Home Equity Credit Lines
Using a credit line to borrow against the equity in your home has become a popular source of consumer credit. And lenders are offering these home equity credit lines in a variety of ways. You will find most loans come with variable interest rates, some come with attractive low introductory rates, and a few come with fixed rates. You also may find most loans have large one-time upfront fees, others have closing costs, and some have continuing costs, such as annual fees. You can find loans with large balloon payments at the end of the loan, and others with no balloons but with higher monthly payments. No one loan is right for every homeowner. The challenge, then, is to contact different lenders, compare options, and select the home equity credit line best tailored to your needs. Be sure to review the home equity contract carefully before you sign it. Do not hesitate to ask questions about the terms and conditions of your financing. To help you do this, you may want to consider the following questions and to use the checklist at the end of this brochure. (We apologize that the checklist is not available on-line. To obtain a copy of the checklist, please request a free copy of the brochure by contacting: Public Reference, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, D.C. 20580; (202) 326-2222. TDD call (202) 326-2502.) Is a home equity credit line for you?
If you need to borrow money, home equity lines may be one useful source of credit. Initially at least, they may provide you with large amounts of cash at relatively low interest rates. And they may provide you with certain tax advantages unavailable with other kinds of loans. (Check with your tax adviser for details.) At the same time, home equity lines of credit require you to use your home as collateral for the loan. This may put your home at risk if you are late or cannot make your monthly payments. Those loans with a large final (balloon) payment may lead you to borrow more money to pay off this debt, or they may put your home in jeopardy if you cannot qualify for refinancing. And, if you sell your home, most plans require you to pay off your credit line at that time. In addition, because home equity loans give you relatively easy access to cash, you might find you borrow money more freely. Remember too, there are other ways to borrow money from a lending institution. For example, you may want to explore second mortgage installment loans. Although these plans also place an additional mortgage on your home, second mortgage money usually is loaned in a lump sum, rather than in a series of advances made available by writing checks on an account. Also, second mortgages usually have fixed interest rates and fixed payment amounts. You also may want to explore borrowing from credit lines that do not use your home as collateral. These are available with your credit cards or with unsecured credit lines that let you write checks as you need the money. In addition, you may want to ask about loans for specific items, such as cars or tuition. How much money can you borrow on a home equity credit line?
Depending on your creditworthiness (your income, credit rating, etc.) and the amount of your outstanding debt, home equity lenders may let you borrow up to 85% of the appraised value of your home minus the amount you still owe on your first mortgage. Ask the lender about the length of the home equity loan, whether there is a minimum withdrawal requirement when you open your account, and whether there are minimum or maximum withdrawal requirements after your account is opened. Inquire how you gain access to your credit line -- with checks, credit cards, or both. Also, find out if your home equity plan sets a fixed time -- a draw period -- when you can make withdrawals from your account. Once the draw period expires, you may be able to renew your credit line. If you cannot, you will not be permitted to borrow additional funds. Also, in some plans, you may have to pay your full outstanding balance. In others, you may be able to repay the balance over a fixed time. What is the interest rate on the home equity loan?
Interest rates for loans differ, so it pays to check with several lenders for the lowest rate. Compare the annual percentage rate (APR), which indicates the cost of credit on a yearly basis. Be aware that the advertised APR for home equity credit lines is based on interest alone. For a true comparison of credit costs, compare other charges, such as points and closing costs, which will add to the cost of your home equity loan. This is especially important if you are comparing a home equity credit line with a traditional installment (or second) mortgage, where the APR includes the total credit costs for the loan. In addition, ask about the type of interest rates available for the home equity plan. Most home equity credit lines have variable interest rates. These variable rates may offer lower monthly payments at first, but during the rest of the repayment period the payments may change and may be higher. Fixed interest rates, if available, may be slightly higher initially than variable rates, but fixed rates offer stable monthly payments over the life of the credit line. If you are considering a variable rate, check and compare the terms. Check the periodic cap, which is the limit on interest rate changes at one time. Also, check the lifetime cap, which is the limit on interest rate changes throughout the loan term. Ask the lender which index is used and how much and how often it can change. An index (such as the prime rate) is used by lenders to determine how much to raise or lower interest rates. Also, check the margin, which is an amount added to the index that determines the interest you are charged. In addition, inquire whether you can convert your variable rate loan to a fixed rate at some future time. Sometimes, lenders offer a temporarily discounted interest rate -- a rate that is unusually low and lasts only for an introductory period, such as six months. During this time, your monthly payments are lower too. After the introductory period ends, however, your rate (and payments) increase to the true market level (the index plus the margin). So, ask if the rate you are offered is "discounted," and if so, find out how the rate will be determined at the end of the discount period and how much larger your payments could be at that time. What are the upfront closing costs?
When you take out a home equity line of credit, you pay for many of the same expenses as when you financed your original mortgage. These include items such as an application fee, title search, appraisal, attorneys' fees, and points (a percentage of the amount you borrow). These expenses can add substantially to the cost of your loan, especially if you ultimately borrow little from your credit line. You may want to negotiate with lenders to see if they will pay for some of these expenses. What are the continuing costs?
In addition to upfront closing costs, some lenders require you to pay continuing fees throughout the life of the loan. These may include an annual membership or participation fee, which is due whether or not you use the account, and/or a transaction fee, which is charged each time you borrow money. These fees add to the overall cost of the loan. What are the repayment terms during the loan?
As you pay back the loan, your payments may change if your credit line has a variable interest rate, even if you do not borrow more money from your account. Find out how often and how much your payments can change. You also will want to know whether you are paying back both principal and interest, or interest only. Even if you are paying back some principal, ask whether your monthly payments will cover the full amount borrowed or whether you will owe an additional payment of principal at the end of the loan. In addition, you may want to ask about penalties for late payments and under what conditions the lender can consider you in default and demand immediate full payment. What are the repayment terms at the end of the loan?
Ask whether you might owe a large payment at the end of your loan term. If so, and you are not sure you will be able to afford the balloon payment, you may want to renegotiate your repayment terms. When you take out the loan, ask about the conditions for renewal of the plan or for refinancing the unpaid balance. Consider asking the lender to agree ahead of time and in writing to refinance any end-of-loan balance or extend your repayment time, if necessary. What safeguards are built into the loan?
One of the best protections you have is the Federal Truth in Lending Act, which requires lenders to inform you about the terms and costs of the plan at the time you are given an application. Lenders must disclose the APR and payment terms and must inform you of charges to open or use the account, such as an appraisal, a credit report, or attorneys' fees. Lenders also must tell you about any variable-rate feature and give you a brochure describing the general features of home equity plans. The Truth in Lending Act also protects you from changes in the terms of the account (other than a variable-rate feature) before the plan is opened. If you decide not to enter into the plan because of a change in terms, all fees you paid earlier must be returned to you. Because your home is at risk when you open a home equity credit account, you have three days to cancel the transaction, for any reason. To cancel, you must inform the lender in writing. Following that, your credit line must be cancelled and all fees you have paid must be returned. Once your home equity plan is opened, if you pay as agreed, the lender, in most cases, may not terminate your plan, accelerate payment of your outstanding balance, or change the terms of your account. The lender may halt credit advances on your account during any period in which interest rates exceed the maximum rate cap in your agreement, if your contract permits this practice.
Friday, January 5, 2007
Thursday, January 4, 2007
RURAL LABOUR
English farmers settling in the United States used to be a joke to their native neighbours. The Englishman began with laughing, or being shocked, at the slovenly methods of cultivation employed by the American settlers: he was next seen to look grave on his own account; and ended by following the American plan.
The American ploughs round the stumps of the trees he has felled, and is not very careful to measure the area he ploughs, and the seed he sows. The Englishman clears half the quantity of land,-- clears it very thoroughily; ploughs deep, sows thick, raises twice the quantity of grain on half the area of land, and points proudly to his crop. But the American has, meantime, fenced, cleared, and sown more land, improved his house and stock, and kept his money in his pocket. The Englishman has paid for the labour bestowed on his beautiful fields more than his fine crop repays him. When he has done thus for a few seasons, till his money is gone, he learns that he has got to a place where it answers to spend land to save labour; the reverse of his experience in England; and he soon becomes as slovenly a farmer as the American, and begins immediately to grow rich.
lt would puzzle a philosopher to compute how long some prejudices will subsist in defiance of, not only evidence, but personal experience. These same Americans, who laugh (reasonably enough) at the prejudiced English farmer, seem themselves incapable of being convinced on a point quite as plain as that between him and themselves. The very ground of their triumph over him is their knowledge of the much smaller value of land, and greater value of labour, in America than in England: and yet, there is no one subject on which so many complaints are to be heard from every class of American society as the immigration of foreigners. The incapacity of men to recognise blessings in disguise has been the theme of moralists in all ages: but it might be expected that the Americans, in this case, would be an exception. It is wonderful, to a stranger, to see how they fret and toil, and scheme and invent, to supply the deficiency of help, and all the time quarrel with the one means by which labour is brought to their door. The immigration of foreigners was the one complaint by which I was met in every corner of the free States; and I really believe I did not converse with a dozen persons who saw the ultimate good through the present apparent evil.
