To an Englishman who has never lived in a slave country, or in a country in which slavery once prevailed, the negro population is of course the most striking feature of the West Indies. But the eye soon becomes accustomed to the black skin and the thick lip, and the ear to the broken patois which is the nearest approach to English which the ordinary negro ever makes. When one has been a week among them, the novelty is all gone. It is only by an exercise of memory and intellect that one is enabled to think of them as a strange race.

But how strange is the race of Creole negroes—of negroes, that is, born out of Africa! They have no country of their own, yet have they not hitherto any country of their adoption; for, whether as slaves in Cuba, or as free labourers in the British isles, they are in each case a servile people in a foreign land. They have no language of their own, nor have they as yet any language of their adoption; for they speak their broken English as uneducated foreigners always speak a foreign language. They have no idea of country, and no pride of race; for even among themselves, the word "nigger" conveys their worst term of reproach. They have no religion of their own, and can hardly as yet be said to have, as a people, a religion by adoption; and yet there is no race which has more strongly developed its own physical aptitudes and inaptitudes, its own habits, its own tastes, and its own faults.

The West Indian negro knows nothing of Africa except that it is a term of reproach. If African immigrants are put to work on the same estate with him, he will not eat with them, or drink with them, or walk with them. He will hardly work beside them, and regards himself as a creature immeasurably the superior of the new comer. But yet he has made no approach to the civilization of his white fellow-creature, whom he imitates as a monkey does a man.

Physically he is capable of the hardest bodily work, and that probably with less bodily pain than men of any other race; but he is idle, unambitious as to worldly position, sensual, and content with little. Intellectually, he is apparently capable of but little sustained effort; but, singularly enough, here he is ambitious. He burns to be regarded as a scholar, puzzles himself with fine words, addicts himself to religion for the sake of appearance, and delights in aping the little graces of civilization. He despises himself thoroughly, and would probably be content to starve for a month if he could appear as a white man for a day; but yet he delights in signs of respect paid to him, black man as he is, and is always thinking of his own dignity. If you want to win his heart for an hour, call him a gentleman; but if you want to reduce him to a despairing obedience, tell him that he is a filthy nigger, assure him that his father and mother had tails like monkeys, and forbid him to think that he can have a soul like a white man. Among the West Indies one may frequently see either course adopted towards them by their unreasoning ascendant masters.

I do not think that education has as yet done much for the black man in the Western world. He can always observe, and often read; but he can seldom reason. I do not mean to assert that he is absolutely without mental power, as a calf is. He does draw conclusions, but he carries them only a short way. I think that he seldom understands the purpose of industry, the object of truth, or the results of honesty. He is not always idle, perhaps not always false, certainly not always a thief; but his motives are the fear of immediate punishment, or hopes of immediate reward. He fears that and hopes that only. Certain virtues he copies, because they are the virtues of a white man. The white man is the god present to his eye, and he believes in him—believes in him with a qualified faith, and imitates him with a qualified constancy.

And thus I am led to say, and I say it with sorrow enough, that I distrust the negro\'s religion. What I mean is this: that in my opinion they rarely take in and digest the great and simple doctrines of Christianity, that they should love and fear the Lord their God, and love their neighbours as themselves.

Those who differ from me—and the number will comprise the whole clergy of these western realms, and very many beside the clergy—will ask, among other questions, whether these simple doctrines are obeyed in England much better than they are in Jamaica. I would reply that I am not speaking of obedience. The opinion which I venture to give is, that the very first meaning of the terms does not often reach the negro\'s mind, not even the minds of those among them who are enthusiastically religious. To them religious exercises are in themselves the good thing desirable. They sing their psalms, and believe, probably, that good will result; but they do not connect their psalms with the practice of any virtue. They say their prayers; but, having said them, have no idea that they should therefore forgive offences. They hear the commandments and delight in the responses; but those commandments are not in their hearts connected with abstinence from adultery or calumny. They delight to go to church or meeting; they are energetic in singing psalms; they are constant in the responses; and, which is saying much more for them, they are wonderfully expert at Scripture texts; but—and I say it with grief of heart, and with much trembling also at the reproaches which I shall have to endure—I doubt whether religion does often reach their minds.

