Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question

[Thomas Carlyle] 1849

ART. III.- CARLYLE ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION.

WHAT HAVE THE WEST INDIA NEGROES GAINED BY EMANCIPATION, AND WHAT HAS THE WORLD GAINED BY THE EFFORTS OF EXETER HALL PHILANTHROPISTS

THE following occasional discourse, delivered by we know not whom, and of date seemingly above a year back, may, perhaps, be welcome to here and there a speculative reader.

It comes to us – no speaker named, no time or place assigned, no commentary of any sort given in the hand-writing of the so-called “Doctor,” properly “Absconded Reporter,” Dr. Phelin M’Quirk, whose singular powers of reporting, and also whose debts, extravagances, and sorrowful insidious finance-operations, now winded up by a sudden disappearance, to the grief of many poor trades-people, are making too much noise in the police offices at present! Of M’Quirk’s composition, we by no means suppose it to be; but from M’Quirk, as the last traceable source, it comes to us; offered, in fact, by his respectable, unfortunate landlady, desirous to make up part of her losses in this way.

To absconded reporters, who bilk their lodgings, we have, of course, no account to give; but if the speaker be of any eminence or substantiality, and feel himself aggrieved by the transaction, let him understand that such, and such only, is our connection with him or his affairs. As the colonial and negro question is still alive, and likely to grow livelier for some time, we have accepted the article, at a cheap market rate; and give it publicity, without, in the least, committing ourselves to the strange doctrines and notions shadowed forth in it. Doctrines and notions which, we rather suspect, are pretty much in a minority of one, in the present era of the world. Here, sure enough, are peculiar views of the rights of negroes; involving, it is probable, peculiar ditto of innumerable other rights, duties, expectations, wrongs and disappointments, much argued of, by logic and by grape-shot, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind. Silence now, however, and let the speaker himself enter:

We are find all in a state of the frightfullest embroilment, and, as it were, of inextricable final bankruptcy, just at present, and being desirous to adjust ourselves in that huge up-break, and unutterable welter of tumbling ruins, and to see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations, the UNIVERSAL ABOLITION-OF-PAIN-ASSOCIATION, which is meant to be the consummate golden flower, and summary of modern philanthropisms, all in one, do not issue as a universal “Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society” – we have judged that, before constituting ourselves, it would be very proper to commune earnestly with one another, and discourse together on the leading elements of our great problem, which surely is one of the greatest.

With this view, the council has decided, both that the negro question, as lying at the bottom, was to be the first handled, and, if possible, the first settled; and then, also, what was of much more questionable wisdom, that – that, in short, I was to be speaker on the occasion. An honorable duty! yet, as I said, a painful one! Well, you shall hear what I have to say on the matter; and you will not, in the least, like it.

West Indian affairs, as we all know, and some of us know to our cost, are in a rather troublous condition this good while. In regard to West Indian affairs, however, Lord John Russell is able to comfort us with one fact, indisputable where so many are dubious, that the negroes are all very happy and doing well. A fact very comfortable indeed.

West Indian whites, it is admitted, are far enough from happy; West Indian colonies not unlike sinking wholly into ruin; at home, too, the British whites are rather badly off-several millions of them hanging on the verge of continual famine – and, in single towns, many thousands of them very sore put to it, at this time, not to live “well,” or as a man should, in any sense, temporal or spiritual, but to live at all-these, again, are uncomfortable facts; and they are extremely extensive and important ones. But, thank heaven, our interesting black population equaling, almost, in number of heads, one of the ridings of Yorkshire, and in worth (in quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available human valor and value), perhaps one of the streets of seven dials –are all doing remarkably well. “Sweet blighted lilies “’– as the American epitaph on the niggar child has it – sweet blighted lilies, they are holding up their heads again! How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad, and dim, dreary stagnancy at home, as if, for England too, there remained nothing but to suppress Chartist riots, banish united Irishmen, vote the supplies, and wait, with arms crossed, till black anarchy and social death devoured us also, as it has done the others; how pleasant to have always this fact to fall back upon; our beautiful black darlings are at last happy; with little labor except to the teeth, which, surely, in those excellent horse-jaws of theirs, will not fail!