It is not much to be wondered at that gentlemen and ladies, living in Boston and New York, and seeing, for the first time in their lives, half-naked and squalid persons in the street, should ask where they come from, and fear lest they should infect others with their squalor, and wish they would keep away. It is not much to be wondered at that the managers of charitable institutions in the maritime cities should be weary of the claims advanced by indigent foreigners: but it is surprising that these gentlemen and ladies should not learn by experience that all this ends well, and that matters are taking their natural course. It would certainly be better that the emigrants should be well clothed, educated, respectable people; (except that, in that case, they would probably never arrive;) but the blame of their bad condition rests elsewhere, while their arrival is, generally speaking, almost a pure benefit. Some are intemperate and profligate; and such are, no doubt, a great injury to the cities where they harbour; but the greater number show themselves decent and hardworking enough, when put into employment. Every American acknowledges that few or no canals or railroads would be in existence now, in the United States, but for the Irish labour by which they have been completed: and the best cultivation that is to be seen in the land is owing to the Dutch and Germans it contains. What would housekeepers do for domestic service without foreigners? If the American ports had been barred against immigration, and the sixty thousand foreigners per annum, with all their progeny, had been excluded, where would now have been the public works of the United States, the agriculture, the shipping?
The most emphatic complainers of the immigration of foreigners are those who imagine that the morals of society suffer thereby. My own conviction is that the morals of society are, on the whole, thereby much improved. It is candidly allowed, on all hands, that the passion of the Irish for the education of their children is a great set-off against the bad qualities some of them exhibit in their own persons; and that the second and third generations of Irish are among the most valuable citizens of the republic. The immigrant Germans are more sober and respectable than the Irish; but there is more difficulty in improving them and their children. The Scotch are in high esteem. My own opinion is that most of the evils charged upon the immigrants are chargeable upon the mismanagement of them in the ports. The atrocious corruption of the New York elections, where an Irishman, just landed, and employed upon the drains, perjures himself, and votes nine times over, is chargeable, not upon immigration, nor yet upon universal suffrage, but upon faults in the machinery of registration. Again, if the great pauper-palace, over the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia, be half full of foreigners; if it be true that an Irish woman was seen to walk round it, and heard to observe that she should immediately write over for all her relations; the evil is chargeable upon there being a pauper-palace, with the best of food and clothing, and no compulsion to work, in a country where there is far more work and wages than there are hands to labour and earn. There is in New York a benevolent gentleman who exercises a most useful and effectual charity. He keeps a kind of registry office for the demand and supply of emigrant labour; takes charge of the funds of such emigrants as are fortunate enough to have any; and befriends them in every way. He declares that he has an average of six situations on his list ready for every sober, able-bodied man and woman that lands at New York.
The bad moral consequences of a dispersion of agricultural labour, and the good moral effects of an adequate combination, are so serious as to render it the duty of good citizens to inform themselves fully of the bearings of this question before they attempt to influence other minds upon it. Those who have seen what are the morals and manners of families who live alone in the wilds, with no human opinion around them, no neighbours with whom to exchange good offices, no stimulus to mental activity, no social amusements, no church, no life, nothing but the pursuit of the outward means of living,--any one who has witnessed this will be ready to agree what a blessing it would be to such a family to shake down a shower of even poor Irish labourers around them. To such a family no tidings ought to be more welcome than of the arrival of ship-load after ship-load of immigrants at the ports, some few of whom may wander hitherwards, and by entering into a combination of labour to obtain means of living, open a way to the attainment of the ends. Sixty thousand immigrants a-year! What are these spread over so many thousand square miles? If the country could be looked down upon from a balloon, some large clusters of these would be seen detained in the cities, because they could not be spared into the country; other clusters would be seen about the canals and railroads; and a very slight sprinkling in the back country, where their stations would be marked by the prosperity growing up around them.
The expedients used in the country settlements to secure a combination of labour when it is absolutely necessary, show how eminently deficient it is. Every one has heard of the "frolic" or "bee," by means of which the clearing of lots, the raising of houses, the harvesting of crops is achieved. Roads are made, and kept by contributions of labour and teams, by settlers. For the rest, what can be done by family labour alone is so done, with great waste of time, material, and toil. The wonderful effects of a "frolic," in every way, should serve, in contrast with the toil and difficulty usually expended in producing small results, to incline the hearts of settlers towards immigrants, and to plan how an increase of them may be obtained.
Minds are, I hope, beginning to turn in this direction. In New England, where there is the most combination of labour, and the poorest land, it is amusing to see the beginning of discoveries on this head. I find, in the United States' Almanack for 1835, an article on agricultural improvements, (presupposing a supply of labour as the primary requisite,) which bears all the marks of freshness and originality, of having been a discovery of the writer's.
"If such improvements as are possible, or even easy," (where there is labour at hand,) "were made in the husbandry of this country, many and great advantages would be found to arise. As twice the number of people might be supported on the same quantity of land, all our farming towns would become twice as populous as they are likely to be in the present state of husbandry. There would be, in general, but half the distance to travel to visit one's friends and acquaintances. Friends might oftener see and converse with each other. Half the labour would be saved in carrying the corn to mill, and the produce to market; half the journeying saved in attending our courts; and half the expense in supporting government, and in making and repairing roads; half the distance saved in going to the smith, weaver, clothier, &c.; half the distance saved in going to public worship, and most other meetings; for where steeples are four miles apart, they would be only two or three. Much time, expense and labour would, on these accounts, be saved; and civilisation, with all the social virtues, would, perhaps, be proportionally promoted and increased."
Before this can be done, there must be hands to do it. Steeples must remain four or fourteen miles apart, till there are beings enough in the intervening space to draw them together. I saw, on the Mississippi, a woman in a canoe, paddling up against the stream; probably, as I was told, to visit a neighbour twenty or thirty miles off. The only comfort was that the current would bring her back four times as quickly as she went up. What a blessing would a party of emigrant neighbours be to a woman who would row herself twenty miles against the stream of the Mississippi for cornpanionship!
Instead of complaining of the sixty thousand emigrants per annum, and lowering the price of land, so as to induce dispersion, it would be wise, if it were possible, in the people of the United States to bring in sixty thousand more labourers per annum, and raise the price of land. This last cannot, perhaps, be done: but why should not the other? With a surplus revenue that they do not know what to do with, and a scarcity of the labour which they do not know how to do without, why not use the surplus funds accruing from the lands in carrying labour to the soil?
It is true, Europeans have the same passion for land as the Americans; and such immigrants would leave their employers, and buy for themselves, as soon as they had earned the requisite funds: but these, again, would supply the means of bringing over more labour; and the intermediate services of the labourers would be so much gained. If the arrangements were so made as to bring over sober, respectable labourers, without their being in any way bound to servitude, (as a host of poor Germans once were made white slaves of,) if, the land and labour being once brought together, and repayment from the benefited parties being secured, (if desired,) things were then left to take their natural course, a greater blessing could hardly befal the United States than such an importation of labourers.
I was told, in every eastern city, that it was a common practice with parish officers in England to ship off their paupers to the United States. I took some pains to investigate the grounds of this charge, and am convinced that it is a mistake; that the accusation has arisen out of some insulated case. I was happy to be able to show my American friends how the supposed surplus population of the English agricultural counties has shrunk, and in some cases disappeared, under the operation of the new Poor Law, so that, even if the charge had ever been true, it could not long remain so. By the time that we shall be enabled to say the same of the parishes of Ireland, the Americans will, doubtless, have discovered that they would be glad of all the labourers we had ever been able to spare; if only we could send them in the form of respectable men and women, instead of squalid paupers, looking as if they were going from shore to shore, to rouse the world to an outcry against the sins and sorrows of our economy.
It will scarcely be credited by those who are not already informed on the subject, that a proposition has been made to send out of the country an equal number of persons to the amount brought into it; ship loads of labourers going to and fro, like buckets in a well: that this proposition has been introduced into Congress, and has been made the basis of appropriations in some State legislatures: tbat itinerant lecturers are employed to advocate the scheme: that it is preached from the pulpit, and subscribed for in the churches, and that in its behalf are enlisted members of tbe administration, a great number of the leading politicians, clergy, merchants, and planters, and a large proportion of the other citizens of the United States. It matters little how many or how great are the men engaged in behalf of a bad scheme, which is so unnatural that it cannot but fail:--it matters little, as far as the scheme itself is concerned; but it is of incalculable consequence as creating an obstruction. For itself, the miserable abortion--the Colonisation scheme--might be passed over; for its active results will be nothing; but it is necessary to refer to it in its passive character of an obstruction. It is necessary to refer thus to it, not only as a matter of fact, but because, absurd and impracticable as the scheme clearly is, when viewed in relation to the whole state of affairs in America, it is not so easy on the spot to discern its true character. So many perplexing considerations are mixed up with it by its advocates; so many of those advocates are men of earnest philanthropy, and well versed in the details of the scheme, while blind to its general hearing, that it is difficult to have general principles always in readiness to meet opposing facts; to help adopting the partial views of well-meaning and thoroughly persuaded persons; and to know where to doubt, and what to disbelieve. I went to America extremely doubtful about the character of this institution. I heard at Baltimore and Washington all that could be said in its favour, by persons conversant with slavery, which I had not then seen. Mr. Madison, the President of the Colonisation Society, gave me his favourable views of it. Mr. Clay, the Vice-President, gave me his. So did almost every clergyman and other member of society whom I met for some months. Much time, observation, and reflection were necessary to form a judgment for myself, after so much prepossession, even in so clear a case as I now see this to be. Others on the spot must have the same allowance as was necessary for me: and, if any pecuniary interest be involved in the question, much more. But, I am firmly persuaded that any clear-headed man, shutting himself up in his closet for a day's study of the question, or taking a voyage, so as to be able to look back upon the entire country he has left,-- being careful to take in the whole of its economical aspect, (to say nothing, at present, of the moral,) can come to no other conclusion than that the scheme of transporting the coloured population of the United States to the coast of Africa is absolutely absurd; and, if it were not so, would be absolutely pernicious. But, in matters of econormy, the pernicious and the absurd are usually identical.
