De l’influence de l’esclavage domestique sur les mœurs des maîtres et des esclaves dans les colonies

CHAP. 8: > On the influence of domestic slavery on the morals of masters and slaves in the English colonies.

The English, who have purer morals and more extensive enlightenment than the Dutch, show themselves to be no better than them in the colonies where they possess slaves. The masters there are given over to the same idleness, the same pride, and the same cruelty [140].

In Jamaica, the English planters have the same morals as the Dutch colonists of the Cape of Good Hope: their life is spent in idleness, gluttony, and debauchery. They rise late, breakfast, smoke, take a siesta, dine, drink punch, and go to bed. Their pleasures are the same as those of the Dutch; but, as they are richer, they can give greater scope to their debauchery [141].

The English women, given over to idleness and devoured by jealousy, are of a cruelty that surpasses that of the men. They have for rivals the women of color, and particularly the mulatto women, whom the masters prefer to all others, and whom they employ in the service of their house, in order to have them continually before their eyes [142]. The white women, unable to take revenge on their husbands, take revenge on their slaves [143].

"A lady," says Moreton, "who suspected one of her slaves of being pregnant by her husband, had her tied to a ladder, and herself applied a hot iron to her belly, to kill the fruit of her suspicions [144]."

The English planters have the same tastes for women of color as the Dutch; but, as they are richer, they can satisfy their passions with greater ease, and they have a greater number of rivals to offer to the jealousy of their mistresses [145].

The slave population is not sustained in the English colonies through reproduction; it is, on the contrary, in a state of continual decline. To maintain it at the same level, a number of slaves at least equal to one-twentieth of the total population must be imported annually [146].

The planters calculate that it is more advantageous for them to wear out their slaves quickly, and to buy new ones, than to treat them with enough care for them to be able to reproduce. They expect to lose, in the first few years, from one-third to one-half of the negroes they buy; this is what they call seasoning them. This loss is factored into the calculation of the price they can pay for their human cargo [147].

The slave population is therefore not self-sustaining; it is continually devoured and renewed, like the population of animals that we destine for our food [148].

The laws are made to protect the masters, and not to protect the slaves.

"The testimony of a slave," says a writer, "cannot be received in court to assert any right, nor to attest to any fact against a white man [149]."

"If a man willfully kills his slave, he shall pay to the public treasury a fine of fifteen pounds sterling [150]."

"If a negro strikes or insults a Christian, he shall, for the first time, be publicly whipped by order of the justice of the peace; for the second time, he shall be whipped, have his nose split, and be marked on the forehead with a hot iron. If he is audacious enough to strike a Christian a third time, he shall suffer death, without the clergy being able to oppose it. If the Christian has been grievously wounded or disfigured, or if blood has been shed, the negro shall have his right hand cut off, in addition to the other penalties [151]."

It follows from the preceding that the morals of the English colonists are even more depraved than those of the Dutch. The reason for this is simple: being richer, they have more means to satisfy their idleness, their sensuality, and their cruelty. The vices of the masters are always in proportion to their power and their wealth, that is to say, to the means they have to satisfy their passions [152].The English colonies, in the islands or on the American continent, can be divided into two classes according to the fertility of their soil. Some are not fertile enough for sugar to be cultivated profitably; they produce commodities that are largely dedicated to the immediate consumption of the inhabitants. The principal production of the others, by contrast, consists of sugar, and this commodity is exported, either to the mother country or to other countries. The treatment of slaves is harsh in all of them, but it is infinitely harsher in the latter than in the former. In the less fertile colonies, slaves are better fed, less overwhelmed with work, and punished less than in the sugar colonies. The reasons for this difference are the same as those I observed in the previous chapter when speaking of the Cape of Good Hope and Surinam [140].

