The British government emancipated1 the negro slaves held under its authority in the West Indies, thereby2 greatly depreciating3 the value of the islands, permitting a half-tamed race to fall back into a state of moral and mental darkness, and adding twenty millions to the national debt, to be paid out of the sweat and blood of her own white serfs. This was termed a grand act of humanity; those who laboured for it have been lauded4 and laurelled without stint5, and English writers have been exceedingly solicitous6 that the world should not "burst in ignorance" of the achievement.
COOLIES.
Being free, the negroes, with the indolence inherent in their nature, would not work. Many purses suffered in consequence, and the purse is a very tender place to injure many persons. It became necessary to substitute other labourers for the free negroes, and the Coolies of India were taken to the Antilles for experiment. These labourers were generally sober, [Pg 434] steady, and industrious7. But how were they treated? A colonist8 of Martinique, who visited Trinidad in June, 1848, thus writes to the French author of a treatise9 on free and slave labour:—
"If I could fully10 describe to you the evils and suffering endured by the Indian immigrants (Coolies) in that horribly governed colony, I should rend11 the heart of the Christian12 world by a recital13 of enormities unknown in the worst periods of colonial slavery.
"Borrowing the language of the prophet, I can truly say,'The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is sad; from the sole of the foot to the top of the head nothing is sound;' wounds, sores, swollen14 ulcers15, which are neither bandaged, nor soothed16, nor rubbed with oil.
"My soul has been deeply afflicted17 by all that I have seen. How many human beings lost! So far as I can judge, in spite of their wasting away, all are young, perishing under the weight of disease. Most of them are dropsical, for want of nourishment18. Groups of children, the most interesting I have ever seen, scions19 of a race doomed20 to misfortune, were remarkable22 for their small limbs, wrinkled and reduced to the size of spindles—and not a rag to cover them! And to think that all this misery23, all this destruction of humanity, all this waste of the stock of a ruined colony, might have been avoided, but has not been! Great God! it is painful beyond expression to think that such a neglect of duty and of humanity on the part of the colonial authorities, as well of the metropolis24 as of the colony—a neglect which calls for a repressive if not a retributive justice—will go entirely25 unpunished, as it has hitherto done, notwithstanding the indefatigable26 efforts of Colonel Fagan, the superintendent27 of the immigrants in this colony, an old Indian officer of large experience, of whom I have heard nothing but good, and never any evil thing spoken, in all my travels through the island.
"I am told that Colonel Fagan prepared a regulation for the government and protection of the immigrants—which regulation [Pg 435] would probably realize, beyond all expectation, the object aimed at; but scarcely had he commenced his operations when orders arrived from the metropolis to suppress it, and substitute another which proceeded from the ministry28. The Governor, Mr. Harris, displeased29 that his own regulation was thus annulled30, pronounced the new order impossible to be executed, and it was withdrawn31 without having been properly tried. The minister sent another order in regard to immigration, prepared in his hotel in Downing street; but Governor Harris pronounced it to be still more difficult of execution than the first, and it, too, failed. It is in this manner that, from beginning to end, the affairs of the Indian immigrants have been conducted. It was only necessary to treat them with justice and kindness to render them—thanks to their active superintendent—the best labourers that could be imported into the colony. They are now protected neither by regulations nor ordinances32; no attention is paid to the experienced voice of their superintendent—full of benevolence33 for them, and always indefatigably34 profiting by what can be of advantage to them. If disease renders a Coolie incapable35 of work, he is driven from his habitation. This happens continually; he is not in that case even paid his wages. What, then, can the unfortunate creature do? Very different from the Creole or the African; far distant from his country, without food, without money; disease, the result of insufficient36 food and too severe labour, makes it impossible for him to find employment. He drags himself into the forests or upon the skirts of the roads, lies there and dies!
"Some years since, the unfortunate Governor (Wall) of Gorea was hung for having pitilessly inflicted37 a fatal corporal punishment on a negro soldier found guilty of mutiny; and this soldier, moreover, was under his orders. In the present case, I can prove a neglect to a great extent murderous. The victims are Indian Coolies of Trinidad. In less than one year, as is shown by official documents, two thousand corpses38 of these unfortunate creatures have furnished food to the crows of the island; and a similar system is pursued, not only without punishment, but without even forming the subject of an official inquest. Strange and deplorable contradiction! and yet the nation which gives us [Pg 436] this example boasts of extending the ?gis of its protection over all its subjects, without distinction! It is this nation, also, that complacently39 takes to itself the credit of extending justice equally over all classes, over the lordly peer and the humblest subject, without fear, favour, or affection!"