No one is to be blamed for the origin of slavery. Because it is now, under conviction, wicked, it does not follow that it was instituted in wickedness. Those who began it, knew not what they did. It has been elsewhere1 ably shown how slavery has always, and, to all appearance, unavoidably existed, in some form or other, wherever large new tracts of land have been taken possession of by a few agricultural settlers. Let it be granted that negro slavery was begun inadvertently in the West India islands, and continued, by an economical necessity, in the colonies of North America.
What is now the state of the case? Slavery, of a very mild kind, has been abolished in the northern parts of the Union, where agricultural labour can be carried on by whites, and where such employments bear a very reduced proportion to manufacturing and commercial occupations. Its introduction into the north-western portions of the country has heen prohibited by those who had had experience of its evils. Slavery, generally of a very aggravated character, now subsists in thirteen States out of twenty-six, and those thirteen are the States which grow the tobacco, rice, cotton and sugar; it being generally alleged that rice and sugar cannot be raised by white labour, while some maintain that they may. I found few who doubted that tobacco and cotton may be grown by white labour, with the assistance from brute labour and machinery which would follow upon the disuse of human capital. The amount of the slave population is now above two millions and a half. It increases rapidly in the States which have been impoverished by slavery; and is killed off, but not with equal rapidity, on the virgin soils to which alone it is, in any degree, appropriate. It has become unquestionably inappropriate in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Kentucky. To these I should be disposed to add Missouri, and North Carolina, and part of Tennessee and South Carolina. The States which have more slave labour than their deteriorated lands require, sell it to those which have a deficiency of labour to their rich lands. Virginia, now in a very depressed condition, derives her chief revenue from the rearing of slaves, as stock, to be sent to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The march of circumstance has become too obvious to escape the attention of the most short-sighted. No one can fail to perceive that slavery, like an army of locusts, is compelled to shift its place, by the desolation it has made. Its progress is southwards; and now, having reached the sea there, south-westwards. If there were but an impassable barrier there, its doom would be certain, and not very remote. This doom was apparently sealed a while ago, by the abolition of slavery in Mexico, and the fair chance there seemed of Missouri and Arkansas being subjected to a restriction of the same purport with that imposed on the new States, north-west of the Ohio. This doom has been, for the present, cancelled by the admission of slavery into Missouri and Arkansas, and by the seizure of Texas by American citizens. The open question, however, only regards its final limits. Its speedy abolition in many of the States may be, and is, regarded as certain.
The institution of slavery was a political anomaly at the time of the Revolution. It has now become an economical one also. Nothing can prevent the generality of persons from seeing this, however blind a few, a very few persons on the spot may be to the truth.2
It has thus obviously become the interest of all to whom slavery still is, or is believed to be, a gain; of those who hold the richest lands; of those who rear slaves for such lands; of all who dread change; of all who would go quietly through life, and leave it to a future generation to cope with their difficulty,--it has become the interest of all such to turn their own attention and that of others from the fact that the time has come when the slaves ought to be made free labourers. They cannot put down the fact into utter silence. Some sort of compromise must be made with it. A tub must be thrown to the whale. A tub has been found which will almost hold the whale.
It is proposed by the Colonisation Society that free persons of colour shall be sent to establish and conduct a civilised community on the shores of Africa. The variety of prospects held out by this proposition to persons of different views is remarkable. To the imaginative, there is the picture of the restoration of the coloured race to their paternal soil: to the religious, the prospect of evangelising Africa. Those who would serve God and Mammon are delighted at being able to work their slaves during their own lives, and then leave them to the Colonisation Society with a bequest of money, (when money must needs be left behind,) to carry them over to Africa. Those who would be doing, in a small way, immediately, let certain of their slaves work for wages which are to carry them over to Africa. Those who have slaves too clever or discontented to be safe neighbours, can ship them off to Africa. Those who are afraid of the rising intelligence of their free coloured neighbours, or suffer strongly under the prejudice of colour, can exercise such social tyranny as shall drive such troublesome persons to Africa. The clergy, public lecturers, members of legislatures, religious societies, and charitable individuals, both in the north and south, are believed to be, and believe themselves to be, labouring on behalf of slaves, when they preach, lecture, obtain appropriations, and subscribe, on behalf of the Colonisation Society. Minds and hearts are laid to rest,--opiated into a false sleep.
Here are all manner of people associated for one object, which has the primary advantage of being ostensibly benevolent. It has had Mr. Madison for its chief officer: Mr. Clay for its second. It has had the aid, for twenty years, of almost all the presses and pulpits of the United States, and of most of their politicians, members of government, and leading professional men and merchants, and almost all the planters of twelve states, and all the missionary interest. Besides the subscriptions arising from so many sources, there have been large appropriations made by various legislatures. What is the result? --Nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Out of a chaos of elements no orderly creation can arise but by the operation of a sound principle: and sound principle here, there is none.
In twenty years, the Colonisation Society has removed to Africa between two and three thousand persons;3 while tbe annual increase of the slave population is, by the lowest computation, sixty thousand; and the number of free blacks is upwards of three hundred and sixty-two thousand.
The chief officers of the Colonisation Society look forward to being able, in a few years, to carry off the present annual increase, and a few more; by which time the annual increase will amount to many times more than the Society will have carried out from the beginning.
The leading Colonisation advocates in the south object to abolition, invariably on the ground that they should be left without labourers: whereas it is the Colonisation scheme which would carry away the labourers, and the abolition scheme which would leave them where they are. To say nothing of the wilfulness of this often-confuted objection, it proves that those who urge it are not in earnest in advocating Colonisation as ultimate emancipation.
As far as I could learn, no leading member of the Colonisation Society has freed any of his slaves. Its president had sold twelve, the week before I first saw him. Its vice-president is obsede by his slaves; but retains them all. And so it is, through the whole hierarchy.
The avowal of a southern gentleman,--"We have our slaves, and we mean to keep them,"--is echoed on political occasions by the same gentlemen of the Colonisation Society, who, on politic or religious occasions, treat of colonisation as ultimate emancipation.
While labourers are flocking into other parts of the country, at the rate of sixty thousand per annum, and are found to be far too few for the wants of society, the Colonisation scheme proposes to carry out more than this number; and fails of all its ostensible objects till it does so. A glance at the causes of slavery, and at the present economy of the United States, shows such a scheme to be a bald fiction.
It alienates the attention and will of the people, (for the purposes of the few,) from the principle of the abolition of slavery, which would achieve any honest objects of the Colonisation Society, and many more. Leaving, for the present, the moral consideration of the case, abolition would not only leave the land as full of labourers as it is now, but incalculably augment the supply of labour by substituting willing and active service, and improved methods of husbandry, for the forced, inferior labour, and wasteful arrangements which are always admitted to be co-existent with slavery.
The greater number of eminent Abolitionists,-- eminent for talents, zeal and high principle,--are converted Colonisationists.
This is surely enough.
It appears to me that the Colonisation Society could never have gained any ground at all, but for the common supposition that the blacks must go somewhere. It was a long while before I could make anything of this. The argument always ran thus.
"Unless they remain as they are, Africa is the only place for them.--It will not do to give them a territory; we have seen enough of that with the Indians. We are heart-sick of territories: the blacks would all perish.--Then, the climate of Canada would not suit them: they would perish there. The Haytians wil1 not take them in: they have a horror of freed slaves. --There is no rest for the soles of their feet, anywhere but in Africa!"
"Why should they not stay where they are?"
"Impossible. The laws of the States forbid freed negroes to remain."
"At present,--on account of the slaves who remain. In case of abolition, such laws would be repealed, of course: and then, why should not the blacks remain where they are?"
"They could never live among the whites in a state of freedorm."
"Why? You are begging the question."
"They would die of vice and misery."
"Why more than the German labourers?"
"They do in the free States. They are dying out there constantly."
"What makes them more vicious than other people?"
"The coloured people always are."
"You mean because their colour is the badge of slavery?"
"Yes."
"Then, when it is no longer so, the degradation, for aught you know, will cease."
This is the circle, described by those who pity the slaves. There is another, appropriate to those who pity the masters.
"What is to become of the planters, without any labourers? They must shut up and go away; for they cannot stay in their houses, without any labourers on the plantations."
"Are the slaves to be all buried? Or are they to evaporate? or what?"
"O, you know, they would all go away. Nothing would make them stay when they were once free."
"They would change masters, no doubt. But as many would remain in the area as before. Why not?"
"The masters could not possibly employ them. They could never manage them, except as slaves."
"So you think that the masters could not have the labourers, because they would go away: and the labourers must go away, because the masters would not have them."
To prevent any escape by a nibble in this circle, the other is brought up round it, to prove that there is no other place than Africa for the blacks to go to: and thus, the alternative of slavery or colonisation is supposed to be established.