The 20 millions, a mere trifle, despatched are paid.

and, far over the sea, we have a few black persons rendered extremely “free” indeed. Sitting yonder, with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices the grinder and incisor teeth ready for every new work, and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates; while the sugar crops rot round them, uncut, because labor cannot be hired, so cheap are the pumpkins; and at home, we are but required to rasp from the breakfast loaves of our own English laborers, some slight “differential sugar duties.”

and lend a poor half million, or a few more millions, now and then, to keep that beautiful state of matters going on. A state of matters lovely to contemplate, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind, which has earned us, not only the praises of Exeter Hall, and loud, long-eared halleluiahs of laudatory psalmody from the friends of freedom everywhere, but lasting favor (it is hoped) from the heavenly powers themselves; which may, at least, justly appeal to the heavenly powers, and ask them, if ever, in terrestrial procedure, they saw the match of it! Certainly, in the past history of the human species, it has no parallel; nor, one hopes, will it have in the future.

Sunk in deep froth-oceans of “Benevolence,” “Fraternity,” “Emancipation-principle,” “Christian Philanthropy,” and other most amiable-looking, but most baseless, and, in the end, baleful and all-bewildering jargon – sad product of a skeptical eighteenth century, and of poor human hearts, left destitute of any earnest guidance, and disbelieving that there ever was any, christian or heathen, and reduced to believe, in rosepink sentimentalism alone, and to cultivate the same under its christian, anti-christian, broad-brimmed, Brutus-headed, and other forms – has not the human species gone strange roads during that period? and poor Exeter Hall, cultivating the broad-brimmed form of christian sentimentalism, and long talking, and bleating, and braying, in that strain – has it not worked out results?

Our West India legislatings, with their spoutings. anti-spoutings, and interminable jangle and babble-our twenty millions, down on the nail for blacks of our own-thirty gradual millions more, and many brave British lives to boot, in watching blacks of other people’s-and now, at last, our ruined sugar estates, differential sugar duties, “immigration loan,” and beautiful blacks, sitting there, up to the ears in pumpkins, and doleful whites, sitting here, without potatoes to eat; never, till now, I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human nonsenses, of which, with the two hot nights of the Missing-Despatch Debate,* God grant that the measure might now, at last, be full!

But no, it is not yet full; we have a long way to travel back, and terrible flounderings to make, and, in fact, an immense load of nonsense to dislodge from our poor heads, and manifold cobwebs to rend from our poor eyes, before we get into the road again, and can begin to act as serious men that have work to do in this universe, and no longer as windy sentimentalists, that merely have speeches to deliver, and despatches to write. O Heaven! in West Indian matters, and in all manner of matters, it is so with us-the more is the sorrow!

The West Indies seems short of labor.

A black man, by working 30 minutes a day can supply himself, by soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be [p.530] a little stiff to raise into hard work!

Supply and demand, which, science says, should be brought to bear on him, have an up-hill task-of it with such a man.

Strong sun is free.

Rich soil, in those unpeopled regions, is almost free.

These are his supply; and half an hour a day, directed upon these, will produce pumpkin, which is his “demand.”

He thus quickly matches supply and demand.

not so swiftly the less fortunate white man of these tropical localities. He, himself, cannot work; and his black neighbor, rich in pumpkin, is in no haste to help him.

Sunk to the ears in pumpkin, imbibing saccharine juices, and much at his ease in the creation, he can listen to the less fortunate white man’s “demand,” and take his own time in supplying it.

Higher wages, massa; higher, for your cane crop cannot wait; still higher – till no conceivable opulence of cane crop will cover such wages!

In Demerara, the cane crop stands rotting.

The fortunate black gentlemen: strong in their pumpkins, having all struck till the “demand” rise a little.

Sweet, blighted lilies, now getting up their heads again!

Science, however, has a remedy still.

Science says that the demand is so pressing, and the supply so inadequate. We should increase the supply, bring more blacks into the labor market. Then the rate will fall.

This recipe of “immigration” is part of our West Indian policy,

It keeps down the labor-market in those islands, by importing new Africans to labor and live there.

I think that there are already enough Africans there if they could be made to lay down their pumpkins and labor for a living,

But the new Africans might take to pumpkins like the others after laboring a little.

You say that this will then be solved by bringing in even more new Africans till:

• pumpkins themselves grow dear
• the country is crowded with Africans, and black men there, like white men here, are forced, by hunger, to labor for their living

That will be a consummation. To have “emancipated” the West Indies into a black Ireland – " free,”’ indeed, but an Ireland, and black!

The world may yet see prodigies, and reality be stranger than a nightmare dream.

Our white Ireland is starving from age to age on its act-of-parliament “freedom”.

This was from the mismanagement among the nations.

Will this be a negro Ireland, with pumpkins themselves fallen scarce like potatoes?

Imagination cannot fathom such an object; the belly of chaos never held the like.

The human mind, in its wide wanderings, has not dreamt, yet, of such a “freedom” as that will be.