As I greatly fear being misunderstood on this subject, I must explain that I by no means think that religious teaching has been inoperative for good among the negroes. Were I to express such an opinion, I should be putting them on the same footing with the slaves in Cuba, who are left wholly without such teaching, and who, in consequence, are much nearer the brute creation than their more fortunate brethren. To have learnt the precepts of Christianity—even though they be not learnt faithfully—softens the heart and expels its ferocity. That theft is esteemed a sin; that men and women should live together under certain laws; that blood should not be shed in anger; that an oath should be true; that there is one God the Father who made us, and one Redeemer who would willingly save us—these doctrines the negro in a general way has learnt, and in them he has a sort of belief. He has so far progressed that by them he judges of the conduct of others. What he lacks is a connecting link between these doctrines and himself—an appreciation of the fact that these doctrines are intended for his own guidance.

But, though he himself wants the link, circumstances have in some measure produced it As he judges others, so he fears the judgment of others; and in this manner Christianity has prevailed with him.

In many respects the negro\'s phase of humanity differs much from that which is common to us, and which has been produced by our admixture of blood and our present extent of civilization. They are more passionate than the white men, but rarely vindictive, as we are. The smallest injury excites their eager wrath, but no injury produces sustained hatred. In the same way, they are seldom grateful, though often very thankful. They are covetous of notice as is a child or a dog; but they have little idea of earning continual respect. They best love him who is most unlike themselves, and they despise the coloured man who approaches them in breed. When they have once recognized a man as their master, they will be faithful to him; but the more they fear that master, the more they will respect him. They have no care for to-morrow, but they delight in being gaudy for to-day. Their crimes are those of momentary impulse, as are also their virtues. They fear death; but if they can lie in the sun without pain for the hour they will hardly drag themselves to the hospital, though their disease be mortal. They love their offspring, but in their rage will ill use them fearfully. They are proud of them when they are praised, but will sell their daughter\'s virtue for a dollar. They are greedy of food, but generally indifferent as to its quality. They rejoice in finery, and have in many cases begun to understand the benefit of comparative cleanliness; but they are rarely tidy. A little makes them happy, and nothing makes them permanently wretched. On the whole, they laugh and sing and sleep through life; and if life were all, they would not have so bad a time of it.

These, I think, are the qualities of the negro. Many of them are in their way good; but are they not such as we have generally seen in the lower spheres of life?

Much of this is strongly opposed to the idea of the Creole negro which has lately become prevalent in England. He has been praised for his piety, and especially praised for his consistent gratitude to his benefactors and faithful adherence to his master\'s interests.

On such subjects our greatest difficulty is perhaps that of avoiding an opinion formed by exceptional cases. That there are and have been pious negroes I do not doubt. That many are strongly tinctured with the language and outward bearing of piety I am well aware. I know that they love the Bible—love it as the Roman Catholic girl loves the doll of a Madonna which she dresses with muslin and ribbons. In a certain sense this is piety, and such piety they often possess.

And I do not deny their family attachments; but it is the attachment of a dog. We have all had dogs whom we have well used, and have prided ourselves on their fidelity. We have seen them to be wretched when they lose us for a moment, and have smiled at their joy when they again discover us. We have noted their patience as they wait for food from the hand they know will feed them. We have seen with delight how their love for us glistens in their eyes. We trust them with our children as the safest playmates, and teach them in mocking sport the tricks of humanity. In return for this, the dear brutes give us all their hearts, but it is not given in gratitude; and they abstain with all their power from injury and offence, but they do not abstain from judgment. Let his master ill use his dog ever so cruelly, yet the animal has no anger against him when the pain is over. Let a stranger save him from such ill usage, and he has no thankfulness after the moment. Affection and fidelity are things of custom with him.