All action, and all conversation, on behalf of this institution, bears the same character,--of arguing in a circle. A magic ring seems drawn round those who live amidst slavery; and it gives a circular character to all they think and say and do upon the subject. There are but few who sit within it who distinctly see anything beyond it. If there were but any one moral giant within, who would heave a blow at it with all the force of a mighty principle, it would be shattered to atoms in a moment; and the white and black slaves it encloses would be free at once. This will be done when more light is poured in under the darkness which broods over it: and the time cannot now be far off.
Whenever I am particularly strongly convinced of anything, in opposition to the opinion of any or many others, I entertain a suspicion that there is more evidence on the other side than I see. I felt so, even on this subject of slavery, which has been clear to English eyes for so long. I went into the slave States with this suspicion in my mind; and I preserved it there as long as possible. I believe that I have heard every argument that can possibly be adduced in vindication or palliation of slavery, under any circumstances now existing; and I declare that, of all displays of intellectual perversion and weakness that I have witnessed, I have met with none so humbling and so melancholy as the advocacy of this institution. I declare that I know the whole of its theory;--a declaration that I dare not make with regard to, I think, any other subject whatever: the result is that I believe there is nothing rational to be said in vindication or palliation of tbe protraction of slavery in the United States.--Having made this avowal, it will not be expected that I should fill my pages with a wide superficies of argument which will no more bear a touch than pond-ice, on the last day of thaw. As I disposed in my mind the opposite arguments of slave-holders, I found that they ate one another up, like the two cats that Sheridan told of; but without leaving so much as an inch of tail
One mistake, perhaps, deserves notice. Restless slave-holders, whose uneasiness has urged them to struggle in their toils, and find themselves unable to get out but by the loss of everything, (but honour and conscience,) pointed out to me the laws of their States, whereby the manumission of slaves is rendered difficult or impossible to the master, remaining on the spot, and prospectively fatal to the freed slave;--pointed out to me these laws as rendering abolition impossible. To say nothing of the feebleness of the barriers which human regulations present to the changes urged on by the great natural laws of society,--it is a sufficient answer that these State laws present no obstacle to general, though they do to particular, emancipation. They will be cancelled or neglected by the same will which created them, when the occasion expires with which they sprang up, or which they were designed to perpetuate. The institution of slavery was not formed in accordance with them: they arose out of the institution. They are an offset; and, to use the words of one of their advocates, spoken in another connexion, "they will share the fate of offsets, and perish with the parent."
It is obvious that all laws which encourage the departure of the blacks must be repealed, when their slavery is abolished. The one thing necessary, in the economical view of the case, is that efficient measures should be taken to prevent an unwise dispersion of these labourers: measures, I mean, which should in no way interfere with their personal liberty, but which should secure to them generally greater advantages on the spot than they could obtain by roaming. It has been distinctly shown that slavery originated from the difficulty of concentrating labour in the neighbourhood of capitalists. Where the people are few in proportion to the land, they are apt to disperse themselves over it; so that personal coercion has been supposed necessary, in the first instance, to secure any efficient cultivation of the land at all. Though the danger and the supposed necessity are past, in all but the rawest of the slave States, the ancient fact should be so borne in mind as that what legislation there is should tend to cause a concentration, rather than a dispersion of the labourers. Any such tendency will be much aided by the strong local attachments for which negroes are remarkable. It is not only that slaves dread all change, from the intellectual and moral dejection to which they are reduced; fearing even the removal from one plantation to another, under the same master, from the constant vague apprehension of something dreadful. It is not only this, (which, however, it would take them some time to outgrow,) but that all their race show a kind of feline attachment to places to which they are accustomed, which will be of excellent service to kind masters when the day of emancipation comes. For the rest, efficient arrangements can and will doubtless be made to prevent their wandering further than from one master to another. The abolition of slavery must be complete and immediate: that is to say, as a man either is or is not the property of another, as there can be no degrees of ownership of a human being, there must be an immediate and complete surrender of all claim to negro men, women, and children as property: but there may and will doubtless be arrangements made to protect, guide, and teach these degraded beings, till they have learned what liberty is, and how to use it. Liberty to change their masters must, under certain reasonable limitations, be allowed; the education of their children must be enforced. The amount of wages will be determined by natural laws, and cannot be foreseen, further than that they must necessarily be very ample for a long time to come. It will probably be found desirable to fix the price of the government lands, with a view to the coloured people, at that amount which will best obviate squatting, and secure the respectable settlement of some who may find their way to the west.
Suggestions of this kind excite laughter among the masters of slaves, who are in the habit of thinking that they know best what negroes are, and what they are capable of. I have reasons for estimating their knowledge differently, and for believing that none know so little of the true character and capabilities of negroes as their owners. They might know more, but for the pernicious and unnatural secrecy about some of the most important facts connected with slave-holding, which is induced partly by pride, partly by fear, partly by pecuniary interest. If they would do themselves and their slaves the justice of inquiring with precision what is the state of Hayti; what has taken place in the West Indies; what the emancipation really was there; what its effects actually are, they would obtain a clearer view of their own prospects. So they would, if they would communicate freely about certain facts nearer home: not only conversing as individuals, but removing the restrictions upon the press by which they lose far more than they gain, both in security and fortune,--to say nothing of intelligence. Of the many families in which I enjoyed intercourse, there was, I believe, none where I was not told of some one slave of unusual value, for talent or goodness, either in the present or a former generation. A collection of these alone, as they stand in my journal, would form no mean testimony to the intellectual and moral capabilities of negroes: and if to these were added the tales which I could tell, if I also were not bound under the laws of mystery of which I have been complaining, many hearts would beat with the desire to restore to their human rights those whose fellow-sufferers have given ample proof of their worthiness to enjoy them. The consideration which binds me to silence upon a rich collection of facts, full of moral beauty and pronnise, is regard to the safety of many whose heroic obedienoe to the laws of God has brought them into jeopardy under the laws of slave-holders, and the allies of slave-holders. Nor would I, by any careless revelations, throw the slightest obstacle in the way of the escape of any one of the slaves who may be about to shirk their masters, by methods with which I happen to be acquainted.
It can, however, do nothing but good to proclaim the truth that slaves do run away in much greater numbers than is supposed by any but those who lose them, and those who help them. By which I mean many others besides the abolitionists par excellence. Perhaps I might confine the knowledge to these last; for I believe no means exist by which the yearly amount of loss of this kind may be verified and published in the south. Everybody who has been in America is familiar with the little newspaper picture of a black man, hieing with his stick and bundle, which is prefixed to the advertisements of runaways. Every traveller has probably been struck with the number of these which meets his eye; but unless he has more private means of information, he will remain unaware of the streams of fugitives continually passing out of the States. There is much reserve about this in the south, from pride; and among those elsewhere who could tell, from far other considerations. The time will come when the whole story in its wonder and beauty, may be told by some who, like myself; have seen more of the matter, from all sides, than it is easy for a native to do. Suffice it, that the loss by runavays, and the generally useless attempts to recover them, is a heavy item in the accounts of the cotton and sugar growers of the south; and one which is sure to become heavier till there shall be no more bondage to escape from. It is obvious that the slaves who run away are among the best: an escape being usually the achievement of a project early formed; concealed, pertinaciously adhered to, and endeared by much toil and sacrifice undergone for its sake, for a long course of years. A weak mind is incapable of such a series of acts, with a unity of purpose. They are the choicest slaves who run away. Of the cases known to me, the greater number of the men, and some of the women, have acted throughout upon an idea; (called by their owners "a fancy,"--a very different thing:) while some few of the men have started off upon some sudden infliction of cruelty; and many women on account of intolerable outrage, of the grossest kind. Several masters told me of leave given to their slaves to go away, and of the slaves refusing to avail themselves of it. If this was meant to tell in favour of slavery, it failed of its effect. The argument was too shallow to impose upon a child. Of course, they were the least valuable slaves to whom this permission was given: and their declining to depart proved nothing so much as the utter degradation of human beings who could prefer receiving food and shelter from the hand of an owner to the possession of themselves.
Amidst the mass of materials which accumulated on my hands during the process of learning from all parties their views on this question, I hardly know where to turn, and what to select, that will most briefly and strongly show that the times have outgrown slavery. This is the point at which every fact and argument issue, whatever may be the intention of those who adduce it. The most striking, perhaps, is the treatment of the Abolitionists: a subject to be adverted to hereafter. The insane fury which vents itself upon the few who act upon the principles which the many profess, is a sign of the times not to be mistaken. It is always the precursor of beneficial change. Society in America seems to be already passing out of this stage into one even more advanced. The cause of abolition is spreading so rapidly through the heart of the nation; the sound part of the body politic is embracing it so actively, that no disinterested observer can fail to be persuaded that even the question of time is brought within narrow limits. The elections will, ere long, show the will of the people that slavery be abolished in the District of Columbia. Then such buckling politicians, mercenary traders, cowardly clergy, and profligate newspaper corps, as are new too blind to see the coming change, will have to choose their part; whether to shrink out of sight, or to boast patriotically of the righteous revolution which they have strived to retard, even by the application of the torture to both the bodies and the minds of their more clear-eyed fellow-citizens.
After giving one or two testimonies to the necessity of a speedy change of system, I will confine myself to relating a few signs of the times which I encountered in my travels through the south.
In 1782, Virginia repealed the law against manumission; and in nine years, there were ten thousand slaves freed in that State. Alarmed for the institution, her legislature re-enacted the law. What has been the consequence?--Let us take the testimony of the two leading newspapers of the capital of Virginia, given at a time when the Virginian legislature was debating the subject of slavery; and when there was, for once, an exposure of the truth from those best qualified to reveal it. In 1832, the following remarks appeared in the "Richmond Enquirer."