In the Mauritius, the Coolies who have been imported are in a miserable40 condition. The planters have profited by enslaving these mild and gentle Hindoos, and rendering41 them wretched.
"By aid of continued Coolie immigration," says Mr. Henry C. Carey, [103] "the export of sugar from the Mauritius has been doubled in the last sixteen years, having risen from seventy to one hundred and forty millions of pounds. Sugar is therefore very cheap, and the foreign competition is thereby driven from the British market. 'Such conquests,' however, says, very truly, the London Spectator, 'don't always bring profit to the conqueror42; nor does production itself prove prosperity. Competition for the possession of a field may be carried so far as to reduce prices below prime cost; and it is clear, from the notorious facts of the West Indies—from the change of property, from the total unproductiveness of much property still—that the West India production of sugar has been carried on not only without replacing capital, but with a constant sinking of capital.' The 'free' Coolie and the 'free' negro of Jamaica have been urged to competition for the sale of sugar, and they seem likely to perish together; but compensation for this is found in the fact that 'free trade has, in reducing the prices of commodities for home consumption, enabled the labourer to devote a greater share of his income toward purchasing clothing and luxuries, and has increased the home trade to an enormous extent.' What effect this reduction of 'the prices of commodities for home consumption' [Pg 437] has had upon the poor Coolies, may be judged from the following passage:—'I here beheld43, for the first time, a class of beings of whom we have heard much, and for whom I have felt considerable interest. I refer to the Coolies imported by the British government to take the places of the faineant negroes, when the apprenticeship44 system was abolished. Those I saw were wandering about the streets, dressed rather tastefully, but always meanly, and usually carrying over their shoulder a sort of chiffonnier's sack, in which they threw whatever refuse stuff they found in the streets or received as charity. Their figures are generally superb, and their Eastern costume, to which they adhere as far as their poverty will permit of any clothing, sets off their lithe45 and graceful46 forms to great advantage. Their faces are almost uniformly of the finest classic mould, and illuminated47 by pairs of those dark, swimming, and propitiatory48 eyes which exhaust the language of tenderness and passion at a glance. But they are the most inveterate49 mendicants on the island. It is said that those brought from the interior of India are faithful and efficient workmen, while those from Calcutta and its vicinity are good for nothing. Those that were prowling about the streets of Spanish Town and Kingston, I presume were of the latter class, for there is not a planter on the island, it is said, from whom it would be more difficult to get any work than from one of them. They subsist51 by begging altogether. They are not vicious nor intemperate52, nor troublesome particularly, except as beggars. In that calling they have a pertinacity53 before which a Northern mendicant50 would grow pale. They will not be denied. They will stand perfectly54 still and look through a window from the street for a quarter of an hour, if not driven away, with their imploring55 eyes fixed56 upon you like a stricken deer, without saying a word or moving a muscle. They act as if it were no disgrace for them to beg, as if an indemnification which they are entitled to expect, for the outrage57 perpetrated upon them in bringing them from their distant homes to this strange island, is a daily supply of their few and cheap necessities, as they call for them. I confess that their begging did not leave upon my mind the impression produced by ordinary mendicancy58. They do not look as if they ought to [Pg 438] work. I never saw one smile; and though they showed no positive suffering, I never saw one look happy. Each face seemed to be constantly telling the unhappy story of their woes59, and, like fragments of a broken mirror, each reflecting in all its hateful proportions the national outrage of which they are the victims.'"[104]
English writers have frequently charged the citizens of the United States with being sordid60, and caring more for pecuniary61 profit than honourable62 principle. No national measure of the great North American Republic, however, is so deeply tainted63 with avaricious64 motives65 as the colonial enactments66 and commercial schemes of Great Britain. Witness the government of British India, and the infamous67 traffic in opium68 forced upon the Chinese. In the conveyance69 of Coolies to the West Indies, and their treatment while toiling70 in those islands, we see the same base spirit displayed. All considerations of humanity have been sacrificed to calculations of profit. A people, naturally mild and intelligent, have been taken from their native land to distant islands, to take the place of the fierce and barbarous Africans, to whose civilization slavery seems almost necessary; and in their new land of bondage71 these poor creatures have been deprived of the inducements to steady exertion72, and left to beg or starve.