A great number of the proprietors of the English colonies, particularly those whose lands are rich enough to produce sugar or other commodities suitable for export, usually reside in England with their families and have their plantations managed by agents. Having no direct contact with their slaves, demanding nothing from them personally, and not inflicting any specific punishment upon them, they cannot adopt the morals that characterize masters. Their wives and children are even more sheltered from the influence of slavery than they are, for they are ignorant or only imperfectly aware of the sources of the income on which they live. The status of being slave-owners must therefore have a weaker influence on their ideas and social habits. The main influence it has on them is to warp their judgment on moral principles, to make them more dependent on their government than other Englishmen, and consequently to dispose them to support all its measures [141].

But although the intellectual and moral faculties of the masters living in England are less affected by the existence of slavery in the colonies than those of masters living among their slaves; and although they may not feel that appetite for all physical enjoyments that we observed among the colonists of the Cape of Good Hope and Surinam, they are scarcely less interested in demanding as much labor as possible from their slaves, and in leaving them only what is strictly necessary to live.

A planter who lives on his plantation has an interest in growing, at least for his own consumption and that of his family, various kinds of plants that can never be brought from afar. He is equally interested in raising some species of animals, and it is difficult for him to calculate his production of this kind so precisely that absolutely nothing is left over for a certain number of his slaves after his family's needs have been met. If the soil he cultivates is not rich enough to produce commodities suitable for distant export, his revenues must be consumed in kind on the spot; and, as the price cannot be very high, his slaves profit from it. But a planter living in England can only draw his income from commodities that are sold, and nothing is sold except what is exported. Any product consumed on site, if not strictly necessary for the life of his slaves, not only has no value for him, but causes him a loss, for this product can only grow insofar as time and land are devoted to it. On the other hand, since English planters live in a country of immense fortunes, where wealth is indispensable for social standing, they are driven by vanity to extract as much produce as possible from their plantations for England. Finally, the agents entrusted with exploiting the lands and the men who cultivate them are not restrained in the exercise of their power by the fear of destroying their property; avarice cannot serve as a check on any of their other passions. These various circumstances, while having little influence on the morals of the planters' families, have, as we shall soon see, a great influence on the fate of the slaves.

It is impossible for the agents employed by the planters to indulge in that idleness of mind and body we observed among the slave-owners of the Dutch colonies; but their activity is exercised only upon human beings. They act upon things only through the intermediary of slaves; they consider the action of man upon things to be beneath them [142]. It is equally impossible for them to indulge in the same luxury, since they do not have the same wealth. The physical enjoyments they are permitted to procure for themselves can only be in proportion to the wages they receive and the wealth they find a way to withhold from their masters. In general, these men do not marry, either because a planter would not want to employ agents burdened with a family, or because women born and raised in free countries would be unable to accustom themselves to the coarse vices and violence they would be forced to witness constantly [143]. In speaking of the richest English colonies, and particularly of Jamaica, we therefore have little need to concern ourselves with the morals of the legitimate wives and children of the master class, their number being very limited [144].

All men to whom any power is delegated in the English colonies dispose of all female slaves with the same arbitrary power we found in the other colonies. In the island of Jamaica, all white men, without distinction of rank, openly abandon themselves to the grossest licentiousness. Every unmarried man keeps a black or mulatto concubine in his home, and this does not prevent his female relatives or acquaintances from visiting him, sitting at his table, and playing with his children. A man, even when married, can live publicly with a black or colored woman without being any less respected, especially if he has personal importance and enjoys some influence in the colony. A man courting a free woman he intends to marry does not believe it necessary to renounce the concubine he keeps publicly, and the future wife is not demanding enough to ask him to make that sacrifice. The clergy themselves often live with black or mulatto concubines without renouncing their functions; the reason they give is that they are no worse than their neighbors, and that they should be allowed to live as everyone else lives [145]. Finally, such licentiousness reigns in the union of the sexes, and women are treated with such contempt, that a man visiting a friend feels no scruple, when bedtime arrives, in openly asking for one of the household's female slaves to be sent to him [146].

