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Yet the submission of the small to the great planter was a convenience rather than a necessity. The wilderness, with the Indian as a part of it, developed a crude and a ruthless spirit, but never a cringing or a submissive one.
I frequently asked the question, "Do you think a jury of your people would be apt to find a planter who has whipped one of his negro laborers guilty of assault and battery?" The answer almost invariably was, "You must make some allowance for the prejudices of our people."
Dyck's life in Jamaica was clean; and his progress as a planter had been free from black spots. He even kept no mistress, and none had ever known him to have to do with women, black, brown, or white.
Some Act to meet this kind of case is then clearly required an Act similar to our Mysore Coffee-stealing Prevention Act, which provides that any person not a planter is liable to be called upon to account for coffee in his possession.
The operation of the laws of trade, as touching this monopoly, is beautifully simple. Already the indications are sufficient to tell us, that, under the sure, but silent working of those laws, the very profits of the Southern planter foreshadow the destruction of his monopoly. His dynasty rests upon the theory, that his negro is the only practical agency for the production of his staple.
His manner was as courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he made no direct appeal to her approval or even esteem. Once settled at the plantation he seemed to like to sit upon the wide portico in the shade of one of the big Corinthian pillars, smoking his cigar lazily and listening attentively to Gaston's experience as a sugar planter.
This was not satisfactory from the planter's standpoint because the Negro had not yet developed stability as a laborer; from the Negro's standpoint because while the planter might advance rations, he frequently postponed the payment of wages and sometimes did not pay at all.
The planter, therefore, must feel it his interest to desist from purchasing, if possible. But again, the greatest mortality was among the newly imported slaves. The diseases they contracted on the passage, and their deaths in the seasoning, all made for the same doctrine.
I arose, put on my clothes and walked out to survey the possessions of this wealthy old planter, to whose hospitality I had been indebted for my life. The plantation, or rather villa, called St. CLAIRE, is owned by one family, consisting of about thirty members including the heads, whom I have already described, with their children, grand-children, and an elderly sister who resides with them.
Wherever on the islands I found a planter living on his own plantation, managing it himself, and out of debt, I found him making money, even with low prices for his sugar, and even if the plantation itself was not favorably placed; not only this, but I found plantations yielding steady and sufficient profits, under judicious management, which in previous hands became bankrupt.
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