Thoughts on the Necessity of Improving the Condition of the Slaves in the British Colonies - With a View to Their Ultimate Emancipation; and on the Practicability, the Safety, and the Advantages of the Latter Measure. by Thomas Clarkson
page 75 of 92 (81%)
page 75 of 92 (81%)
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first place, they never have a driver with them on any of these
occasions; and, in the second place, _having all their earnings to themselves_, they have that stimulus within them to excite industry, which is only known _to free men_. What is it, I ask, which gives birth to industry in any part of the world, seeing that labour is not agreeable to man, but the stimulus arising from the hope of gain? What makes an English labourer do more work in the day than a slave, but the stimulus arising from the knowledge, that what he earns is _for himself and not for another_? What, again, makes an English labourer do much more work _by the piece_ than by _the day_, but the stimulus arising from the knowledge that he may gain more by the former than by the latter mode of work? Just so is the West Indian slave situated, when _he is working for himself_, that is, when he knows _that what he earns is for his own use_. He has then all the stimulus of a free man, and he is, therefore, _during such work_ (though unhappily no longer) really, and in effect, and to all intents and purposes, as much _a free labourer_ as any person in any part of the globe. But if he be a free man, while he is working for himself, and if in that capacity he does twice or thrice more work than when he works for his master, it follows, that it would be cheaper for his master to employ him as a free labourer, or that the labour of free men in the West Indies would be cheaper than the labour of slaves. That West Indian slaves, when they work for themselves, do much more in a given time than when they work for their masters, is a fact so notorious in the West Indies, that no one who has been there would deny it. Look at Long's History of Jamaica, The Privy Council Report, Gaisford's Essay on the good Effects of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and other books. Let us hear also what Dr. Dickson, the editor of Mr. Steele, and who resided so many years in Barbadoes, says on this |
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