I know how deep will be the indignation I shall draw upon my head by this picture of a fellow-creature and a fellow-Christian. Man\'s philanthropy would wish to look on all men as walking in a quick path towards the perfection of civilization. And men are not happy in their good efforts unless they themselves can see their effects. They are not content to fight for the well-being of a race, and to think that the victory shall not come till the victors shall for centuries have been mingled with the dust. The friend of the negro, when he puts his shoulder to the wheel, and tries to rescue his black brother from the degradation of an inferior species, hopes to see his client rise up at once with all the glories of civilization round his head. "There; behold my work; how good it is!" That is the reward to which he looks. But what if the work be not as yet good? What if it be God\'s pleasure that more time be required before the work be good—good in our finite sense of the word—in our sense, which requires the show of an immediate effect?

After all, what we should desire first, and chiefly—is it not the truth? It will avail nothing to humanity to call a man a civilized Christian if the name be not deserved. Philanthropy will gain little but self-flattery and gratification of its vanity by applying to those whom it would serve a euphemistic but false nomenclature. God, for his own purposes—purposes which are already becoming more and more intelligible to his creatures—has created men of inferior and superior race. Individually, the state of an Esquimaux is grievous to an educated mind: but the educated man, taking the world collectively, knows that it is good that the Esquimaux should be, should have been made such as he is; knows also, that that state admits of improvement; but should know also that such cannot be done by the stroke of a wand—by a speech in Exeter Hall—by the mere sounds of Gospel truth, beautiful as those sounds are.

We are always in such a hurry; although, as regards the progress of races, history so plainly tells us how vain such hurry is! At thirty, a man devotes himself to proselytizing a people; and if the people be not proselytized when he has reached forty, he retires in disgust. In early life we have aspirations for the freedom of an ill-used nation; but in middle life we abandon our protégé to tyranny and the infernal gods. The process has been too long. The nation should have arisen free, at once, upon the instant. It is hard for man to work without hope of seeing that for which he labours.

But to return to our sable friends. The first desire of a man in a state of civilization is for property. Greed and covetousness are no doubt vices; but they are the vices which have grown from cognate virtues. Without a desire for property, man could make no progress. But the negro has no such desire; no desire strong enough to induce him to labour for that which he wants. In order that he may eat to-day and be clothed to-morrow, he will work a little; as for anything beyond that, he is content to lie in the sun.

Emancipation and the last change in the sugar duties have made land only too plentiful in Jamaica, and enormous tracts have been thrown out of cultivation as unprofitable. And it is also only too fertile. The negro, consequently, has had unbounded facility of squatting, and has availed himself of it freely. To recede from civilization and become again savage—as savage as the laws of the community will permit—has been to his taste. I believe that he would altogether retrograde if left to himself.

I shall now be asked, having said so much, whether I think that emancipation was wrong. By no means. I think that emancipation was clearly right; but I think that we expected far too great and far too quick a result from emancipation.

These people are a servile race, fitted by nature for the hardest physical work, and apparently at present fitted for little else. Some thirty years since they were in a state when such work was their lot; but their tasks were exacted from them in a condition of bondage abhorrent to the feelings of the age, and opposed to the religion which we practised. For us, thinking as we did, slavery was a sin. From that sin we have cleansed ourselves. But the mere fact of doing so has not freed us from our difficulties. Nor was it to be expected that it should. The discontinuance of a sin is always the commencement of a struggle. Few, probably, will think that Providence has permitted so great an exodus as that which has taken place from Africa to the West without having wise results in view. We may fairly believe that it has been a part of the Creator\'s scheme for the population and cultivation of the earth; a part of that scheme which sent Asiatic hordes into Europe, and formed, by the admixture of nations, that race to which it is our pride to belong. But that admixture of blood has taken tens of centuries. Why should we think that Providence should work more rapidly now in these latter ages?

