De l’influence de l’esclavage domestique sur l’indépendance des peuples possesseurs d’esclaves.

CHAP. 16: > On the influence of domestic slavery on the independence of peoples who possess slaves.

The immediate effect of slavery is to place the possessed man in a state of hostility against the one who possesses him; this state results not only from the violence and extortions to which the slave is ceaselessly subjected, it results above all from the desire inherent in each individual to perpetuate his species and to contribute to the well-being of future generations. A man who is considered the property of another, and who has thus fallen to the last degree of degradation to which a being of his species can descend, sees all the miseries of servitude extend over his descendants to the most remote posterity. As long as his race endures, fathers and mothers will be powerless to soften the lot of their children, husbands will be able to do nothing for their wives, wives for their husbands, brothers for their sisters, children for their parents; all the bonds dearest to the human heart will be ceaselessly broken. Men made slaves, therefore, can have no more terrible and more persevering enemies than their masters, and the descendants of their masters.

It follows from this that the same motives that lead an enslaved population to rally to any man who wants to deprive the masters of their power, and subject them to a despotic government, lead them to rally to a foreign power that aspires to subjugate them. Slaves, possessing no property, do not fear pillage; they can, on the contrary, profit from the disorder that follows an invasion, to repossess some small portion of the wealth that their labors have produced; it is even possible that, by rendering services to the victors, they may be rewarded with freedom. In no case do they have to fear seeing their condition worsen; a change of masters following an invasion cannot be considered a greater calamity than a change of masters following an exchange, a sale, or any other commercial transaction.

As soon as possessors of men find themselves in a state of war with a foreign nation, they must therefore guard against two kinds of enemies: first, against those who are already within their own families, and then against those who come to subjugate them. It is rare that these two classes of enemies are not in collusion; those within willingly serve as spies and guides for those without, while awaiting the opportunity to support them more effectively. The masters are therefore obliged to have two armies at the same time: one, which watches the movements of the slaves and which prevents or represses their insurrections; the other, which watches and fights the foreign enemy.

The invasion of a country exploited by slaves is favored not only by the disposition in which the enslaved population finds itself to rally to all the enemies of the masters, it is also favored by the misery that generally weighs upon the country, and by the ease with which a foreign power attracts to its side the great proprietors who are overwhelmed with debt. There is no war among modern peoples that does not draw a nation into great expense, and that does not require the establishment of new taxes; but if the most numerous part of the population is considered property, on whom will the tax burden fall? It cannot be on the slaves, for they possess nothing, their masters leaving them nothing beyond what is strictly necessary for them to subsist. The expenses that war requires must therefore be furnished by taxes levied on the slave-owners; but these taxes can provide only weak means, first, because the number of taxpayers is necessarily very limited, and, second, because slavery is an obstacle to the accumulation of capital in the hands of the masters. Let us add that the state of distress in which most possessors of men usually find themselves disposes a great number of them to become the instruments of any power that is willing to pay them. A State where the laboring population is composed only of slaves is therefore extremely weak, compared to a free nation.

The influence that slavery exercises on the size of the population is also felt on national independence. It is evident, in fact, that when a small population is scattered over a vast territory, it is very difficult to oppose an invasion. Only regular armies can offer resistance, and, to form these armies, entire provinces must be depopulated. This was seen in the war that took place, in the last century, between Russia and Poland; the recruitment of armies had so depleted the northern provinces of men that the girls there could no longer find husbands. According to Rulhière, when a male child was born there, twenty marriageable girls would at once be seen to run and offer to take care of the child, remaining as servants in the house where he was born, for no other wage than the promise of one day marrying them [332]. In regions where, as a consequence of slavery, a small population is spread over an immense territory, the loss of a single battle is enough to deliver the entire country to the discretion of the enemy.

Finally, the effects that slavery produces on the nature of government influence national independence in a no less extensive manner. There exists a relationship so intimate and so manifest between the strength of a nation relative to foreign powers and the nature of its government, that it is not necessary to demonstrate it. If, therefore, it is in the nature of slavery to corrupt the government of the people who admit it, as I believe I have previously demonstrated, it is clear that, in this respect, the enslavement of a part of the population is a cause of weakness.