"It is probable, fromwhat we hear, that the committee on the coloured population will report some plan for getting rid of the free people of colour. But is this all that can be done? Are we for ever to suffer the greatest evil which can scourge our land not only to remain, but to increase in its dimensions? 'We may shut our eyes and avert our faces, if we please,' (writes an eloquent South C:arolinian, on his return from the north a few weeks ago,) 'but there it is, the dark and growing evil, at our doors: and meet the question we must at no distant day. God only knows what it is the part of wise men to do on that momentous and appalling subject. Of this I am very sure, that the difference--nothing short of frightful --between all that exists on one side of the Potomac, and all on the other, is owing to that cause alone.
The American ploughs round the stumps of the trees he has felled, and is not very careful to measure the area he ploughs, and the seed he sows. The Englishman clears half the quantity of land,-- clears it very thoroughily; ploughs deep, sows thick, raises twice the quantity of grain on half the area of land, and points proudly to his crop. But the American has, meantime, fenced, cleared, and sown more land, improved his house and stock, and kept his money in his pocket. The Englishman has paid for the labour bestowed on his beautiful fields more than his fine crop repays him. When he has done thus for a few seasons, till his money is gone, he learns that he has got to a place where it answers to spend land to save labour; the reverse of his experience in England; and he soon becomes as slovenly a farmer as the American, and begins immediately to grow rich.
lt would puzzle a philosopher to compute how long some prejudices will subsist in defiance of, not only evidence, but personal experience. These same Americans, who laugh (reasonably enough) at the prejudiced English farmer, seem themselves incapable of being convinced on a point quite as plain as that between him and themselves. The very ground of their triumph over him is their knowledge of the much smaller value of land, and greater value of labour, in America than in England: and yet, there is no one subject on which so many complaints are to be heard from every class of American society as the immigration of foreigners. The incapacity of men to recognise blessings in disguise has been the theme of moralists in all ages: but it might be expected that the Americans, in this case, would be an exception. It is wonderful, to a stranger, to see how they fret and toil, and scheme and invent, to supply the deficiency of help, and all the time quarrel with the one means by which labour is brought to their door. The immigration of foreigners was the one complaint by which I was met in every corner of the free States; and I really believe I did not converse with a dozen persons who saw the ultimate good through the present apparent evil.
It is not much to be wondered at that gentlemen and ladies, living in Boston and New York, and seeing, for the first time in their lives, half-naked and squalid persons in the street, should ask where they come from, and fear lest they should infect others with their squalor, and wish they would keep away. It is not much to be wondered at that the managers of charitable institutions in the maritime cities should be weary of the claims advanced by indigent foreigners: but it is surprising that these gentlemen and ladies should not learn by experience that all this ends well, and that matters are taking their natural course. It would certainly be better that the emigrants should be well clothed, educated, respectable people; (except that, in that case, they would probably never arrive;) but the blame of their bad condition rests elsewhere, while their arrival is, generally speaking, almost a pure benefit. Some are intemperate and profligate; and such are, no doubt, a great injury to the cities where they harbour; but the greater number show themselves decent and hardworking enough, when put into employment. Every American acknowledges that few or no canals or railroads would be in existence now, in the United States, but for the Irish labour by which they have been completed: and the best cultivation that is to be seen in the land is owing to the Dutch and Germans it contains. What would housekeepers do for domestic service without foreigners? If the American ports had been barred against immigration, and the sixty thousand foreigners per annum, with all their progeny, had been excluded, where would now have been the public works of the United States, the agriculture, the shipping?
The most emphatic complainers of the immigration of foreigners are those who imagine that the morals of society suffer thereby. My own conviction is that the morals of society are, on the whole, thereby much improved. It is candidly allowed, on all hands, that the passion of the Irish for the education of their children is a great set-off against the bad qualities some of them exhibit in their own persons; and that the second and third generations of Irish are among the most valuable citizens of the republic. The immigrant Germans are more sober and respectable than the Irish; but there is more difficulty in improving them and their children. The Scotch are in high esteem. My own opinion is that most of the evils charged upon the immigrants are chargeable upon the mismanagement of them in the ports. The atrocious corruption of the New York elections, where an Irishman, just landed, and employed upon the drains, perjures himself, and votes nine times over, is chargeable, not upon immigration, nor yet upon universal suffrage, but upon faults in the machinery of registration. Again, if the great pauper-palace, over the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia, be half full of foreigners; if it be true that an Irish woman was seen to walk round it, and heard to observe that she should immediately write over for all her relations; the evil is chargeable upon there being a pauper-palace, with the best of food and clothing, and no compulsion to work, in a country where there is far more work and wages than there are hands to labour and earn. There is in New York a benevolent gentleman who exercises a most useful and effectual charity. He keeps a kind of registry office for the demand and supply of emigrant labour; takes charge of the funds of such emigrants as are fortunate enough to have any; and befriends them in every way. He declares that he has an average of six situations on his list ready for every sober, able-bodied man and woman that lands at New York.
The bad moral consequences of a dispersion of agricultural labour, and the good moral effects of an adequate combination, are so serious as to render it the duty of good citizens to inform themselves fully of the bearings of this question before they attempt to influence other minds upon it. Those who have seen what are the morals and manners of families who live alone in the wilds, with no human opinion around them, no neighbours with whom to exchange good offices, no stimulus to mental activity, no social amusements, no church, no life, nothing but the pursuit of the outward means of living,--any one who has witnessed this will be ready to agree what a blessing it would be to such a family to shake down a shower of even poor Irish labourers around them. To such a family no tidings ought to be more welcome than of the arrival of ship-load after ship-load of immigrants at the ports, some few of whom may wander hitherwards, and by entering into a combination of labour to obtain means of living, open a way to the attainment of the ends. Sixty thousand immigrants a-year! What are these spread over so many thousand square miles? If the country could be looked down upon from a balloon, some large clusters of these would be seen detained in the cities, because they could not be spared into the country; other clusters would be seen about the canals and railroads; and a very slight sprinkling in the back country, where their stations would be marked by the prosperity growing up around them.
The expedients used in the country settlements to secure a combination of labour when it is absolutely necessary, show how eminently deficient it is. Every one has heard of the "frolic" or "bee," by means of which the clearing of lots, the raising of houses, the harvesting of crops is achieved. Roads are made, and kept by contributions of labour and teams, by settlers. For the rest, what can be done by family labour alone is so done, with great waste of time, material, and toil. The wonderful effects of a "frolic," in every way, should serve, in contrast with the toil and difficulty usually expended in producing small results, to incline the hearts of settlers towards immigrants, and to plan how an increase of them may be obtained.
Minds are, I hope, beginning to turn in this direction. In New England, where there is the most combination of labour, and the poorest land, it is amusing to see the beginning of discoveries on this head. I find, in the United States' Almanack for 1835, an article on agricultural improvements, (presupposing a supply of labour as the primary requisite,) which bears all the marks of freshness and originality, of having been a discovery of the writer's.
"If such improvements as are possible, or even easy," (where there is labour at hand,) "were made in the husbandry of this country, many and great advantages would be found to arise. As twice the number of people might be supported on the same quantity of land, all our farming towns would become twice as populous as they are likely to be in the present state of husbandry. There would be, in general, but half the distance to travel to visit one's friends and acquaintances. Friends might oftener see and converse with each other. Half the labour would be saved in carrying the corn to mill, and the produce to market; half the journeying saved in attending our courts; and half the expense in supporting government, and in making and repairing roads; half the distance saved in going to the smith, weaver, clothier, &c.; half the distance saved in going to public worship, and most other meetings; for where steeples are four miles apart, they would be only two or three. Much time, expense and labour would, on these accounts, be saved; and civilisation, with all the social virtues, would, perhaps, be proportionally promoted and increased."
Before this can be done, there must be hands to do it. Steeples must remain four or fourteen miles apart, till there are beings enough in the intervening space to draw them together. I saw, on the Mississippi, a woman in a canoe, paddling up against the stream; probably, as I was told, to visit a neighbour twenty or thirty miles off. The only comfort was that the current would bring her back four times as quickly as she went up. What a blessing would a party of emigrant neighbours be to a woman who would row herself twenty miles against the stream of the Mississippi for cornpanionship!
Instead of complaining of the sixty thousand emigrants per annum, and lowering the price of land, so as to induce dispersion, it would be wise, if it were possible, in the people of the United States to bring in sixty thousand more labourers per annum, and raise the price of land. This last cannot, perhaps, be done: but why should not the other? With a surplus revenue that they do not know what to do with, and a scarcity of the labour which they do not know how to do without, why not use the surplus funds accruing from the lands in carrying labour to the soil?
It is true, Europeans have the same passion for land as the Americans; and such immigrants would leave their employers, and buy for themselves, as soon as they had earned the requisite funds: but these, again, would supply the means of bringing over more labour; and the intermediate services of the labourers would be so much gained. If the arrangements were so made as to bring over sober, respectable labourers, without their being in any way bound to servitude, (as a host of poor Germans once were made white slaves of,) if, the land and labour being once brought together, and repayment from the benefited parties being secured, (if desired,) things were then left to take their natural course, a greater blessing could hardly befal the United States than such an importation of labourers.
