emancipation would be happy indeed, if they could see the day when our West Indian slaves should arrive at the rank and condition of the copyholders of Mr. Steele. The freedom which they desire they believe to be compatible with the joint interest of the master and the slave. At the same time they maintain, that the copyholders of Mr. Steele had been brought so near to the condition of free men, that a removal from one to the other, after a certain time, seemed more like a thing of course than a matter to be attended either with difficulty or danger. Their moral character must have improved. If they had ceased for seven years to feel themselves degraded by arbitrary punishment, they must have acquired some little independence of mind. If they had been paid for their labour, they must have acquired something like a spirit of industry. If they had been made to pay rent for their cottage and land, and to maintain themselves, they must have been made to look beforehand, to think for themselves and families from day to day, and to provide against the future; all which operations of the mind are the characteristics only of free men. The case, therefore, of Mr. Steele is most important and precious: for it shows us, first, that the emancipation, which we seek, is a thing which may be effected. The plan of Mr. Steele was put in force in a British Island, and that, which was done in one British Island may, under similar circumstances, be done again in the same, as well as in another. It shows us, too, how this emancipation may be brought about. The process is so clearly detailed, that any one may follow it. It is also a case for encouragement, inasmuch as it was attended with success.

I have now considered no less than five cases of slaves* emancipated in bodies, and a sixth of slaves, who were led up to the very threshold of freedom, comprehending altogether not less than between five and six hundred thousand persons; and I have considered also all the objections that could be reasonably advanced against them. The result is a belief on my part, that emancipation is not only practicable, but that it is practicable without danger. The slaves, whose cases I have been considering, were resident in different parts of the world. There must have been amongst such a vast

* See No. 73 of this series.

number, persons of all characters. Some were liberated, who had been accustomed to the use of arms; others at a time when the land in which they sojourned was afflicted with civil and foreign wars; others again suddenly, and with all the vicious habits of slavery upon them. And yet, under all these disadvantageous circumstances, I find them all, without exception, yielding themselves to the will of their superiors, so as to be brought by them with as much ease and certainty into the form intended for them, as clay in the hands of a potter is fashioned to his own model. But, if this be so, I think I should be chargeable with a want of common sense, were I to doubt for a moment, that emancipation was practicable; and I am not sure that I should not be exposed to the same charge, were I to doubt, that emancipation was practicable without danger. For I have not been able to discover (and it is most remarkable) a single failure in any of the cases which have been produced. I have not heard throughout this vast mass of emancipated persons of a single instance of bad behaviour, not even of a refusal to work, or of disobedience to orders. Much less have I heard of frightful commotions, or massacres, or of revenge for past injuries, even when they had it amply in their power. In fact, the Negro character is malleable at the European will. There is, as I have before observed, a singular pliability in the constitutional temper of the Negroes, and they have besides a quick sense of their own interest, which influences their conduct. I am convinced, that West Indian masters may do what they will with their slaves; and that they may lead them through any changes they please, and with perfect safety to themselves, if they will only make the slaves understand that they are to be benefitted thereby."

We have seen from the facts which were adduced in a preceding number, that the emancipation of the Negroes may be effected without danger, and if we attend to this case of Mr. Steele's we shall perceive that it would be attended with profit to the planters.

"I have employed and amused myself," he says, "by introducing an entire new mode of governing my own slaves, for their happiness, and also for my own profit." It appears, then, that Mr. Steele's new plan for governing

his slaves was profitable. Let us now try to make out from his own account of what these profits consisted.

"Mr. Steele informs us, that his superintendent had obliged him to hire all his holing at 3. currency, or 21. 2s. 10d. sterling, per acre. He was very much displeased at these repeated charges; and then it was, that he put to trial, the question whether he could not obtain the labour of his Negroes by voluntary means, instead of the old method of violence. He made, therefore, an attempt to introduce task-work, or labour with a promised premium for extraordinary efforts, upon his estates. He gave his Negroes a small pecuniary reward over and above the usual allowances, and the consequence was, that the poorest, feeblest, and by character the most indolent Negroes of the whole. gang, cheerfully performed the holing of his land, generally said to be the most laborious work, for less than a fourth part of the stated price paid to the undertakers for holing. After this he continued the practice of taskwork for a premium. He describes the operation of such a system on the mind of his Negroes in the following words: According to the vulgar mode of governing Negro-slaves, they feel only the desponding fear of punishment for doing less than they ought, without being sensible that the settled allowance of food and clothing is given, and should be accepted, as a reward for doing well, while in task work the expectation of winning the reward, and the fear of losing, have a double operation to exert their endeavours.' Mr. Steele was benefitted in another point of view by this practice. 'He was clearly convinced, that saving time, by doing in one day as much as would otherwise require three days, was worth more than double the premium, the timely effects on vegetation being critical.' He found also to his satisfaction, that during all the operations under the premium there were no disorders, no crowding to the sick-house, as before.'