Slaves are not equally miserable in all circumstances; several may even find themselves treated gently enough to become attached to their possessors. The dangers that servitude gives rise to for the independence of the masters are therefore not always the same, and it has sometimes happened that slaves have been armed to defend it. But these are exceptions that rarely present themselves, and on which it is not safe to count; the Romans, from the very beginning of their republic, and at a time when servitude had not yet acquired the character of harshness that it later had, saw their slaves rally to the armies that were besieging their city [333]. From the fear of seeing their slaves revolt was born the policy of always carrying the war into the enemy's territory. This policy long averted the danger; but, when the legions were powerless to defend the barriers of the empire, the desertion of the slaves accelerated its fall. When Alaric and Rhadagaisus swept through Italy, their army swelled with the entire crowd that still spoke the Teutonic language, and with every slave who could call himself a Goth or a German [334]. Rome, before having subjugated all the nations that had already made some progress in civilization, could subsist its armies on the territory of its enemies; but, when all the industrious nations had been subjugated, the empire found itself incapable of bearing the costs of war: the slaves possessed nothing, and most of the masters were ruined.

The great men of Rome, as their armies invaded the territory of other nations, made the free men disappear from it; they distributed them as slaves in countries that were foreign to them. They divided the soil among themselves to make vast domains, or leased it from the republic, and had it exploited by other men brought in as slaves. The Goth or German prisoners were dispersed in the countryside of Italy, the Gaulish prisoners were transported to the coasts of Africa or Asia Minor. When the barbarian peoples descended upon the empire from all sides, they therefore found only half-deserted regions, populated by men for whom the invasion was a benefit rather than a calamity. History does not tell us what became, as the conquerors advanced into the country, of the families of the possessors of men, who found themselves placed in the midst of their slaves; but we can form an idea of it from what happened in the last century to Poland, in the war that led to its partition.

Before Poland was partitioned, its extreme weakness, a necessary result of the slavery of the most numerous part of the population, had struck people's minds.

"The weakest of its enemies," said a historian, "can with impunity, and without precaution, enter its territory, levy contributions there, destroy its cities, ravage its countryside, massacre its inhabitants or carry them off. Without troops, without fortresses, without artillery, without munitions, without money, without generals, without knowledge of military principles, what resistance could it think of opposing? With a sufficient population, enough genius and resources to play a role, Poland has become the disgrace and the plaything of nations [335]."

As soon as the Russian government had formed the design of subjugating the Polish nobles, it began by inciting uprisings among the slaves. Seditious writings were distributed among the peasants, or posted on church doors; at the same time, secret emissaries were sent into the countryside to incite insurrections. A troop of Zaporozhian savages followed the Russian missionaries and supplied arms to the insurgents. The latter, says Rulhière, led them from house to house. All who were not of the Greek religion—old men, women, children, noblemen, servants, monks, artisans, Jews, and Lutherans—all were massacred. All the nobility scattered in their houses in Ukraine were slaughtered there [336].

In the provinces where the slaves had not yet been roused to insurrection, the possessors dared not abandon their lands, for fear that their departure would be the signal for the uprising; but, at the same time, they were seized with terror at seeing themselves and their families in the midst of an enemy population, which was waiting only for a sign to massacre them. The Russian troops roamed the country without fear and without danger, convinced that they needed only a signal to find auxiliaries in the peasants. If the Polish nobles dared to complain, the Russian ambassador gave them to understand that he would raise the slaves, and by this single word he commanded their silence. Indeed, says the historian I have just cited, emissaries were sent throughout Poland to raise the peasants: all was fury, desolation, despair [337]. However, the nobility had no troops to defend itself; for to have them, it would have been necessary to arm slaves, and the slaves were enemies [338].

In the wars that the Russian government has had to sustain, no power has been found to call its peasants to independence; but, if one judges what the masters must fear from their slaves by what happened among them at the beginning of the seventeenth century, they are no more secure than the Poles were when their country was subjugated. One saw then, in fact, a fugitive slave call his companions in servitude to independence, place himself at their head, give the cities over to pillage, and seize the daughters and wives of the masters.