I was told, in every eastern city, that it was a common practice with parish officers in England to ship off their paupers to the United States. I took some pains to investigate the grounds of this charge, and am convinced that it is a mistake; that the accusation has arisen out of some insulated case. I was happy to be able to show my American friends how the supposed surplus population of the English agricultural counties has shrunk, and in some cases disappeared, under the operation of the new Poor Law, so that, even if the charge had ever been true, it could not long remain so. By the time that we shall be enabled to say the same of the parishes of Ireland, the Americans will, doubtless, have discovered that they would be glad of all the labourers we had ever been able to spare; if only we could send them in the form of respectable men and women, instead of squalid paupers, looking as if they were going from shore to shore, to rouse the world to an outcry against the sins and sorrows of our economy.
It will scarcely be credited by those who are not already informed on the subject, that a proposition has been made to send out of the country an equal number of persons to the amount brought into it; ship loads of labourers going to and fro, like buckets in a well: that this proposition has been introduced into Congress, and has been made the basis of appropriations in some State legislatures: tbat itinerant lecturers are employed to advocate the scheme: that it is preached from the pulpit, and subscribed for in the churches, and that in its behalf are enlisted members of tbe administration, a great number of the leading politicians, clergy, merchants, and planters, and a large proportion of the other citizens of the United States. It matters little how many or how great are the men engaged in behalf of a bad scheme, which is so unnatural that it cannot but fail:--it matters little, as far as the scheme itself is concerned; but it is of incalculable consequence as creating an obstruction. For itself, the miserable abortion--the Colonisation scheme--might be passed over; for its active results will be nothing; but it is necessary to refer to it in its passive character of an obstruction. It is necessary to refer thus to it, not only as a matter of fact, but because, absurd and impracticable as the scheme clearly is, when viewed in relation to the whole state of affairs in America, it is not so easy on the spot to discern its true character. So many perplexing considerations are mixed up with it by its advocates; so many of those advocates are men of earnest philanthropy, and well versed in the details of the scheme, while blind to its general hearing, that it is difficult to have general principles always in readiness to meet opposing facts; to help adopting the partial views of well-meaning and thoroughly persuaded persons; and to know where to doubt, and what to disbelieve. I went to America extremely doubtful about the character of this institution. I heard at Baltimore and Washington all that could be said in its favour, by persons conversant with slavery, which I had not then seen. Mr. Madison, the President of the Colonisation Society, gave me his favourable views of it. Mr. Clay, the Vice-President, gave me his. So did almost every clergyman and other member of society whom I met for some months. Much time, observation, and reflection were necessary to form a judgment for myself, after so much prepossession, even in so clear a case as I now see this to be. Others on the spot must have the same allowance as was necessary for me: and, if any pecuniary interest be involved in the question, much more. But, I am firmly persuaded that any clear-headed man, shutting himself up in his closet for a day's study of the question, or taking a voyage, so as to be able to look back upon the entire country he has left,-- being careful to take in the whole of its economical aspect, (to say nothing, at present, of the moral,) can come to no other conclusion than that the scheme of transporting the coloured population of the United States to the coast of Africa is absolutely absurd; and, if it were not so, would be absolutely pernicious. But, in matters of econormy, the pernicious and the absurd are usually identical.
No one is to be blamed for the origin of slavery. Because it is now, under conviction, wicked, it does not follow that it was instituted in wickedness. Those who began it, knew not what they did. It has been elsewhere1 ably shown how slavery has always, and, to all appearance, unavoidably existed, in some form or other, wherever large new tracts of land have been taken possession of by a few agricultural settlers. Let it be granted that negro slavery was begun inadvertently in the West India islands, and continued, by an economical necessity, in the colonies of North America.
What is now the state of the case? Slavery, of a very mild kind, has been abolished in the northern parts of the Union, where agricultural labour can be carried on by whites, and where such employments bear a very reduced proportion to manufacturing and commercial occupations. Its introduction into the north-western portions of the country has heen prohibited by those who had had experience of its evils. Slavery, generally of a very aggravated character, now subsists in thirteen States out of twenty-six, and those thirteen are the States which grow the tobacco, rice, cotton and sugar; it being generally alleged that rice and sugar cannot be raised by white labour, while some maintain that they may. I found few who doubted that tobacco and cotton may be grown by white labour, with the assistance from brute labour and machinery which would follow upon the disuse of human capital. The amount of the slave population is now above two millions and a half. It increases rapidly in the States which have been impoverished by slavery; and is killed off, but not with equal rapidity, on the virgin soils to which alone it is, in any degree, appropriate. It has become unquestionably inappropriate in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Kentucky. To these I should be disposed to add Missouri, and North Carolina, and part of Tennessee and South Carolina. The States which have more slave labour than their deteriorated lands require, sell it to those which have a deficiency of labour to their rich lands. Virginia, now in a very depressed condition, derives her chief revenue from the rearing of slaves, as stock, to be sent to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The march of circumstance has become too obvious to escape the attention of the most short-sighted. No one can fail to perceive that slavery, like an army of locusts, is compelled to shift its place, by the desolation it has made. Its progress is southwards; and now, having reached the sea there, south-westwards. If there were but an impassable barrier there, its doom would be certain, and not very remote. This doom was apparently sealed a while ago, by the abolition of slavery in Mexico, and the fair chance there seemed of Missouri and Arkansas being subjected to a restriction of the same purport with that imposed on the new States, north-west of the Ohio. This doom has been, for the present, cancelled by the admission of slavery into Missouri and Arkansas, and by the seizure of Texas by American citizens. The open question, however, only regards its final limits. Its speedy abolition in many of the States may be, and is, regarded as certain.
The institution of slavery was a political anomaly at the time of the Revolution. It has now become an economical one also. Nothing can prevent the generality of persons from seeing this, however blind a few, a very few persons on the spot may be to the truth.2
It has thus obviously become the interest of all to whom slavery still is, or is believed to be, a gain; of those who hold the richest lands; of those who rear slaves for such lands; of all who dread change; of all who would go quietly through life, and leave it to a future generation to cope with their difficulty,--it has become the interest of all such to turn their own attention and that of others from the fact that the time has come when the slaves ought to be made free labourers. They cannot put down the fact into utter silence. Some sort of compromise must be made with it. A tub must be thrown to the whale. A tub has been found which will almost hold the whale.
It is proposed by the Colonisation Society that free persons of colour shall be sent to establish and conduct a civilised community on the shores of Africa. The variety of prospects held out by this proposition to persons of different views is remarkable. To the imaginative, there is the picture of the restoration of the coloured race to their paternal soil: to the religious, the prospect of evangelising Africa. Those who would serve God and Mammon are delighted at being able to work their slaves during their own lives, and then leave them to the Colonisation Society with a bequest of money, (when money must needs be left behind,) to carry them over to Africa. Those who would be doing, in a small way, immediately, let certain of their slaves work for wages which are to carry them over to Africa. Those who have slaves too clever or discontented to be safe neighbours, can ship them off to Africa. Those who are afraid of the rising intelligence of their free coloured neighbours, or suffer strongly under the prejudice of colour, can exercise such social tyranny as shall drive such troublesome persons to Africa. The clergy, public lecturers, members of legislatures, religious societies, and charitable individuals, both in the north and south, are believed to be, and believe themselves to be, labouring on behalf of slaves, when they preach, lecture, obtain appropriations, and subscribe, on behalf of the Colonisation Society. Minds and hearts are laid to rest,--opiated into a false sleep.
Here are all manner of people associated for one object, which has the primary advantage of being ostensibly benevolent. It has had Mr. Madison for its chief officer: Mr. Clay for its second. It has had the aid, for twenty years, of almost all the presses and pulpits of the United States, and of most of their politicians, members of government, and leading professional men and merchants, and almost all the planters of twelve states, and all the missionary interest. Besides the subscriptions arising from so many sources, there have been large appropriations made by various legislatures. What is the result? --Nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Out of a chaos of elements no orderly creation can arise but by the operation of a sound principle: and sound principle here, there is none.
In twenty years, the Colonisation Society has removed to Africa between two and three thousand persons;3 while tbe annual increase of the slave population is, by the lowest computation, sixty thousand; and the number of free blacks is upwards of three hundred and sixty-two thousand.
The chief officers of the Colonisation Society look forward to being able, in a few years, to carry off the present annual increase, and a few more; by which time the annual increase will amount to many times more than the Society will have carried out from the beginning.
The leading Colonisation advocates in the south object to abolition, invariably on the ground that they should be left without labourers: whereas it is the Colonisation scheme which would carry away the labourers, and the abolition scheme which would leave them where they are. To say nothing of the wilfulness of this often-confuted objection, it proves that those who urge it are not in earnest in advocating Colonisation as ultimate emancipation.
As far as I could learn, no leading member of the Colonisation Society has freed any of his slaves. Its president had sold twelve, the week before I first saw him. Its vice-president is obsede by his slaves; but retains them all. And so it is, through the whole hierarchy.
The avowal of a southern gentleman,--"We have our slaves, and we mean to keep them,"--is echoed on political occasions by the same gentlemen of the Colonisation Society, who, on politic or religious occasions, treat of colonisation as ultimate emancipation.
While labourers are flocking into other parts of the country, at the rate of sixty thousand per annum, and are found to be far too few for the wants of society, the Colonisation scheme proposes to carry out more than this number; and fails of all its ostensible objects till it does so. A glance at the causes of slavery, and at the present economy of the United States, shows such a scheme to be a bald fiction.
