Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  Eustatia is but one mountain of about twenty miles in compass; it is amongst the Leeward islands; but though so small and inconveniently laid out by nature, the industry of the Dutch have made it turn out to very good account, and it is fully peopled; the sides of the mountain are divided and laid out in very pretty settlements; and though they have neither springs nor rivers, they are so careful that they never want proper supplies of water from their ponds and cisterns. They raise here sugar and tobacco; and this island, as well as Curassou, is engaged in the Spanish counterband trade, for which, however, it is not so well situated; and it draws the same advantages from it’s constant neutrality.

  As for Aruba and Bonaire; they lie near Curassou, and have no trade of consequence; they are chiefly employed in raising fresh provisions for the principal island, and for the refreshment of such ships as use these seas.

  The trade of all the Dutch American settlements was originally carried on by the West-India company only. At present such ships as go upon that trade pay two and a half per cent. For their licences; the company however reserves to itself, the whole of what is carried on between Africa and the American islands.

  The Danes had likewise a West-India company, though it’s object was far from extensive. It was little more than the island of St. Thomas, an inconsiderable member of the Caribbees; lately they have added to their possessions the island of Santa Cruz in the same cluster. These islands, so long as they remained in the hands of the company, were ill managed, and nothing like the proper advantage was made of them; but the present king of Denmark, inferior to none who ever sat upon that or any other throne, in love to his subjects, and a judicious zeal for promoting their welfare, has bought up that company’s stock, and laid the trade open. Since then, the old settlement at St. Thomas is very much improved; it produces upwards of three thousand hogsheads of sugar at a thousand weight each, and others of the West-Indian commodities in tolerable plenty; and as for Santa Cruz, from a perfect desart a few years since, it is beginning to settle fast; several persons from the English islands, and amongst them some of great wealth, have gone to settle there, and have received very great encouragement to do so. The air of the place is extremely unhealthful, but this ill disposition will probably continue no longer than the woods with which the island at present is almost wholly covered. These two nations, the Dutch and Danes, hardly deserve to be mentioned amongst the proprietors of America; their possessions there are comparatively nothing. But as they appear extremely worthy of the attention of these powers, and as the share of the Dutch is worth to them at least six hundred thousand pounds sterling a year, what must we think of our possessions? What attention do they not deserve from us? and what may not be made of them by that attention?

  There seems to be a remarkable providence in the casting the parts, if I may use that expression, of the several European nations who act upon the stage of America. The Spaniards, proud, lazy and magnificent, has an ample walk in which to expatiate; a soft climate to indulge his love of ease; and a profusion of gold and silver to procure him all these luxuries his pride demands, but which his laziness would refuse him.

  The Portuguese, naturally indigent at home, and enterprising rather than industrious abroad, has gold and diamonds as the Spaniard has, wants them as he does, but possesses them in a more useful, though a less ostentatious manner.

  The English, of a reasoning disposition, thoughtful and cool, and men of business rather than of great industry, impatient of much fruitless labour, abhorrent of constraint, and lovers of a country life, have a lot which indeed produces neither gold nor silver; but they have a large tract of a fine continent; a noble field for the exercise of agriculture, and sufficient to furnish their trade, without laying them under great difficulties. Intolerant as they are of the most useful restraints, their commerce flourishes from the freedom every man has of pursuing it according to his own ideas, and directing his life after his own fashion.

  The French, active, lively, enterprizing, pliable and politic, and though changing their pursuits, always pursuing the present object with eagerness, are notwithstanding tractable and obedient to rules and laws which bridle these dispositions, and wind and turn them to proper courses. This people have a country, where more is to be effected by managing the people than by cultivating the ground; where a pedling commerce, that requires constant motion, flourishes more than agriculture or a regular traffic; where they have difficulties which keep them alert by struggling with them, and where their obedience to a wise government serves them for personal wisdom. In the islands the whole is the work of their policy, and a right turn their government has taken.

  The Dutch have got a rock or two on which to display the miracles of frugality and diligence, (which are their virtues,) and on which they have exerted these virtues, and shewn those miracles.

  PART VI. The English Settlements.

  CHAP. I.

  THE English colonies are the fairest objects of our attention in America, not only as they comprehend a vast and delightful variety of climates, situations, natural products and effects of art; but as they contain, though the dominions of one potentate, and their inhabitants formed out of the people of one nation, an almost equal variety of manners, religions and ways of living. They have a most flourishing trade with their mother country, and they communicate widely with many foreign nations; for besides the constant and useful intercourse they hold with Africa, their ships are seen in the ports of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and even in the Levant; nor are they excluded the American settlements of France, Spain, Portugal and Holland. This, with their constant correspondence with each other, and with their mother country, hurries about a lively circulation of trade, of which Great Britain is the heart and spring, from whence it takes it’s rise, and to which it all returns in the end.

  In some of the European settlements we have seen the effects of a vast ambition supported by surprizing feats of a romantic courage mixed with an insatiable thirst of gold. In others, the regular product of a systematic policy tempering and guiding an active industry; but in our own colonies we are to display the effects of liberty; the work of a people guided by their own genius, and following the directions of their own natural temper in a proper path.