"Their example," says a historian, "spread the spirit of anarchy far and wide. The peasants believed that the time had come to re-establish equality and to exterminate the nobility. The blood of the nobles flowed in torrents, and their torn limbs, exposed to the view of the people, were so many signals calling them to liberty. The forces that were gathered against them were easily dissipated. Woe to the nobles who were delivered to them by traitors, or whom the fortunes of war caused to fall into their hands. They devised new tortures to kill them [339]."

However, slavery exposes the Russians less to being subjugated by a foreign nation than it exposed the Poles. There are several reasons for this difference, but one of the main ones is in the nature of the government. When Russian slaves enter the army, their masters no longer have any power over them, at least not as masters. They then depend only on the government or the officers it gives them, and their lot is little different from the soldiers of other nations; the recruitment of armies is therefore easier and less dangerous. On the other hand, the nobles being themselves the slaves of the government, can exercise a less despotic power over the peasants. The infringements on the liberty of the masters weaken, in this case as in all others, the dangers attached to the enslavement of the laboring classes. Rulhière observes that the slaves of Russia constitute the strength of its armies [340]. The reason is simple: it is that an enlisted peasant is a kind of freedman.

The influence of slavery on the independence of the American islands is so manifest that the idea of the masters' existence is inseparable from the idea of their subjugation to peoples or governments that exist in other climates. The possessors of men in the English, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies need, to maintain their empire over their slaves, to be ceaselessly under the protection of foreign armies. They can pass alternately under the domination of all the powers to which the chance of war momentarily gives the empire of the seas; but they are not permitted to hope to be masters of their own destinies, as long as they reign over a slave population; their subjugation is an inseparable condition of their domination. The foreign domination that weighs on the colonists is not that which a regular government exercises over its subjects; it is that which a master exercises over his properties. There is no analogy between the power to which a colonist of Martinique is subject, and the power to which an inhabitant of France is subject. The latter finds guarantees in the courts, in the chambers, in open debate and in the public opinion that is its consequence; the former can find them only in his intrigues, in his obedience, and at the mercy of power. If the inhabitants of the colonies inspire any sympathy in the mother countries, this sympathy exists only for the part of the population that is oppressed, for the slaves and for the men of color. A multitude of societies have been formed in all the cities of England to come to the aid of the slaves; the most commendable men of all ranks have joined these societies; the writers or orators known for the independence of their character have defended and propagated their principles; but who has ever thought of associating to protect the colonists, or to put an end to their distress?

The inhabitants of Haiti, the greatest number of whom were slaves not long ago, have in fact enjoyed their independence for nearly thirty years; they have maintained it against one of the first powers of Europe for the same space of time, and they have ended by having it recognized by all nations. What is the island exploited by slaves and possessed by masters that could hope to do the same? The population of Jamaica is almost equal to that of Haiti; and yet what resistance would it oppose to an invasion, if the free population of England withdrew its protection? The island of Cuba also contains a great number of inhabitants; but if the masters there were left to their own devices, they would be incapable of opposing any resistance to a power that united with their slaves. The dependence in which the masters find themselves with respect to any foreign power is such that the possessors of the French colonies tremble to see the Haitian flag appear on their coasts, although they are protected by all the power of the French government, and they are at war with no one, if not with their slaves.The peoples of the American islands or continent who use slaves for all their labor are so weak, when considered as a national body, that a few fugitive slaves are enough to compromise their very existence. When the island of Haiti was occupied by French colonists, a few slaves who had taken refuge in the mountains soon multiplied to the point that they could offer a safe haven to anyone who wished to join them, and they made the entire colony tremble. It is there, says Raynal, that, thanks to the cruelty of civilized nations, they become free and ferocious like tigers, waiting perhaps for a chief and a conqueror to restore the violated rights of humanity [341]. The Dutch colony of Surinam likewise saw its existence compromised by slaves who had taken refuge in the forests. The wars that took place between the independent negroes and their former owners became so dangerous for the latter that they were obliged to suspend their land clearing. They would have been defeated and exterminated had they not been rescued by the mother country and by European officers and soldiers; and they ended up treating with the fugitive slaves as equal powers [342].