It alienates the attention and will of the people, (for the purposes of the few,) from the principle of the abolition of slavery, which would achieve any honest objects of the Colonisation Society, and many more. Leaving, for the present, the moral consideration of the case, abolition would not only leave the land as full of labourers as it is now, but incalculably augment the supply of labour by substituting willing and active service, and improved methods of husbandry, for the forced, inferior labour, and wasteful arrangements which are always admitted to be co-existent with slavery.
The greater number of eminent Abolitionists,-- eminent for talents, zeal and high principle,--are converted Colonisationists.
This is surely enough.
It appears to me that the Colonisation Society could never have gained any ground at all, but for the common supposition that the blacks must go somewhere. It was a long while before I could make anything of this. The argument always ran thus.
"Unless they remain as they are, Africa is the only place for them.--It will not do to give them a territory; we have seen enough of that with the Indians. We are heart-sick of territories: the blacks would all perish.--Then, the climate of Canada would not suit them: they would perish there. The Haytians wil1 not take them in: they have a horror of freed slaves. --There is no rest for the soles of their feet, anywhere but in Africa!"
"Why should they not stay where they are?"
"Impossible. The laws of the States forbid freed negroes to remain."
"At present,--on account of the slaves who remain. In case of abolition, such laws would be repealed, of course: and then, why should not the blacks remain where they are?"
"They could never live among the whites in a state of freedorm."
"Why? You are begging the question."
"They would die of vice and misery."
"Why more than the German labourers?"
"They do in the free States. They are dying out there constantly."
"What makes them more vicious than other people?"
"The coloured people always are."
"You mean because their colour is the badge of slavery?"
"Yes."
"Then, when it is no longer so, the degradation, for aught you know, will cease."
This is the circle, described by those who pity the slaves. There is another, appropriate to those who pity the masters.
"What is to become of the planters, without any labourers? They must shut up and go away; for they cannot stay in their houses, without any labourers on the plantations."
"Are the slaves to be all buried? Or are they to evaporate? or what?"
"O, you know, they would all go away. Nothing would make them stay when they were once free."
"They would change masters, no doubt. But as many would remain in the area as before. Why not?"
"The masters could not possibly employ them. They could never manage them, except as slaves."
"So you think that the masters could not have the labourers, because they would go away: and the labourers must go away, because the masters would not have them."
To prevent any escape by a nibble in this circle, the other is brought up round it, to prove that there is no other place than Africa for the blacks to go to: and thus, the alternative of slavery or colonisation is supposed to be established.
All action, and all conversation, on behalf of this institution, bears the same character,--of arguing in a circle. A magic ring seems drawn round those who live amidst slavery; and it gives a circular character to all they think and say and do upon the subject. There are but few who sit within it who distinctly see anything beyond it. If there were but any one moral giant within, who would heave a blow at it with all the force of a mighty principle, it would be shattered to atoms in a moment; and the white and black slaves it encloses would be free at once. This will be done when more light is poured in under the darkness which broods over it: and the time cannot now be far off.
Whenever I am particularly strongly convinced of anything, in opposition to the opinion of any or many others, I entertain a suspicion that there is more evidence on the other side than I see. I felt so, even on this subject of slavery, which has been clear to English eyes for so long. I went into the slave States with this suspicion in my mind; and I preserved it there as long as possible. I believe that I have heard every argument that can possibly be adduced in vindication or palliation of slavery, under any circumstances now existing; and I declare that, of all displays of intellectual perversion and weakness that I have witnessed, I have met with none so humbling and so melancholy as the advocacy of this institution. I declare that I know the whole of its theory;--a declaration that I dare not make with regard to, I think, any other subject whatever: the result is that I believe there is nothing rational to be said in vindication or palliation of tbe protraction of slavery in the United States.--Having made this avowal, it will not be expected that I should fill my pages with a wide superficies of argument which will no more bear a touch than pond-ice, on the last day of thaw. As I disposed in my mind the opposite arguments of slave-holders, I found that they ate one another up, like the two cats that Sheridan told of; but without leaving so much as an inch of tail
One mistake, perhaps, deserves notice. Restless slave-holders, whose uneasiness has urged them to struggle in their toils, and find themselves unable to get out but by the loss of everything, (but honour and conscience,) pointed out to me the laws of their States, whereby the manumission of slaves is rendered difficult or impossible to the master, remaining on the spot, and prospectively fatal to the freed slave;--pointed out to me these laws as rendering abolition impossible. To say nothing of the feebleness of the barriers which human regulations present to the changes urged on by the great natural laws of society,--it is a sufficient answer that these State laws present no obstacle to general, though they do to particular, emancipation. They will be cancelled or neglected by the same will which created them, when the occasion expires with which they sprang up, or which they were designed to perpetuate. The institution of slavery was not formed in accordance with them: they arose out of the institution. They are an offset; and, to use the words of one of their advocates, spoken in another connexion, "they will share the fate of offsets, and perish with the parent."
It is obvious that all laws which encourage the departure of the blacks must be repealed, when their slavery is abolished. The one thing necessary, in the economical view of the case, is that efficient measures should be taken to prevent an unwise dispersion of these labourers: measures, I mean, which should in no way interfere with their personal liberty, but which should secure to them generally greater advantages on the spot than they could obtain by roaming. It has been distinctly shown that slavery originated from the difficulty of concentrating labour in the neighbourhood of capitalists. Where the people are few in proportion to the land, they are apt to disperse themselves over it; so that personal coercion has been supposed necessary, in the first instance, to secure any efficient cultivation of the land at all. Though the danger and the supposed necessity are past, in all but the rawest of the slave States, the ancient fact should be so borne in mind as that what legislation there is should tend to cause a concentration, rather than a dispersion of the labourers. Any such tendency will be much aided by the strong local attachments for which negroes are remarkable. It is not only that slaves dread all change, from the intellectual and moral dejection to which they are reduced; fearing even the removal from one plantation to another, under the same master, from the constant vague apprehension of something dreadful. It is not only this, (which, however, it would take them some time to outgrow,) but that all their race show a kind of feline attachment to places to which they are accustomed, which will be of excellent service to kind masters when the day of emancipation comes. For the rest, efficient arrangements can and will doubtless be made to prevent their wandering further than from one master to another. The abolition of slavery must be complete and immediate: that is to say, as a man either is or is not the property of another, as there can be no degrees of ownership of a human being, there must be an immediate and complete surrender of all claim to negro men, women, and children as property: but there may and will doubtless be arrangements made to protect, guide, and teach these degraded beings, till they have learned what liberty is, and how to use it. Liberty to change their masters must, under certain reasonable limitations, be allowed; the education of their children must be enforced. The amount of wages will be determined by natural laws, and cannot be foreseen, further than that they must necessarily be very ample for a long time to come. It will probably be found desirable to fix the price of the government lands, with a view to the coloured people, at that amount which will best obviate squatting, and secure the respectable settlement of some who may find their way to the west.
Suggestions of this kind excite laughter among the masters of slaves, who are in the habit of thinking that they know best what negroes are, and what they are capable of. I have reasons for estimating their knowledge differently, and for believing that none know so little of the true character and capabilities of negroes as their owners. They might know more, but for the pernicious and unnatural secrecy about some of the most important facts connected with slave-holding, which is induced partly by pride, partly by fear, partly by pecuniary interest. If they would do themselves and their slaves the justice of inquiring with precision what is the state of Hayti; what has taken place in the West Indies; what the emancipation really was there; what its effects actually are, they would obtain a clearer view of their own prospects. So they would, if they would communicate freely about certain facts nearer home: not only conversing as individuals, but removing the restrictions upon the press by which they lose far more than they gain, both in security and fortune,--to say nothing of intelligence. Of the many families in which I enjoyed intercourse, there was, I believe, none where I was not told of some one slave of unusual value, for talent or goodness, either in the present or a former generation. A collection of these alone, as they stand in my journal, would form no mean testimony to the intellectual and moral capabilities of negroes: and if to these were added the tales which I could tell, if I also were not bound under the laws of mystery of which I have been complaining, many hearts would beat with the desire to restore to their human rights those whose fellow-sufferers have given ample proof of their worthiness to enjoy them. The consideration which binds me to silence upon a rich collection of facts, full of moral beauty and pronnise, is regard to the safety of many whose heroic obedienoe to the laws of God has brought them into jeopardy under the laws of slave-holders, and the allies of slave-holders. Nor would I, by any careless revelations, throw the slightest obstacle in the way of the escape of any one of the slaves who may be about to shirk their masters, by methods with which I happen to be acquainted.
It can, however, do nothing but good to proclaim the truth that slaves do run away in much greater numbers than is supposed by any but those who lose them, and those who help them. By which I mean many others besides the abolitionists par excellence. Perhaps I might confine the knowledge to these last; for I believe no means exist by which the yearly amount of loss of this kind may be verified and published in the south. Everybody who has been in America is familiar with the little newspaper picture of a black man, hieing with his stick and bundle, which is prefixed to the advertisements of runaways. Every traveller has probably been struck with the number of these which meets his eye; but unless he has more private means of information, he will remain unaware of the streams of fugitives continually passing out of the States. There is much reserve about this in the south, from pride; and among those elsewhere who could tell, from far other considerations. The time will come when the whole story in its wonder and beauty, may be told by some who, like myself; have seen more of the matter, from all sides, than it is easy for a native to do. Suffice it, that the loss by runavays, and the generally useless attempts to recover them, is a heavy item in the accounts of the cotton and sugar growers of the south; and one which is sure to become heavier till there shall be no more bondage to escape from. It is obvious that the slaves who run away are among the best: an escape being usually the achievement of a project early formed; concealed, pertinaciously adhered to, and endeared by much toil and sacrifice undergone for its sake, for a long course of years. A weak mind is incapable of such a series of acts, with a unity of purpose. They are the choicest slaves who run away. Of the cases known to me, the greater number of the men, and some of the women, have acted throughout upon an idea; (called by their owners "a fancy,"--a very different thing:) while some few of the men have started off upon some sudden infliction of cruelty; and many women on account of intolerable outrage, of the grossest kind. Several masters told me of leave given to their slaves to go away, and of the slaves refusing to avail themselves of it. If this was meant to tell in favour of slavery, it failed of its effect. The argument was too shallow to impose upon a child. Of course, they were the least valuable slaves to whom this permission was given: and their declining to depart proved nothing so much as the utter degradation of human beings who could prefer receiving food and shelter from the hand of an owner to the possession of themselves.