  I intend to consider the English colonies under two principal divisions; the first I allot to those islands which lie under the torrid zone between the tropic of Cancer and the Equinoctial line, in that part generally called the West-Indies. The second is to comprehend ou• possessions in the temperate zone on the con+tinent of North America. The West-Indi• islands shall be considered, as they are amongs• the greater Antilles; the Windward, or th• Leeward islands. Amongst the first we pos+sess the large and noble island of Jamai+ca; amongst the second we have Barba+does; and in the third division St. Christo+pher’s, Antegua, Nevis, Montserrat, and Barbuda. As all these islands lie between the tropics, whatever is to be said of the air, winds, meteors, and natural produce, shall fall under one head, as they are the same or nearly the same in all of them; their produce for the market is nearly the same too; and therefore whatever is to be said of the manufacturing of those, shall come together, after we have given a concise description of the state of each island separately.

  Jamaica lies between the 75th and 79th degree of West longitude from London, and is between seventeen and nineteen degrees distant from the Equinoctial. It is in length, from East to West, a hundred and forty English miles; and in breadth about sixty; and of an oval form. This country is in a manner intersected with a ridge of lofty mountains, rugged and rocky, that are called the blue mountains. On each side of the blue mountains are chains of lesser mountains gradually lower. The greater mountains are little better than so many rocks; where there is any earth, it is only a stubborn clay fit for no sort of husbandry. The mountains are very steep, and the rocks tumbled upon one another in a manner altogether stupendous, the effect of the frequent earthquakes which have shaken this island in all times. Yet barren as these mountains are, they ar
e all covered to the very top with a great variety of beautiful trees, flourishing in a perpetual spring; their roots penetrate the crannies of the rocks, and search out the moisture which is lodged there by the rains that fall so frequently on these mountains, and the mists that almost perpetually brood upon them. These rocks too are the parents of a vast number of fine rivulets, which tumble down their sides in cataracts, that form amongst the rudeness of the rocks and precipices, and the shining verdure of the trees, the most wildly pleasing imagery imaginable. The face of this country is a good deal different from what is generally observed in other places. For as on one hand the mountains are very steep; so the plains between them are perfectly smooth and level. In these plains, the soil augmented by the wash of the mountains for so many ages, is prodigiously fertile. None of our islands produce so fine sugars. They formerly had here cacao in great perfection, which delights in a rich ground. Their pastures after the rains, are of a most beautiful verdure, and extraordinary fatness. They are called Savannas. On the whole, if this island were not troubled with great thunders and lightnings, hurricanes, and earthquakes; and if the air was not at once violently hot, damp, and extremely unwholsome in most parts, the fertility and beauty of this country would make it as desirable a situation for pleasure, as it is for the profits, which in spite of these disadvantages draw hither such a number of people.

  The river waters are many of them unwholsome, and taste of copper; but some springs there are of a better kind. In the plains are found several salt fountains, and in the mountains, not far from Spanish-town, is a hot bath, of extraordinary medicinal virtues. It relieves in the dry belly-ach, one of the most terrible endemial distempers of Jamaica, and in various other complaints.

  This island came into our possession during the usurpation of Cromwell, and by means of an armament which had another destination. Cromwell, notwithstanding the great abilities which enabled him to overturn the constitution, and to trample upon the liberties of his country, was not sufficiently acquainted with foreign politics. This ignorance made him connect himself closely with France, then rising into a dangerous grandeur, and to fight with great animosity, the shadow which remained of the Spanish power. On such ideas he fitted out a formidable fleet, with a view to reduce the island of Hispaniola; and though he failed in this design, Jamaica made amends not only for this failure, but almost for the ill policy which first drew him into hostilities with the Spaniards; by which, however, he added this excellent country to the British dominions.

  There was nothing of the genius of Cromwell to be seen in the planning of this expedition. From the first to the last all was wrong; all was a chain of little interested mismanagement, and had no air of the result of absolute power lodged in great hands. The fleet was ill victualled; the troops ill provided with necessaries to support and encourage men badly chosen, and worse armed. They embarked in great discontent. The generals were but little better satisfied, and had little more hopes than the soldiers. But the generals, (for there were two in the command, Pen and Venables, one for the marine, the other for the land service,) were men of no extraordinary talents. And if they had been men of the best capacity, little was to be expected from two commanders not subordinate, and so differing in their ideas, and so envious of each other as land and sea-officers generally are. But to make this arrangement perfect in all respects, and to improve the advantages arising from a divided command, they added a number of commissioners as a check upon both. This tripartite generalship, in the truest Dutch taste, produced the effects that might be expected from it. The soldiers differed with the generals, the generals disagreed with one another, and all quarrelled with the commissioners. The place of their landing in Hispaniola was ill chosen, and the manner of it wretchedly contrived. The army had forty miles to march before it could act; and the soldiers, without order, without heart, fainting and dying by the excessive heat of the climate and the want of necessary provisions, and disheartened yet more by the cowardice and discontent of their officers, yielded an easy victory to an handful of Spaniards. They retired ignominiously and with great loss.