But, although one cannot expect much restraint from women whom everything tends to degrade and corrupt, it is not always without violence that masters succeed in obtaining possession of them. A man, though a slave, sometimes remains the guardian and overseer of his daughter, and the daughter obeys her father's orders until her master, or the one to whom he has delegated his power, gives her contrary orders. The wife likewise remains under the protection of the man she has chosen for a husband, and recognizes his authority until a superior force separates her from him. If, therefore, a master or one of his delegates wishes to abuse a young girl protected by her father, or a woman defended by her husband, a conflict arises between the master's power and the paternal or marital authority; and this conflict always ends with the punishment of the father or husband, and with the rape of the daughter or wife. Resistance, in such a case, would be futile, since public force would join with the force of the master and his satellites, and since the colonial magistrates, by the very fact that they make the power of slave-owners over their slaves irresistible, are the necessary protectors of rape and adultery. A husband whose wife has been taken by a master, and who has been severely punished for refusing to give her up voluntarily, can complain to the magistrate; but he should consider himself very fortunate if his complaint is not followed by a new punishment [147].

The slaves must be at their work at sunrise, that is, at five in the morning, and they cannot leave it until nightfall. They rest only for the time of their breakfast and dinner; they are granted half an hour for the first meal and two hours for the second, so that the working time is about twelve hours a day [148]. But when the harvest season arrives, the work must intensify. A slave is then obliged to work for three nights a week, without this extra burden in any way diminishing his daytime occupations: women, children, the elderly, everyone is subject to the same condition [149]. Upon returning in the evening to their huts, which are usually formed of a few tree trunks through which the wind and rain have free passage, the slaves find nothing prepared. They must procure for themselves the wood they need, light their fire, and prepare their food as they see fit. They are also obliged to take from the night the time they need to make their clothes, or to wash the little they have to cover themselves with [150].

In the colonies where slaves do not draw their provisions from land they cultivate for their own account, the masters grant them, per week, about one hundred and twenty-six ounces of wheat and five herrings. Each thus has to consume per day five-sevenths of a herring and eighteen ounces of wheat, whenever the avarice of the masters or their agents does not subtract anything from this legal ration [151]. In the colonies where slaves cultivate their own provisions, they have only Sunday to devote to this cultivation. They must even take from this day the time necessary to go to the market, sometimes located at a distance of ten or twelve miles, and to carry out all the other labors required for the care of their families [152]. They are also obliged to make their clothing from a little coarse cloth that the masters grant them. As for their bed, it is not judged that they need anything other than the earth and sometimes a few leaves [153].

If the slaves are so poorly fed, so poorly clothed, and so poorly housed, what then can stimulate them to the excessive labor demanded of them? The continual punishments inflicted upon them. Slaves of both sexes are led in gangs to the fields by men whose vigorous arms are armed with a long and heavy whip. So that they may better feel this emblem of the masters' authority, as they call it, their shoulders are kept bare during work [154]. A driver is assigned to every dozen slaves, so that when the gang is somewhat large, the cracking of whips resounds incessantly in their ears [155]. Each blow from this instrument tears the skin, and the drivers make such frequent use of it that men who have observed the greatest number of slaves have not met a single one whose body did not bear marks of violence [156]. The children, as soon as they are capable of any work, are led to the fields in gangs and treated with the same violence as their fathers and mothers [157].

The slightest faults, the least slackening in their work, are punished with violent blows. The slaves are not even permitted to break the silence; if a conversation starts among them and does not cease at the first command, the driver administers a volley of blows to the entire gang, beginning with the first and ending with the last [158]. It is not enough for slaves to be severely punished for the slightest faults; they must, moreover, show themselves to be insensitive to the punishments inflicted on the people dearest to them. Women who do not have the strength to hold back their tears and stifle their sobs at the sound of the whip blows tearing the muscles of their brothers, husbands, or children, would themselves be subjected to the same torture. A woman who, in such a circumstance, dared to say a word to implore her master's pity, even if she were pregnant, would risk being stretched out naked, face down, with her limbs tied to four stakes, and then being torn by whip blows to the point of breathing her last. If the executioner, moved by pity or weakened by fatigue, were to lessen the force of his blows, his master, armed with a heavy club and positioned behind him, would soon find a way to reawaken his energy [159].