Amidst the mass of materials which accumulated on my hands during the process of learning from all parties their views on this question, I hardly know where to turn, and what to select, that will most briefly and strongly show that the times have outgrown slavery. This is the point at which every fact and argument issue, whatever may be the intention of those who adduce it. The most striking, perhaps, is the treatment of the Abolitionists: a subject to be adverted to hereafter. The insane fury which vents itself upon the few who act upon the principles which the many profess, is a sign of the times not to be mistaken. It is always the precursor of beneficial change. Society in America seems to be already passing out of this stage into one even more advanced. The cause of abolition is spreading so rapidly through the heart of the nation; the sound part of the body politic is embracing it so actively, that no disinterested observer can fail to be persuaded that even the question of time is brought within narrow limits. The elections will, ere long, show the will of the people that slavery be abolished in the District of Columbia. Then such buckling politicians, mercenary traders, cowardly clergy, and profligate newspaper corps, as are new too blind to see the coming change, will have to choose their part; whether to shrink out of sight, or to boast patriotically of the righteous revolution which they have strived to retard, even by the application of the torture to both the bodies and the minds of their more clear-eyed fellow-citizens.
After giving one or two testimonies to the necessity of a speedy change of system, I will confine myself to relating a few signs of the times which I encountered in my travels through the south.
In 1782, Virginia repealed the law against manumission; and in nine years, there were ten thousand slaves freed in that State. Alarmed for the institution, her legislature re-enacted the law. What has been the consequence?--Let us take the testimony of the two leading newspapers of the capital of Virginia, given at a time when the Virginian legislature was debating the subject of slavery; and when there was, for once, an exposure of the truth from those best qualified to reveal it. In 1832, the following remarks appeared in the "Richmond Enquirer."
"It is probable, fromwhat we hear, that the committee on the coloured population will report some plan for getting rid of the free people of colour. But is this all that can be done? Are we for ever to suffer the greatest evil which can scourge our land not only to remain, but to increase in its dimensions? 'We may shut our eyes and avert our faces, if we please,' (writes an eloquent South C:arolinian, on his return from the north a few weeks ago,) 'but there it is, the dark and growing evil, at our doors: and meet the question we must at no distant day. God only knows what it is the part of wise men to do on that momentous and appalling subject. Of this I am very sure, that the difference--nothing short of frightful --between all that exists on one side of the Potomac, and all on the other, is owing to that cause alone.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
What is MATURITY?
Lots of people tend to assume that with age comes maturity...is it true??
Is it the ability to forgive someone's insensitivity as chilidish behaviour??...then I am not mature!
Is it the habit of going to "lecture mode" on all and sundry??...then I am not mature!
Is it the ability to take everything, both good and bad news in your stride? Nope! I cant do that either!
Is it the ability to forgive easily? Nope! I cant do that either
Personally, I think being mature has nothing to do with age! You could be quite old and still not be mature and vice versa. Its about being sensitive to other's feelings, opinions and ideas. It is about using your discretion on saying the right things at the right place at the right time. Its about empathy and respect for everyone irrespective of their gender, position or any such discrimination. Maturity is to respect every individual as an individual and to understand and respect their individuality - SIMPLE!
Is it the ability to forgive someone's insensitivity as chilidish behaviour??...then I am not mature!
Is it the habit of going to "lecture mode" on all and sundry??...then I am not mature!
Is it the ability to take everything, both good and bad news in your stride? Nope! I cant do that either!
Is it the ability to forgive easily? Nope! I cant do that either
Personally, I think being mature has nothing to do with age! You could be quite old and still not be mature and vice versa. Its about being sensitive to other's feelings, opinions and ideas. It is about using your discretion on saying the right things at the right place at the right time. Its about empathy and respect for everyone irrespective of their gender, position or any such discrimination. Maturity is to respect every individual as an individual and to understand and respect their individuality - SIMPLE!
Monday, December 18, 2006
How much is too much??
Have you ever known anyone who is contented with everything and everyone in their lives? We always want more...out of everything and everyone. At every stage in life, I have wanted more or something different after achieving what i wanted. When i was a kid, like everyone else, all I wanted was to be all grown up and become an independant woman...and now its vice versa! :-) What to do, I am human! :-P
I have always thought myself to be a contented person, honestly speaking I am not! And most of the times, I want this and that, and that too...lol...like they say "I want to have the cake and eat it too". I cant imagine how some enlightened souls write off material comforts as an illusion that we mere mortals live in. When i look at lovely clothes, beautiful jewellery, a lovely house, some tasteful furniture, lovely curtains...the list goes on and on...I go berseck! I prefer being a mere mortal in that case..lol...
Our mind or the heart, which ever is applicable, is insatiable and always wants more..be it material things or from people in a relationship. S once told me that "To love someone is to love them as they are and as they are NOT". But are we able to do that? We want to change that person into someone we want them to be!
I am no feminist, and I strongly endorse the fact that certain things are meant to be done by men and some by women, due to physiological reasons but nothing else! But i cant simply stand comments like ( mostly from men!) that "Oh! How gossipy and bitchy women are!" Puuhlllleeeez...I know so many men who are extremely bitchy and forever wanting some juicy gossip. How an individual behaves is dependant on how s/he is reared, not on whether a man or woman...
Three cheers to individualism!!!! :-)
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Why do you want to know??...and smile... :)
This is my defence mechansim ( thanks to my mom!, that's how she handles people!)devised for nosy people when I dont want to answer their personal (read nosy) questions. I agree that people are different, but sadly some of them do not think twice before they ask something. For example, there was this new girl who joined recently at work, and the first question she asks me is "so...did you have an arranged/love marriage"...I answer that...and her next question is "When do you plan to have kids??!!"...I am like ..."what the hell !!??!!"....even my MIL thinks twice before she asks me that! Lots of people, sadly most of them are Indians, do not know when to stop and end up getting snubbed /ignored/ disliked for being so nosy and interfering. When I had just got married, I had one of satya's distant aunt visiting us. We were just moving in, so we were in the process of putting together all our stuff, arranging the bed and things like that....She gives us a lot of gyan about how we should position our bed, in which direction, so on and so forth...S and I were like....uh...excuse me??!! Infact I should plead GUILTY, coz the minute someone says they had a love marraige...the next question I ask, is "tell me your story!" !! I just cant help myself, I find it extremely romantic and exciting to hear love stories.. :D . But of course, I am sure I know that person well enough to ask that. There is this another aspect that lots of people are interested in knowing, is how much you earn? I have met so many people who come up with various methods to extract the information! We used to have a neighbour who would ask my brother "so how much do you earn pa? is it a 5 figure or 6 figure...just tell me that"...lol Just something 'light' I wanted to share :-)
Monday, December 4, 2006
Music - Quintessential element in my life!
There are no words to describe how important music has become.... am listening to a song by A.R.Rahman, from a surya movie...it starts like "munbe vaa en anbe vaa...." its fantabulous...am listening to it over and over...like a mantra!!! Brings back all pleasant memories to your mind. That man is a genius! Right from my teens, music is like my loyal companion who shares my happiness and my agony aunt when I am sad...or upset! If I have some good music for company, i am quite happy to be by myself...no food, no entertainment or anything...i can just carry on. Music has this ability to soothe frayed nerves...and lift your spirits! Especially when you listen to some slow romantic numbers, it brings a smile on your face! :-)
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Gappa Bas....(Shut Up)!!
If you know me personally, you would exactly say 'shut up' to me in whatever language you are familiar with!!! Coz i am someone who talks non-stop....absolutely endless conversations are generally associated with me! ..lol... To keep quiet is to die...in my world! :-)
S has been away on official trips and I am alone at home on weekends...I have so much time with me that i really cant figure out what to do with it! How long can i watch TV or read a book or clean the house?? But I have slowly started enjoying being alone....I dont believe in solitude or any sort of introspection, but i hate to admit that this time alone has done me a lot of good..I feel much calmer and surprisingly positive!
Even if i say so myself, I have evolved as a person..in the sense that I can fairly judge people now, dont voice my opinion on all and sundry unnecessarily and I have begun to accept that life is full of ups and downs and its very important to enjoy both phases with the same intensity and have a sense of balance! Of course....my basic nature cannot change but i can atleast learn to neutralize extreme emotions.
Cheers to me!!!!!!! :-) Narcissist you say??? I care a damn! A friend of mine told me that I appear as such as confident personality that it can be intimidating to a few....so in any case, you think i am arrogant and high-handed...so why make an effort?? :D
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