And
when the wages were fixed fairly, they almost invariably sought to
indemnify themselves for their enforced justice by the insulting
license of their tongues, addressed to males and females alike. The
influence of such men on local legislation, in which they [253] had a
preponderating share, either as actual proprietors or as the
attorneys of absentees, was not in the direction of refinement or
liberality. Indeed, the kind of laws which they enacted, especially
during the apprenticeship (1834-8), is thus summarized by one, and
him an English officer, who was a visitor in those agitated days of
the Colonies:--
"It is demonstrated that the laws which were to come into operation
immediately on expiration of the apprenticeship are of the most
objectionable character, and fully established the fact not only of a
future intention to infringe the rights of the emancipated classes,
but of the actual commencement and extensive progress of a Colonial
system for that purpose. The object of the laws is to circumscribe
the market for free labour--to prohibit the possession or sale of
ordinary articles of produce on sale, the obvious intention of which
is to confine the emancipated classes to a course of agricultural
servitude--to give the employers a monopoly of labour, and to keep
down a free competition for wages--to create new and various modes of
apprenticeship for the purpose of prolonging predial service,
together with many evils of the [254] late system--to introduce
unnecessary restraint and coercion, the design of which is to create
a perpetual surveillance over the liberated negroes, and to establish
a legislative despotism.
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