6

"This account shows clearly how Mr. Steele made a part of his profits. These profits consisted first of a saving of expense in his husbandry, which saving was not made by others. He had his land holed at one-fourth of the usual rent. Let us apply this to all the other operations

of husbandry, such as weeding, deep hoeing, &c. in a large farm of nearly eight hundred acres, and we shall see how considerable the savings would be in one year. His Negroes again did not counterfeit sickness as before, in order to be excused from labour, but rather wished to labour to obtain the reward. There was, therefore, no crowding to the hospitals. This constituted a second source of saving; for they who were in the hospitals were maintained by Mr Steele without earning any thing, while they who were working in the field left to their master in their work, when they went home at night, a value superior to that which they had received from him for their day's labour. But there was another saving of equal importance, which Mr. Steele calls a saving of time, but which he might with more propriety have called a saving of season. This saving of season, he says, was worth more than double the premium; and so it might easily have been. There are soils, every farmer knows, which are so constituted, that if you miss your day, you miss your season; and if you miss your season, you lose probably half your crop. The saving, therefore, of the season, by having a whole crop instead of half an one, was a third source of saving money.

Another considerable source of saving to Mr. Steele was, that he was not obliged to purchase any corn for his slaves as formerly. My readers will be able to judge better of this saving, when I inform them of what has been the wretched policy of many of our planters in this department of their concerns. Look over their farming memoranda, and you will see sugar, sugar, sugar, in every page; but you may turn over leaf after leaf before you will find the words provision grounds. By means of this wretched policy slaves have suffered most grievously. Some of them have been half-starved. Starvation, too, has brought on disorders which have ultimately terminated in their death. Hence their mas

ters have suffered losses, besides the expense of buying what they ought to have raised on their own estates, and this perhaps at a dear market: and in this wretched predicament Mr. Steele appears to have been placed when he first went to Barbadoes. His slaves, he tells us, had been reduced in number by bad management.

Even for six years afterwards he had been obliged to buy several hundred bushels of corn; but in the year 1790 he had sold several hundred bushels at a high price and had still a great stock on hand. And to what was all this owing but to the alteration of the condition of his slaves. His slaves did not only three times more work than before, in consequence of the superior industry he had excited amongst them, but, by so doing, they were enabled to put the corn into the earth three times more quickly than before, or they were so much forwarder in their work, that they were enabled to sow it at the critical moment, or so as to save the season, thus secure a full crop, or a larger crop on a less number of acres than was before raised on a greater. Thus Mr. Steele saved the purchase of a great part of the provisions for his slaves. He had formerly a great deal to buy for them, but now nothing. On the contrary, he had to sell; and, as his slaves were made, according to the new system, to maintain themselves, he had now the whole produce of his estate to dispose of. The circumstance therefore of having nothing to buy, but every thing to sell, constituted another source of his profits.”

and

"What the other particular profits of Mr. Steele were I can no where find, neither can I find what were his particular expenses; so as to be enabled to strike the balance in his favour. Happily, however, Mr. Steele has done this for himself, though he has not furnished us with the items on either side.-He says, that from the year 1773 to 1779 (he arrived in Barbadoes in 1780) his stock had been so much reduced by ill management and wasteful economy, that the annual average net clearance was little more than one and a quarter per cent. on the purchase. In a second period of four years, in consequence of the exertion of an honest and able manager, (though with a further reduction of the stock, and including the loss from the great hurricane,) the annual average income was brought to clear a little above two per cent.; but in a third period of three years, from 1784 to 1786 inclusive, since the new mode of governing the slaves, (besides increasing the stock and laying out large sums annually in adding necessary works, and in repairs of the damages by the great hurricane,) the estate has cleared very near four and a