By these means following as near as possible the East Indian
mode, and consolidating the distilleries, I do suppose our sugar-islands
might be better worked than they now are by _two-thirds_ or indeed
_one-half_ of the present force. Let it be considered how much labour is
lost by the persons _overseeing the forced labourer_, which is saved
when he works _for his own profit_. I have stated with the strictest
veracity a plain matter of fact, that sugar estates can _be worked
cheaper by free men than by slaves_[16]."
I shall now show, that the old maxim, which has been mentioned, is true,
when applied to the case of our West Indian islands, by establishing a
fact of a very different kind, viz. that the slaves in the West Indies
do much more work in a given time when _they work for themselves_, than
when _they work for their masters_. But how, it will be said, do you
prove, by establishing this fact, that it would be cheaper for our
planters to employ free men than slaves? I answer thus: I maintain that,
_while the slaves are working for themselves_, they are to be
considered, indeed that they are, _bona fide, free labourers_. In the
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_.
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