to the owner, there ought to be no objection on

his part.

It may be said that in these isolated cases of manumission the person enfranchised will pass at once from the field to some domestic or handicraft employment; and that if the practice be widely extended, it will subtract materially from the required cultivation of the soil.

I must allow that agricultural labour is in great disrepute in the West Indies. It is not so in other countries, for we often find even the well educated and the affluent delighting in the cultivation of a garden or in the ruder employments of a farm. In the West Indies field labour is always associated with the whip and the driver, and other tokens of personal degradation; we therefore cannot wonder that it is generally shunned.

The first step towards the removal of the existing dislike to this species of employment is to engage the great mass of our population in a kind of voluntary field labour, of which the profits may to a certain extent perceptibly accrue to themselves. To work spontaneously, and for our own immediate benefit, is the distinctive character of freedom. We may surely

M

If,

approximate to this in our West India colonies, without detriment to the master's interests. for instance, the sum now expended by the master in the maintenance of his slaves-averaging in this island from three to five pounds sterling each, including young and old, were commuted for its equivalent in time-say two days, or two days and a half, in the week-and the slaves were allowed on those days to cultivate their provision grounds, or to work for hire, they would virtually be free during nearly one half of their time. If they had also the power of buying off the remainder of their servitude at a fair remunerating price to the master, there would be the strongest stimulus to their increased exertion, and to the most laborious and successful cultivation of the soil. Would they be likely, after having earned so many and great advantages by field labour, to regard it with dissatisfaction, and to consider themselves degraded by following their former occupation? Would they not rather, if the permission were allowed them, continue to work for their masters as tenants on the estate, receiving either wages in money for their labour, or a portion of the produce of the land? I believe the present condition of the sugar planta

tions in those states of South America which have granted entire freedom to their slaves, will furnish a satisfactory answer to these questions.

I should rejoice to see the slaves inalienably attached to the soil, and subject to fixed laws, to be enforced by the magistrate alone. I should rejoice to see them secured from arbitrary and capricious punishment, and regarded by the law as persons, not as things.

Q.-Page 142.

I am confident that I am not unjustly severe in this remark. It is painful to employ terms which convey so general and sweeping a censure. I would gladly have abstained from noticing the subject at all, but I could not have observed silence without participating in the guilt of connivance. I bear a ready testimony to the frequent kindness of the proprietor to his dependents. In some In some cases it will amount almost to injurious and culpable indulgence; but I am forced also to declare, that at times acts of cruelty are committed in our colonies without any punishment, or even public censure, falling on the offender. The excuse, that the

notice of these crimes will give a handle to those who oppose the colonial interests, is worse than frivolous. The real charge against the West Indian societies is, not that cruelties are committed among them, (for to this charge every society is more or less obnoxious,) but that the man who revels in violence and oppression has no mark set upon him, and that he is allowed to vaunt himself in the land, without control and without reproach. I am aware of the extreme difficulty of bringing to justice the perpetrators of cruel deeds in the West Indies. The laws are in most cases defective in affording protection to the bondsman ; and even where the laws might be enforced to check or punish an act of oppression, we have incurred the reproach that the fear of becoming unpopular in the community deters many a person from prosecuting the offender, or from appearing as a voluntary witness against him. These things ought not to be. I am sure that I am a friend to our colonies in thus publicly noticing and reprobating the evil.

THE END.

LONDON:

IBOTSON AND PALME?, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.