The slave-owners of the American islands and continent can flatter themselves that they will have few dangers to face, so long as the peoples of Europe and their governments believe it is in their interest to maintain the domination they exercise over them. But this belief, which no longer exists among the most enlightened part of the nations, may not last long in the minds of governments; everyone is already convinced that colonies are very expensive and bring very little return to the peoples whose governments permit themselves this kind of luxury. What would happen, however, if England, France, and the Netherlands suddenly abolished, as useless burdens on their subjects, the monopolies granted to the colonists and the enormous expenses their security requires? What would happen if they were left to protect and govern themselves? Would they place themselves under the protection of other powers? They might try, but they would have difficulty finding any; the Russians and the Turks are not as subtle as we are; if they make the subjects they oppress pay, they would, with all the more reason, make those to whom they granted expensive protection pay [343].

It would not be impossible, moreover, that in a war between two continental powers, one of them might seek to incite the other's slaves to revolt.

"Our West Indian colonies," says an English writer, "do not possess the resources that we have in the East Indies. They have all protested against any intention of entrusting their defense to natives of the country; they want, whatever the cost in men and money, to be guarded only by European soldiers. The slaves, outnumbering the free men by at least twenty to one, are the principal cause of their fears, and it is against them that they must multiply their precautions. Had they had the wisdom to attach the blacks and men of color to their cause, they could have confided in them in the moment of danger; but from what perspective can one now view these colonies, if not as a mass of combustible materials waiting only for a spark to ignite and produce the most terrible of explosions? To speak of the security of possessions where nineteen-twentieths of the population are bent under the yoke of the most degrading servitude is true madness, especially when one considers that Haiti looms over them with the force and vigor of a liberty newly won by blood and vengeance, and that South America has proclaimed the freedom of all its slaves... Let us not forget, moreover, that we have no guarantee against another war with America. We have shown her the vulnerable point of our colonies; in the last war, we called upon her slaves to place themselves under our banners, to take up arms against their masters, and to win their freedom. Suppose that in another war with that power, an army of American negroes were to land in Jamaica, with the design of freeing their brethren. What could the whites oppose against such a force? We could send regiment after regiment from Europe to their aid; the climate would mow them down as they arrived. Let us recall what a handful of maroons was capable of executing, twenty-seven years ago, against the entire forces of Jamaica. It took only two hundred combatants to hold all those forces in check for eight or nine months, and they laid down their arms only on the promise of an amnesty. If, instead of having only two hundred men, they had had five thousand or even just two thousand, the island would have been lost to England forever [344]."

The Anglo-Americans of the South are less threatened in their independence by the slavery established among them than are the planters of the islands. Men of the master class are more numerous there than they are in the colonies, and their union with the States that no longer have slaves is a guarantee for them. There is no doubt, however, that their independence is already affected by the existence of a multitude of slaves in their midst. If a power with which they were at war were to form a few regiments of blacks or men of color, speaking the same language as those they hold in bondage, and if it were to land them on their territory, they might well see a repeat of the spectacle that Poland presented at the time of the Russian invasion. The care the Anglo-Americans take to keep their slaves in a state of brutish ignorance, by forbidding themselves, under severe penalties, from teaching them to read, would make incitement to revolt a little more difficult; but the insurrections would only be all the more terrible, for the most brutish slaves are always the most ferocious [345].

As long as the principal islands of America are exploited by slaves, the dangers that slavery presents to the independence of the Anglo-Americans of the South will be less great, because the white owners will scruple to employ means that would compromise their own existence; but this state will not be eternal; already, one of the largest and most fertile islands is possessed only by free negroes or men of color; the English, who possess the most considerable islands, are moving toward the abolition of slavery with that constancy and energy that are in their character; they will achieve their goal just as they did when they willed the abolition of the slave trade. They began by forbidding, in their own colonies, the introduction and trade of new slaves; then, they made other nations submit to the law they had imposed upon themselves; now, they are taking a few more steps; they are marching toward the abolition of servitude. I will not examine whether they will stop there, or whether they will demand that others follow their example; if they ever did demand it, I do not know where they might meet resistance. I only wish to observe that the emancipation of the slaves in the English colonies will place the Anglo-Americans of the South in the most critical position, unless they hasten to follow the example given to them. The time when the English will have reached the goal toward which they are striving in concert with their government may be distant relative to the life of a man, but it is very near relative to the existence of a nation [346].