  But the principal commanders, a little reconciled by their misfortunes, and fearing to return to England without effect, very wisely turned their thoughts another way. They resolved to attempt Jamaica, before the inhabitants of that island could receive encouragement by the news of their defeat in Hispaniola. They knew that this island was in no good posture of defence; and they set themselves vigorously to avoid the mistakes, which proved so fatal in the former expedition. They severely punished the officers who had shewn an ill example by their cowardice; and they ordered with respect to the soldiers, that if any attempted to run away, the man nearest to him should shoot him.

  Fortified with these regulations they landed in Jamaica, and laid siege to St. Jago de la Vega now called Spanish-town, the capital of the island. The people, who were in no condition to oppose an army of ten thousand men, and a strong naval force, would have surrendered immediately, if they had not been encouraged by the strange delays of our generals and their commissioners. However at last the town with the whole island surrendered, but not until the inhabitants had secreted their most valuable effects in the mountains.

  CHAP. II.

  AFTER the restoration, the Spaniards ceded the island to our court. Cromwell had settled there some of the troops employed in it’s reduction; some royalists uneasy at home sought an asylum in this island; not a few planters from Barbadoes were invited to Jamaica by the extraordinary fertility of the soil, and the other various advantages which it offered. These latter taught the former settlers the manner of raising the sugar cane, and making sugar. For at first they had wholly applied themselves to the raising of cacao, as the Spaniards had done before them. It was happy for them that they fell into this new practice; for the cacao groves planted by the Spaniards began to fail, and the new plantations did not answer, as the negroes foretold they would not, because of the want of certain religious ceremonies always used by the Spaniards in planting them, at which none of the slaves were suffered to be present, and to the use of which they attributed the prosperity of these plantations. Probably there were methods taken at that time, that were covered by the veil of these religious ceremonies, which are necessary to the well-being of that plant. However that be, the cacao has never since equalled the reputation of the Spanish, but gave way to the more profitable cultivation of indigo and sugar.

  But what gave the greatest life to this new settlement, and raised it at once to a surprizing pitch of opulence, which it hardly equals even in our days, was the resort thither of those pirates called the Buccaneers. That people who fought with the most desperate bravery, and spent their plunder with the most stupid extravagance, were very welcome guests in Jamaica. They often brought two, three, and four hundred thousand pieces of eight at a time, which were immediately squandered away in all the ways of excessive gaming, wine and women. Vast fortunes were made, and the returns of treasure to England were prodigiously great. In the island they had by this means raised such funds, that when the source of this wealth was stopped up by the suppression of the pirates, they were enabled to turn their industry into better channels. They increased so fast, that it was computed that in the beginning of this century, they had sixty thousand whites and a hundred and twenty thousand negroes in this island. This calculation is certainly too large. However, the Jamaicans were undoubtedly very numerous until reduced by earthquakes, (one of which intirely ruined Port-Royal, and killed a vast number of persons in all parts of the country) and by very terrible epidemical diseases, which treading on the heels of the former calamities swept away vast multitudes. Losses which have not been since sufficiently repaired. Now the white inhabitants scarcely exceed twenty thousand souls, and the blacks are about ninety thousand; both much fewer than was computed formerly, and with a disproportion much greater on the side of the whites. It appears at present, that Jamaica is rather upon the decline; a point this that deserves the most attentive consideration
. A country which contains at least four millions of acres, has a fertile soil, an extensive sea coast, and many very fine harbours, for an island so circumstanced, and at a time when the value of all it’s products at market is considerably risen, for such a country to fall short of it’s former numbers, and not to have above three or four hundred thousand acres employed in any sort of culture, shews clearly that something must be very wrong in the management of its affairs; and what shews it even yet more clearly, land is so extravagantly dear in many of the other islands, as to sell sometimes for one hundred pounds an acre and upwards; a price that undoubtedly never would be paid, if convenient land was to be had, and proper encouragement given in Jamaica. Whether this be owing to public or private faults, I know not; but certain it is, that wherever they are, they deserve a speedy and effectual remedy from those, in whose power it is to apply it.

  CHAP. III.

  THE natural products of Jamaica, besides sugar, cacao, and ginger, are principally piemento, or, as it is called, allspice, or Jamaica pepper. The tree which bears the piemento rises to the height of above thirty feet. It is straight, of a moderate thickness, and covered with a grey bark extremely smooth and shining. It shoots out a vast number of branches upon all sides, that bear a plentiful foliage of very large and beautiful leaves of a shining green, in all things resembling the leaf of the bay tree. At the very end of the twigs are formed bunches of flowers; each stalk bearing a flower which bends back, and within which bend are to be discerned some stamina of a pale green colour; to these succeeds a bunch of small crowned berries, larger when ripe than juniper berries; at that season they change from their former green, and become black, smooth, and shining; they are taken unripe from the tree, and dried in the sun; in this case they assume a brown colour, and have a mixed flavour of many kinds of spice, whence it is called allspice. But it is milder than the other spices, and is judged to be inferior to none of them for the service which it does to cold, watery, and languid stomachs. The tree grows mostly upon the mountains.