The colonial regulations do not permit masters to kill their slaves; on the contrary, they forbid it. A master who was guilty of such a crime would, in some islands, risk being prosecuted and condemned to a fine of ten pounds. If the person killed was not among those considered his property, he could furthermore be condemned to pay their value to the one reputed to be their owner [160]. But these regulations are scarcely executed, and masters can kill the men or women they possess for nothing. The courts of justice admit only the testimony of persons of the master race, and besides the fact that these persons always make common cause against the slaves, nothing is easier for a master than to lead his victim to a place where there are no witnesses [161].

Masters do not generally admit that a legal or religious marriage can exist between two persons possessed by a third as property. The exceptions in this regard are so few that they are scarcely worth counting [162]. If, therefore, a male and female slave unite, under whatever conditions, there is no authority on earth that can guarantee them the execution of their mutual promises. The husband would appeal in vain to the master or the overseer to complain of his wife's infidelity or abandonment; the wife would complain no less vainly of her husband. The complaints of either would be heard only to the extent that they served the interest or passions of their common possessor. The male and female slave, in a word, owing everything to their master, can, by that very fact, owe nothing to each other. Children find themselves placed, relative to their parents, in the same position as the husband and wife are to each other. The reason is the same: the masters do not recognize an authority or duties that would place limits on their power.

However, although there exists for the enslaved population no authority intended to enforce the bonds of conjugal association or kinship; although an invincible force, on the contrary, tends ceaselessly to loosen or dissolve these bonds, the slaves form families and remain united until violence separates them. The man and woman who have freely associated form a hut and live there together. It is together that they care for their children and devote to them the time they are permitted to have. The father and mother are not ignorant that their descendants, being born slaves like them, will be able neither to relieve them in their labors nor to help them in their old age, and that they will belong entirely to their masters. Nevertheless, they have for them the same tenderness, and make for them the same sacrifices, as if they could expect from them the most effective help and the most attentive care. The mother, called by her son's cries, suspends her work in the fields and runs to offer him her breast, with the certainty that, if she is caught, she will be torn by the whip of a merciless master [163]. In the islands where the enslaved population can have a little time for itself, a father and mother submit to the most fatiguing labors and impose upon themselves the harshest privations in the hope of making some savings. If, having reached the end of their working lives, they manage to amass a small treasure, they go to offer it to their master, not to buy their own freedom, but to purchase the freedom of one of their children [164].Slaveholders cannot completely prevent the formation of families, as it is a necessary condition for the reproduction of their property; but when their interests or convenience demand it, they feel no scruple in selling family members to different buyers. They separate them so that, no matter how attached they are, they cannot even hope to see one another again. Thus, a husband sees his wife sold, or a wife her husband, to go cultivate another plantation or live on another island, while the one who is not sold remains in the same dwelling; a mother and father sometimes see each of their children sold in succession, and lose even the hope of knowing what has become of them. If, in these moments of eternal separation, a mother gives way to her despair, if she lets out cries or groans, the fearsome whip of the overseer, by tearing her muscles, teaches her to suppress tears or cries that show she has defied the authority of her master [165].

Enslaved men and women endure the excessive labors to which they are subjected; they endure the deprivation of food and clothing; they endure injury, contempt, and punishments; but rarely can they survive the separations to which cupidity condemns them. Men who have thus lost their wives or children often give up on life and seek to destroy themselves, though without arousing the suspicions of their masters. The most common method they employ is to eat substances that impair their constitution and lead them imperceptibly to the grave; they hope that after leaving this life, they will be reunited with the objects of their affection in their native land. Tyrants have used this belief to prolong their tyranny: they have persuaded the enslaved population that any individual who was beheaded was deprived of the happiness of seeing his native land again. Whenever the colonists perceived that the despair of some of their slaves was driving them toward self-destruction, they had them decapitated and planted their heads before their companions in servitude. Thus, death ceased to be a refuge from the most intolerable evils, and masters found, even in religious beliefs, auxiliaries for their vices and crimes [166].

This sketch of the morals of the inhabitants of the English colonies is far from complete; but they will be better known once I have explained the other effects that slavery produces on the various classes of the population [167].