No Englishman, no Anglo-Saxon, could be what he now is but for that portion of wild and savage energy which has come to him from his Vandal forefathers. May it not then be fair to suppose that a time shall come when a race will inhabit those lovely islands, fitted by nature for their burning sun, in whose blood shall be mixed some portion of northern energy, and which shall owe its physical powers to African progenitors,—a race that shall be no more ashamed of the name of negro than we are of the name of Saxon?

But, in the mean time, what are we to do with our friend, lying as he now is at his ease under the cotton-tree, and declining to work after ten o\'clock in the morning? "No, tankee, massa, me tired now; me no want more money." Or perhaps it is, "No; workee no more; money no \'nuff; workee no pay." These are the answers which the suppliant planter receives when at ten o\'clock he begs his negro neighbours to go a second time into the cane-fields and earn a second shilling, or implores them to work for him more than four days a week, or solicits them at Christmas-time to put up with a short ten days\' holiday. His canes are ripe, and his mill should be about; or else they are foul with weeds, and the hogsheads will be very short if they be not cleansed. He is anxious enough, for all his world depends upon it. But what does the negro care? "No; me no more workee now."

The busher (overseer; elide the o and change v into b, and the word will gradually explain itself)—The busher, who remembers slavery and former happy days, d——s him for a lazy nigger, and threatens him with coming starvation, and perhaps with returning monkeydom. "No, massa; no starve now; God send plenty yam. No more monkey now, massa." The black man is not in the least angry, though the busher is. And as for the canes, they remain covered with dirt, and the return of the estate is but one hundred and thirty hogsheads instead of one hundred and ninety. Let the English farmer think of that; and in realizing the full story, he must imagine that the plenteous food alluded to has been grown on his own ground, and probably planted at his own expense. The busher was wrong to curse the man, and wrong to threaten him with the monkey\'s tail; but it must be admitted that the position is trying to the temper.

And who can blame the black man? He is free to work, or free to let it alone. He can live without work and roll in the sun, and suck oranges and eat bread-fruit; ay, and ride a horse perhaps, and wear a white waistcoat and plaited shirt on Sundays. Why should he care for the busher? I will not dig cane-holes for half a crown a day; and why should I expect him to do so? I can live without it; so can he.

But, nevertheless, it would be very well if we could so contrive that he should not live without work. It is clearly not Nature\'s intention that he should be exempted from the general lot of Adam\'s children. We would not have our friend a slave; but we would fain force him to give the world a fair day\'s work for his fair day\'s provender if we knew how to do so without making him a slave. The fact I take it is, that there are too many good things in Jamaica for the number who have to enjoy them. If the competitors were more in number, more trouble would be necessary in their acquirement.

And now, just at this moment, philanthropy is again busy in England protecting the Jamaica negro. He is a man and a brother, and shall we not regard him? Certainly, my philanthropic friend, let us regard him well. He is a man; and, if you will, a brother; but he is the very idlest brother with which a hardworking workman was ever cursed, intent only on getting his mess of pottage without giving anything in return. His petitions about the labour market, my excellently-soft-hearted friend, and his desire to be protected from undue competition are—. Oh, my friend, I cannot tell you how utterly they are—gammon. He is now eating his yam without work, and in that privilege he is anxious to be maintained. And you, are you willing to assist him in his views?

The negro slave was ill treated—ill treated, at any rate, in that he was a slave; and therefore, by that reaction which prevails in all human matters, it is now thought necessary to wrap him up in cotton and put him under a glass case. The wind must not blow on him too roughly, and the rose-leaves on which he sleeps should not be ruffled. He has been a slave; therefore now let him be a Sybarite. His father did an ample share of work; therefore let the son be made free from his portion in the primeval curse. The friends of the negro, if they do not actually use such arguments, endeavour to carry out such a theory.