Toward that, if Exeter Hall, and science of supply and demand guide us in the matter, we are daily traveling, and even struggling, with loans of half a million, and such like, to accelerate ourselves.

Philanthropy is wonderful.

The social science – not a “gay science,” but a rueful –which finds the secret of this universe in “supply and demand,” and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful.

Not a “gay science” like some we have heard of.

It is a dreary, desolate and abject and distressing one which we may call the dismal science.

Philanthropy and the Dismal Science are led by any sacred cause of black emancipation, or the like.

These combined will give birth to progenies and prodigies:

• dark extensive moon-calves
• unnameable abortions
• wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto!

In fact, it will behoove us of this English nation, to overhaul our West Indian procedure from top to bottom; and to ascertain a little better what it is that fact and nature demand of us, and what only Exeter Hall, wedded to the Dismal Science, demands.

To the former set of demands we will endeavor, at our peril – and worse peril than our purse’s, at our soul’s peril – to give all obedience.

To the latter we will very frequently demur, and try if we cannot stop short where they contradict the former, and, especially, before arriving at the black throat of ruin, whither they appear to be leading us.

In many other provinces, beside the West Indian, that unhappy wedlock of philanthropic liberalism and the Dismal Science, has engendered such all-enveloping delusions, of the moon-calf sort – and wrought huge woe for us, and for the poor, civilized world, in these days! And sore will be the battle with said moon-calves; and terrible the struggle to return out of our delusions, floating rapidly on which, not the West Indies alone, but Europe generally, is nearing the Niagara Falls. [Here various persons, in an agitated manner, with an air of indignation, left the room; especially one very tall gentleman, in white trousers, whose boots creaked much. The President, in a resolved voice, with a look of official rigor, whatever his own private feelings might be, enjoined, " Silence! Silence!” The meeting again sat motionless.]

My philanthropic friends, can you discern no fixed headlands in this wide-weltering deluge of benevolent twaddle and revolutionary grapeshot that has burst forth on us – no sure bearings at all?

Fact and nature, it seems to me, say a few words to us, if, happily, we have still an ear for fact and nature. Let us listen a little, and try. And first, with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid down as a principle, which no eloquence in Exeter Hall, or Westminster Hall, or elsewhere, can invalidate or hide, except for a short time only, that no black man, who will not work according to what ability the gods have given him for working, has the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may be, but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be compelled, by the real proprietors of said land, to do competent work for his living.

This is the everlasting duty of all men, black or white, who are born into this world. To do competent work, to labor honestly according to the ability given them; for that, and for no other purpose, was each one of us sent into this world; and woe is to every man who by friend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this, the end of his being.

That is the’" unhappy" lot – lot equally unhappy cannot otherwise be provided for man. Whatsoever prohibits or prevents a man from this, his sacred appointment, to labor while he lives on earth – that, I say, is the man’s deadliest enemy; and all men are called upon to do what is in their power, or opportunity, toward delivering him from it. If it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him, then his own indolence is the enemy he must be delivered from; and the first “right” he has – poor indolent blockhead, black or white – is, that every unprohibited man, whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing that way, shall endeavor to “emancipate” him from his indolence, and, by some wise means, as I said, compel him to do the work he is fit for.

This is the eternal law of nature for a man, my beneficient Exeter Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and, if need be, compelled, to do what work the Maker of him has intended, by the making of him for this world. Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such felicity in the West India islands is, or can be, the blessedness of our black friend – but that he should do useful work there, according as the gifts have been bestowed on him for that. And his own happiness, and that of others around him, will alone be possible, by his and their getting into such a relation that this can be permitted him, and, in case of need, that this can be compelled him.

I beg you to understand this, for you seem to have a little forgotten it, and there lie a thousand inferences in it, not quite useless for Exeter Hall, at present. The idle black man in the West Indies, had, not long since, the right, and will again, under better form, if it please Heaven, have the right (actually the first “right of man” for an indolent person) to be compelled to work as he was fit, and to do the Maker’s will, who had constructed him with such and such prefigurements of capability. And I incessantly pray Heaven, all men, the whitest alike, and the blackest, the richest and the poorest, in other regions of the world, had attained precisely the same right, the divine right of being compelled (if “permitted” will not answer) to do what work they are appointed for, and not to go idle another minute, in a life so short! Alas, we had then a perfect world! and the millennium and true “organization of labor,” and reign of complete blessedness, for all workers and men, had then arrived, which, in these, our own poor districts of the planet, as we all lament to know, it is very far from having yet done.