After the passage of the act abolishing negro slavery, an arrangement was sanctioned by the colonial [Pg 439] government for the introduction of Indian labourers into the Mauritius, under a species of apprenticeship. The Coolies were engaged at five rupees, equal to ten shillings a month, for five years, with also one pound of rice, a quarter of a pound of dhall, or grain—a kind of pulse—and one ounce of butter, or ghee, daily. But for every day they were absent from their work they were to return two days to their masters, who retained one rupee per month to pay an advance made of six months' wages, and to defray the expense of their passage. If these men came into Port Louis to complain of their masters, they were lodged73 in the Bagne prison till their masters were summoned! Before the magistrates74 the masters had a great advantage over their servants. The latter being foreigners, but few of them could speak French, and they had no one to assist them in pleading their cause. They generally represented themselves as having been deceived with respect to the kind of labour to be required of them. [105]
A large number of Indian convicts have been transported to the Mauritius, and their slavery is deplorable. Backhouse, who visited the island when these poor wretches75 were not so numerous as they now are, says—"Among the Indian convicts working on the road, we noticed one wearing chains; several had a [Pg 440] slight single ring round the ankle. They are lodged in huts with flat roofs, or in other inferior dwellings76 near the road. There are about seven hundred of them in the island. What renders them peculiarly objects of sympathy is, that they were sent here for life, and no hope of any remission of sentence is held out to them for good conduct. Theirs is a hopeless bondage; and though it is said by some that they are not hard worked, yet they are generally, perhaps constantly, breaking stones and mending the roads, and under a tropical sun. There are among them persons who were so young when transported that, in their offences, they could only be looked on as the dupes of those who were older, and many of them bear good characters."
The hopeless slavery of these convicts is a doom21 which displays, in a striking light, the characteristics of British philanthropy. Death would be preferable to such a punishment, in the estimation of many of the Hindoos; but the British authorities are determined77 to make the punishment pay! After the "eternal blazon78" concerning the act of emancipating79 negroes, for which the pauperized labourers of Great Britain had to pay by their slavery, the colonial government created another system, attended with the misery and degradation80 of a people better fitted for freedom than the negroes. The civilized81 world is requested to look on and admire!
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1
emancipated
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| adj.被解放的，不受约束的v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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depreciating
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| v.贬值，跌价，减价( depreciate的现在分词 )；贬低，蔑视，轻视 | |
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lauded
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| v.称赞，赞美( laud的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stint
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| v.节省，限制，停止；n.舍不得化，节约，限制；连续不断的一段时间从事某件事 | |
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solicitous
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| adj.热切的，挂念的 | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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8
colonist
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| n.殖民者，移民 | |
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9
treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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14
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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ulcers
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| n.溃疡( ulcer的名词复数 )；腐烂物；道德败坏；腐败 | |
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soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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nourishment
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| n.食物，营养品；营养情况 | |
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scions
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| n.接穗，幼枝( scion的名词复数 )；（尤指富家）子孙 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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indefatigable
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| adj.不知疲倦的，不屈不挠的 | |
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superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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displeased
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| a.不快的 | |
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annulled
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| v.宣告无效( annul的过去式和过去分词 )；取消；使消失；抹去 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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ordinances
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| n.条例，法令( ordinance的名词复数 ) | |
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benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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indefatigably
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| adv.不厌倦地，不屈不挠地 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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40
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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42
conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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43
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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44
apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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lithe
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| adj.(指人、身体)柔软的，易弯的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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48
propitiatory
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| adj.劝解的；抚慰的；谋求好感的；哄人息怒的 | |
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inveterate
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| adj.积习已深的，根深蒂固的 | |
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50
mendicant
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| n.乞丐；adj.行乞的 | |
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51
subsist
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| vi.生存，存在，供养 | |
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52
intemperate
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| adj.无节制的，放纵的 | |
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53
pertinacity
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| n.执拗，顽固 | |
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54
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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mendicancy
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| n.乞丐，托钵，行乞修道士 | |
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59
woes
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| 困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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pecuniary
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| adj.金钱的；金钱上的 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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63
tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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avaricious
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| adj.贪婪的，贪心的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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enactments
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| n.演出( enactment的名词复数 )；展现；规定；通过 | |
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infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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conveyance
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| n.(不动产等的)转让，让与；转让证书；传送；运送；表达；（正）运输工具 | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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magistrates
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| 地方法官，治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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wretches
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| n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋 | |
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dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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blazon
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| n.纹章，装饰；精确描绘；v.广布；宣布 | |
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emancipating
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| v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的现在分词 ) | |
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80
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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