But one feels that the joke has almost been carried too far when one is told that it is necessary to protect the labour market in Jamaica, and save the negro from the dangers of competition. No immigration of labourers into that happy country should be allowed, lest the rate of wages be lowered, and the unfortunate labourer be made more dependent on his master! But if the unfortunate labourers could be made to work, say four days a week, and on an average eight hours a day, would not that in itself be an advantage? In our happy England, men are not slaves; but the competition of the labour market forces upon them long days of continual labour. In our own country, ten hours of toil, repeated six days a week, for the majority of us will barely produce the necessaries of life. It is quite right that we should love the negroes; but I cannot understand that we ought to love them better than ourselves.

But with the most sensible of those who are now endeavouring to prevent immigration into Jamaica the argument has been, not the protection of the Jamaica negro, but the probability of ill usage to the immigrating African. In the first place, it is impossible not to observe the absurdity of acting on petitions from the negroes of Jamaica on such a pretence as this. Does any one truly imagine that the black men in Jamaica are so anxious for the welfare of their cousins in Africa, that they feel themselves bound to come forward and express their anxiety to the English Houses of Parliament? Of course nobody believes it. Of course it is perfectly understood that those petitions are got up by far other persons, and with by far other views; and that not one negro in fifty of those who sign them understands anything whatever about the matter, or has any wish or any solicitude on such a subject.

Lord Brougham mentions it as a matter of congratulation, that so large a proportion of the signatures should be written by the subscribers themselves—that there should be so few marksmen; but is it a matter of congratulation that this power of signing their names should be used for so false a purpose?

And then comes the question as to these immigrants themselves. Though it is not natural to suppose that their future fellow-labourers in Jamaica should be very anxious about them, such anxiety on the part of others is natural. In the first place, it is for the government to look to them; and then, lest the government should neglect its duty, it is for such men as Lord Brougham to look to the government. That Lord Brougham should to the last be anxious for the welfare of the African is what all men would expect and all desire; but we would not wish to confide even to him the power of absolutely consummating the ruin of the Jamaica planter. Is it the fact that labourers immigrating to the West Indies have been ill treated, whether they be Portuguese from Madeira, Coolies from India, Africans from the Western Coast, or Chinese? In Jamaica, unfortunately, their number is as yet but scanty, but in British Guiana they are numerous. I think I may venture to say that no labourers in any country are so cared for, so closely protected, so certainly saved from the usual wants and sorrows incident to the labouring classes. And this is equally so in Jamaica as far as the system has gone. What would be the usage of the African introduced by voluntary contribution may be seen in the usage of him who has been brought into the country from captured slave-ships. Their clothing, their food, their house accommodation, their hospital treatment, their amount of work and obligatory period of working with one master—all these matters are under government surveillance; and the planter who has allotted to him the privilege of employing such labour becomes almost as much subject to government inspection as though his estate were government property.

It is said that an obligatory period of labour amounts to slavery, even though the contract shall have been entered into by the labourer of his own free will. I will not take on myself to deny this, as I might find it difficult to define the term slavery; but if this be so, English apprentices are slaves, and so are indentured clerks; so are hired agricultural servants in many parts of England and Wales; and so, certainly, are all our soldiers and sailors.

But in the ordinary acceptation of the word slavery, that acceptation which comes home to us all, whether we can define it or no, men subject to such contracts are not slaves.

There is much that is prepossessing in the ordinary good humour of the negro; and much also that is picturesque in his tastes. I soon learned to think the women pretty, in spite of their twisted locks of wool; and to like the ring of their laughter, though it is not exactly silver-sounding. They are very rarely surly when spoken to; and their replies, though they seldom are absolutely witty, contain, either in the sound or in the sense, something that amounts to drollery. The unpractised ear has great difficulty in understanding them, and I have sometimes thought that this indistinctness has created the fun which I have seemed to relish. The tone and look are humorous; and the words, which are hardly heard, and are not understood, get credit for humour also.

