Zachary Macaulay was born in Inverary, the son of a minister. He was sent to work in a Glasgow merchant’s house at the age of fourteen, but to evade the problems he faced as a result of too much good company and high living among the students of Glasgow university, he left to work as a clerk on the plantations when he was sixteen. His description of the circumstances in which he and other white men lived among slaves is grim. Unlike many, Macaulay’s conscience could not be silenced indefinitely, and he returned to Britain to become one of the foremost champions of the abolition of slavery.
Towards the end of the year 1784 a circumstance happened which gave a temporary suspension to my career, and led to a few sober reflections. I then saw that the only way that remained to extricate myself from the labyrinth in which I was involved was going abroad. I made known my wish to my father, and it was determined that I should try my fortunes in the East Indies. [At the suggestion of a friend, however, his father sends him instead to the West Indies] …
During the voyage to Jamaica I had a good deal of time for reflection, and I endeavoured to fortify myself, by previous resolutions, against the evils to which I felt myself prone. Company I had found my greatest snare, and I resolved to guard against it; and though every reformation proceeding on such grounds as mine then did must be partial and inadequate, yet one good effect arising from it was a resolution of abstaining from all excess in drinking, which I afterwards adhered to.
At this time I had not yet reached the age of seventeen, and found myself, on landing at Jamaica, without money, or without a single friend to whom I could turn for assistance. The letters of recommendation to persons in high position … were entirely neglected. The visions which had been presented to me of rapidly increasing wealth and honours now vanished entirely, but the disappointment did not seriously affect my spirits. I felt certainly indignation and resentment at the coldness and indifference shown me by men, from whom I thought I had a right to expect different treatment. But I recollect feeling a degree of self-complacency in finding myself able to reconcile my mind to very considerable hardships, rather than submit to repeat the humiliating applications which I had already made to those persons.
My trials, however, were not of long duration. One or two private gentlemen to whom a friend of mine had written to introduce me, soon found me out, and showed me great kindness. Through their exertions I obtained the situation of under-manager or book-keeper on a sugar plantation.
Here I entered upon a new mode of life which waged war with all my tastes and feelings. My position was laborious, irksome, and degrading, to a degree of which I could have formed no previous conception, and which none can imagine fully who have not, like me, experienced the vexatious, capricious, tyrannical, and pitiless conduct of a Jamaica overseer. To this, however, I made it a point of honour to reconcile my mind. Indeed I saw there was no medium for me, under the circumstances, between doing so and starving.
While my health remained good, I therefore submitted with cheerfulness to all the severe toil and painful watchings which were required of me. What chiefly affected me at first was, that by my situation I was exposed not only to the sight, but also to the practice of severities over others, the very recollection of which makes my blood run cold. My mind was at first feelingly alive to the miseries of the poor slaves, and I not only revolted from the thought of myself inflicting punishment upon them, but the very sight of punishment sickened me.
The die, however, was now cast; there was no retreating. I should gladly indeed have returned to Europe, but I had not the means. I had no friend at home to whom I could apply except my father, and I would almost sooner have died than have added any more pressure of that anxiety which a numerous family necessarily caused him. In the West Indies, I was bound, if I would not forfeit the regard of all whom were disposed to serve me, even to give no vent to those feelings which would have seemed to reproach them with cruelty. As the only alternative, therefore, I resolved to get rid of my squeamishness as soon as I could, as a thing which was very inconvenient. And in this I had a success beyond my expectations.
Virgil’s expression, ‘Easy is the descent to Hell,’ is a bold, but perfectly just representation of the rapidity with which we move downwards in the scale of moral rectitude when once we have made a voluntary declension from the path of duty. I soon satisfied myself that the duty which I owed to my employers, for I used still to moralize, required the exact fulfilment of their orders; and that the duty which I owed myself, my father, and my friends, required that I should throw no obstacles, which the voice of all in the world whom I had hitherto known was so far from sanctioning, that it condemned them as foolish, childish, and ridiculous, in the way of my fortune.
At this time, that is in the year 1785, I find myself writing thus to a friend at home: ‘But far other is now my lot, doomed by my own folly to toil for a scanty subsistence in an inhospitable clime. The air of this island must have some peculiar quality in it, for no sooner does a person set foot on it than his former ways of thinking are entirely changed. The contagion of an universal example must indeed have its effect. You would hardly know your friend, with whom you have spent so many hours in more peaceful and more pleasant scenes, were you to view me in the field of canes, amidst perhaps a hundred of the sable race, cursing and bawling, while the noise of the whip resounding on their shoulders, and the cries of the poor wretches, would make you imagine that some unlucky accident had carried you to the doleful shades.’
This picture, shocking as it is, owes nothing to fancy; but my mind was now steeled, and though some months before this period, in writing to the same friend I had had a heart to draw in very lively colours, and with pathetic touches which I really felt, the miseries of the negroes, yet now I was callous and indifferent, and could allude to them with a levity which sufficiently marked my depravity. I had indeed raised for myself an imaginary standard of justice in my dealings with them, to which I thought it right to conform.
But the hour of retribution seemed to be at hand. Dangerous, and repeated, and long-continued attacks of illness brought me frequently to the very borders of the grave. My sufferings were extreme; and they were aggravated by the most cruel neglect and the most hard-hearted unkindness. There was a kind of high-mindedness about me which kept me from complaining even in my lowest extremity of wretchedness, nor did the hope of better days ever forsake me. Nay, when stretched upon a straw mattress, with ‘tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw,’ burning with fever, pining under the want of every necessary comfort, shut out from the sight or converse of any one whom I could call a friend, unable to procure even a cup of cold water for which I did not myself crawl to the neighbouring rivulet, I maintained an unbroken spirit.
I tremble to think on the stupid insensibility, nay the desperate harness, with which at times I stood tottering upon the brink of eternity. Surely had I died then my place would have been where mercy is clean gone for ever, and where even God forgets to be gracious. May I not regard myself emphatically as a brand plucked out of the burning? These judgments, however, like those which visited Pharaoh, served only to harden my heart. Indeed this is the effect which appears, if we consult our Bible and experience, to be the necessary result of afflictions when they do not lead the mind to God.
When health returned my sufferings were soon forgotten; and better prospects opening upon me, and friends rising up daily who showed a willingness to serve me as soon as I was master of my business, I began to like my situation. I even began to be wretch enough to think myself happy.
My outward conduct indeed, for a West Indian planter, was sober and decorous, for I affected superiority to the grossly vulgar manners and practices which disgrace almost every rank of men in the West Indies, but my habits and dispositions were now fundamentally the same. In these I was quite assimilated to my neighbours, and this is a part of my life of which I scarce like either to speak or think. It was a period of most degrading servitude to the worst of masters.