast of Africa, good part of the coast of the terraqueous globe?

The living centers of this slave mischief, the live coal that produces all this world-wide smoke, it appears, lie simply in two points, Cuba and Brazil, are perfectly accessible and manageable. If the laws of Heaven do authorize you to keep the whole world in a pother about this question – if you really appeal to the Almighty God upon it, and set common interests, and terrestrial considerations, and common sense, at defiance in behalf of it – why, in Heaven’s name, not go to Cuba and Brazil with a sufficiency of 74-gun ships, and signify to those nefarious countries, that their procedure on the negro question is too bad; that of all the solicisms now submitted to on earth, it is the most alarming and transcendent, and, in fact is such that a just man cannot follow his affairs any longer in the same planet with it; that they clearly will not, the nefarious populations will not, for love or fear, watching or entreaty, respect the rights of the negro enough; wherefore you here, with your seventy-fours. are come to be king over them, and will, on the spot, henceforth see for yourselves that they do it. Why not, if Heaven do send you? The thing can be done; easily. if you are sure of that proviso. It can be done, it is the way to “suppress the slave-trade;” and so far as yet appears, the one way.

Most thinking people! – If hen-stealing prevail to a plainly unendurable extent. will you station police officers at every henroost; and keep them watching and cruising incessantly to and fro over the parish in the unwholesome dark, at enormous expense. with almost no effect; or will you not try rather to discover where the fox’s den is,and kill the fox?

Most thinking people, you know the fox and his den; there he is – kill him, and discharge your cruisers and police-watchers! Oh. my friends, I feel there is an immense fund of human stupidity circulating among us, and much clogging our affairs for some time past! A certain man has called us, “of all peoples the wisest in action;” but, he added, “the stupidest in speech:” and it is a sore thing, in these constitutional times, times mainly of universal parliamentary and other eloquence, that the “speakers” have all first to emit, in such tumultuous volumes, their human stupor, as the indispensable preliminary, and everywhere we must first see that and its results out, before beginning any business! – Explicit MS.