Nothing about them is more astonishing than the dress of the women. It is impossible to deny to them considerable taste and great power of adaptation. In England, among our housemaids and even haymakers, crinoline, false flowers, long waists, and flowing sleeves have become common; but they do not wear their finery as though they were at home in it. There is generally with them, when in their Sunday best, something of the hog in armour. With the negro woman there is nothing of this. In the first place she is never shame-faced. Then she has very frequently a good figure, and having it, she knows how to make the best of it. She has a natural skill in dress, and will be seen with a boddice fitted to her as though it had been made and laced in Paris.

Their costumes on fête days and Sundays are perfectly marvellous. They are by no means contented with coloured calicoes; but shine in muslin and light silks at heaven only knows how much a yard. They wear their dresses of an enormous fulness. One may see of a Sunday evening three ladies occupying a whole street by the breadth of their garments, who on the preceding day were scrubbing pots and carrying weights about the town on their heads. And they will walk in full-dress too as though they had been used to go in such attire from their youth up. They rejoice most in white—in white muslin with coloured sashes; in light-brown boots, pink gloves, parasols, and broad-brimmed straw hats with deep veils and glittering bugles. The hat and the veil, however, are mistakes. If the negro woman thoroughly understood effect, she would wear no head-dress but the coloured handkerchief, which is hers by right of national custom.

Some of their efforts after dignity of costume are ineffably ludicrous. One Sunday evening, far away in the country, as I was riding with a gentleman, the proprietor of the estate around us, I saw a young girl walking home from church. She was arrayed from head to foot in virgin white. Her gloves were on, and her parasol was up. Her hat also was white, and so was the lace, and so were the bugles which adorned it. She walked with a stately dignity that was worthy of such a costume, and worthy also of higher grandeur; for behind her walked an attendant nymph, carrying the beauty\'s prayer-book—on her head. A negro woman carries every burden on her head, from a tub of water weighing a hundredweight down to a bottle of physic.

When we came up to her, she turned towards us and curtsied. She curtsied, for she recognized her \'massa;\' but she curtsied with great dignity, for she recognized also her own finery. The girl behind with the prayer-book made the ordinary obeisance, crooking her leg up at the knee, and then standing upright quicker than thought.

"Who on earth is that princess?" said I.

"They are two sisters who both work at my mill," said my friend. "Next Sunday they will change places. Polly will have the parasol and the hat, and Jenny will carry the prayer-book on her head behind her."

I was in a shoemaker\'s shop at St. Thomas, buying a pair of boots, when a negro entered quickly and in a loud voice said he wanted a pair of pumps. He was a labouring man fresh from his labour. He had on an old hat—what in Ireland men would call a caubeen; he was in his shirt-sleeves, and was barefooted. As the only shopman was looking for my boots, he was not attended to at the moment.

"Want a pair of pumps—directerly," he roared out in a very dictatorial voice.

"Sit down for a moment," said the shopman, "and I will attend to you."

He did sit down, but did so in the oddest fashion. He dropped himself suddenly into a chair, and at the same moment rapidly raised his legs from the ground; and as he did so fastened his hands across them just below his knees, so as to keep his feet suspended from his arms. This he contrived to do in such a manner that the moment his body reached the chair his feet left the ground. I looked on in amazement, thinking he was mad.

"Give I a bit of carpet," he screamed out; still holding up his feet, but with much difficulty.

"Yes, yes," said the shopman, still searching for the boots.

"Give I a bit of carpet directerly," he again exclaimed. The seat of the chair was very narrow, and the back was straight, and the position was not easy, as my reader will ascertain if he attempt it. He was half-choked with anger and discomfort.

The shopman gave him the bit of carpet. Most men and women will remember that such bits of carpet are common in shoemakers\' shops. They are supplied, I believe, in order that they who are delicate should not soil their stockings on the floor.

The gentleman in search of the pumps had seen that people of dignity were supplied with such luxuries, and resolved to have his value for his money; but as he had on neither shoes nor stockings, the little bit of carpet was hardly necessary for his material comfort.