publised in NYT back in January 1860..Emancipation in Jamaica

[evanovitch]

http://www.nytimes.com/1860/01/27/news/emancipation-in-jamaica-times-past-and-times-present.html?smid=pl-share

[evanovitch]

I know of no country in the world where prosperity, wealth, and a commanding position have been so strangely subverted and destroyed, as they have been in Jamaica, within the brief space of sixty years. I know of no country in the world where so little trouble has been taken to investigate the causes of this decline, or to remedy the evils that have depressed the colony. The partisans of Slavery, it is true -- the sufferers, who have commanded the ear of the world and have enlisted its sympathies in their behalf -- have represented, and with a large coloring of reason, that all this widespread ruin is to be attributed to Emancipation only. But thinking and intelligent men are no longer convinced by these state complaints. They cannot now be brought to believe that the liberation of 350,000 slaves, whatever may have been its first effect, is the origin, and only origin, of the poverty and distress that prevail in the island at the present day. British Emancipation may have been unwise; regarded as a great social revolution, the manner in which the scheme was executed must be utterly condemned; private rights were violated, and their sacredness was eclipsed by the splendor of an act which gave freedom to a people who never knew what freedom was; -- but the ruin attributed to it is, in Jamaica, too broad and too deep to be set down any longer as the effect of that one solitary cause. No other English island has the natural advantages that Jamaica possesses; no other English island exhibits the same, or anything like the same, destitution; yet all have passed through the same experience -- all have undergone the same trial.

[evanovitch]

http://www.nytimes.com/1860/02/03/ne...l?pagewanted=3 EMANCIPATION IN JAMAICA.--II.; A Tour of Observation--Spanish Town--St. Thomas-in-the-Vale--Mount Diabolo--The Moneague.

[evanovitch]

this third article is sooo amazing http://www.nytimes.com/1861/08/17/ne...d-revenue.html

[RichD]

There is nothing like work done in Kingston, except perhaps in the establishments of a few European or American merchants, or on the piers, now and then, at the loading or unloading of vessels. The city was originally well laid out, but it is not ornamented with a single tree, and the square, in a central location, is a barren desert of sand, white-hot with exposure to the blazing sun. The streets are filthy, the beach lots more so, and the commonest laws of health are totally disregarded; wreck and ruin, destitution and neglect. There is nothing new in Kingston. The people, like their horses, their houses, and all that belongs to them, look old and worn. There are no improvements to be noted, not a device, ornament, or conceit of any kind to indicate the presence of taste or refinement. The inhabitants, taken en masse, are steeped to the eyelids in immorality; promiscuous intercourse of the sexes is the rule; the population shows an unnatural decrease; illegitimacy exceeds legitimacy; abortion and infanticide are not unknown. Kingston looks what it is, a place where money has been made, but can be made no more. It is used up and cast aside as useless.

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