The negroes would not work, and there were no means of forcing them to do so. The anti-slavery party still had their delegates in the West Indies to see that the "poor negro" was not oppressed in any way, and their representatives in Parliament to call the Government to account if they allowed any vagrancy laws, or even the shadow of a coercive measure in the colonies. One ordinance after another for this purpose was disallowed, until every planter was in despair.
[Illustration: EAST INDIAN COOLIE FAMILY.]
To retain their labourers was a matter of life or death. Some continued the old slave allowances to put them in good humour, but as these made the negroes independent of wages, the privilege was abused. They took everything and did nothing in return. Some went so far as to say that the Queen had promised that their late masters should supply them as usual, entirely regardless of the amount of work they did. This made the planters sore. What with one trouble and another the few who survived the wreck hardly knew how to act. They must not do anything to drive their people away, for there were many inducements offered by others in the same predicament. The negro was master, and he knew it. So much depended on him that he was enticed to labour, by high wages and greater privileges, until this bidding of one against another produced the very result which it was intended to avoid.
[Illustration: COOLIE WOMEN, BRITISH GUIANA.]
Something had to be done. First, the allowances of those who would not work were stopped; then their houses and provision grounds were taken away. Thousands of fruit-trees were destroyed to prevent their living on mangoes and bananas during the season. Then the planters attempted to combine to bring wages to a paying level, and this led to strikes of the negroes. Everything tended to further estrangement until employer and labourer drifted far apart. In British Guiana the negroes bought some of the abandoned plantations and established villages; in some cases they even attempted to carry them on as sugar estates, but as all wanted to be masters they in every case failed.
[Illustration: COOLIE VEGETABLE SELLERS, BRITISH GUIANA.]
[Illustration: EAST INDIAN COOLIES, TRINIDAD.]