The existence of slavery threatens the independence of the Anglo-Americans of the South in another way. We have seen, when I explained the effects of slavery on the growth of wealth and of the various classes of the population, that in countries where all labor is performed by enslaved men, wealth increases only extremely slowly, and the population multiplies more slowly; often, population and wealth even decrease simultaneously. In the States of the Union where all labor is performed by free hands, wealth and men, on the contrary, multiply with unprecedented rapidity; not only does the number of individuals increase rapidly in each State, but the number of free States tends to multiply. It will necessarily follow from this that the more the Anglo-Americans of the North prosper, the more the Southern States will lose their importance; their influence will decrease in proportion to the growth of the population, wealth, and enlightenment of the other States.

Doubtless, one fraction of a population can grow in number, wealth, and enlightenment without the other fractions suffering for it; it even often happens that this growth is a benefit to them; but this only occurs when there is an identity of sentiments, opinions, and interests: now, this identity cannot exist between a population composed of industrious and free men, and a population composed of slave-owners. The former attach honor to activity, to labor, to economy, to good morals; they attach contempt to laziness, to incapacity, to dissipation. The latter attach honor to idleness, to ostentation, to the number of men they possess; they attach contempt to labor, to industry. How could such men strive toward the same goal? How could they have any esteem for one another [347]?

The interests, as they are conceived on both sides, are no less opposed than the opinions, sentiments, and habits. The masters see their interest in maintaining their domination over their slaves in its full extent. They consider any guarantee granted to the men they possess as an attack on their property. In their eyes, their security depends on the brutish ignorance of the enslaved population; what matters to them is not that their slaves be active, laborious, and intelligent, but that they be submissive, and that the idea of a better future never enter their minds. For the masters, it is not a matter of increasing agricultural products or multiplying land clearing; it is a matter of conserving existing possessions. Slave-owners are like despots; when they are not regressing, they at least want to remain stationary.

Men who are neither masters nor slaves, and who practice some branch of industry, are interested, on the contrary, in seeing a homogeneous population in all the States of the Union. Their security will be all the greater, the better each State is able to provide for its own defense. They will be all the richer as the products of their soil and industry find a greater number of consumers in the Southern States, and as they are able to buy the products of those latter States more cheaply. For industrious and commercial peoples, there are no worse business partners than nations where the population is divided into masters and slaves; the ones can buy nothing, and the others pay poorly. The industrious peoples of the free States have an interest in seeing all the other States advance in step with them; it matters little to them whether those with whom they will have commercial relations have always been masters or were formerly freedmen. However powerful the prejudice of the Northern Americans against blacks and men of color may be, there is an even greater power among them: the love of gain. The American most vain and proud of the color and nobility of his skin will always prefer a slightly dark-skinned man with whom he can do good business, to a white man who will be of no use to him, and who will not pay his debts.

There are men who have predicted a separation between the States where one part of the population is considered the property of the other, and the States where slavery is abolished. If this separation were ever to occur, it would not be the Southern States that had provoked it; left to themselves, they would be so weak that, if they kept slavery, they could be invaded as easily as Poland was in the last century. For a separation to take place, the free States would have to reject the alliance of the slave-owners as a burden and a cause of corruption among them. But even in that case, the States exploited by slaves would not be independent; they would obey whatever influence other nations pleased to exercise: there is not a single power that could not say to them, like the Russian ambassador to the Polish nobles: If you stir, I will incite your slaves to revolt!

Two important truths result from the facts set forth in this chapter: the first is that all men who reduce others to servitude, or who become slave-owners, place themselves, by that very fact, between two enemies; they expose themselves to being massacred by the men they possess, or to being enslaved by foreigners; the second is that, whenever a true coalition is formed between the internal and external enemies, the masters have no means of resistance.