insurance, interest, and other charges, it will readily be seen that a system of taxation so grinding could end no otherwise than as it did — in ruin. That such was the tendency of things was seen in the steady diminution of production. In the three years ending with 1802, the average exports were, of

The system that looked to depriving the cultivator of the advantage of a market near at hand, in which to sell his products; and from which he could carry home the manure-thus maintaining the powers of his land-was here producing its natural results, in causing the slave to become from day to day more barbarized ; and that such was the case was shown by the enormous excess of deaths over births. Evidence of exhaustion was, therefore, seen in every thing connected with the island. Labor and land were declining in value, and the security for the payment of the debt due in England was becoming less from year to year, as more and more the people of other countries were being driven to the work of cultivation, because of the impossibility of competing with England in manufactures. Sugar having declined to little more than a guinea a hundredweight, and rum to little more than two shillings a gallon,* nearly the whole crop was swallowed up in commissions and interest. Under such circumstances, waste of life was inevitable; and therefore it is, that we have seen the importation of hundreds of thousands of men who have perished-leaving behind them no traces of their existence. On whom, however, must rest the responsibility for a state of things so hideous as that which is here exhibited? Not, surely, upon the planter, for he exercised no volition whatsoever. He was not permitted to employ his surplus power in refining his own sugar, nor could he legally introduce a spindle or a loom into the island. He could neither mine coal nor smelt copper ore. Unable to repay his borrowings from the earth, the loans he could obtain from her diminished in quantity; and then, small as they were, they were absorbed by the exchangers and those who superintend the exchanges — exercising the duties of government. Being himself * Tooke's History of Prices, vol. ii. p. 412.

a mere instrument in their hands for the destruction of negro morals, intellect, and life, it is upon them, and not upon him, must rest the responsibility for the fact that, of all the slaves imported into the island, not more than two-fifths were represented on the day of emancipation.

Nevertheless, he it was that was branded as the tyrant and the destroyer of morals and of life; and public opinion - the public opinion of the same people who had absorbed so large a portion of the product of negro labor-drove the government to the measure of releasing the slave from compulsory service, and appropriating a certain amount to the payment, first, of the mortgage debts due in England - leaving the owner, in most cases, without a shilling for carrying on the work of his plantation. The consequences are seen in the extensive abandonment of land, and in the decline of its value. Any quantity of it may be purchased, prepared for cultivation, and as rich as any in the island, for five dollars an acre; while other land, far richer, naturally, than any in New England, ranges from fifty cents to one dollar. With the decline in the value of land, the laborer tends towards barbarism, and the reason of this may be found in the fact, that the power of association has no existence that there is no diversity of employment and that after centuries of connection with a community that boasts of the perfection of its machinery, there is not even a tolerable axe to be found on the island.*

* "I could not learn that there were any estates on the island decently stocked with implements of husbandry. Even the modern axe is not in general use; for felling the larger class of trees, the negroes commonly use what they call an axe, which is shaped much like a wedge, except that it is a little wider at the edge than at the opposite end, at the very extremity of which a perfectly straight handle is inserted. A more awkward thing for chopping could not be well conceived at least, so I thought until I saw the instrument in yet more general use about the houses in the country, for cutting firewood. It was, in shape, size, and appearance, more like the outer half of the blade of a scythe, stuck into a small wooden handle, than any thing else I can compare it to: with this long knife, for it is nothing else, I have seen negroes hacking at branches of palm for several minutes, to accomplish what a good wood-chopper, with an American axe, would finish at a single stroke. I am not now speaking of the poorer class of negro proprietors, whose poverty or ignorance might excuse this, but of the proprietors of large estates, which have cost their thousands of pounds."-Bigelow's Notes on Jamaica, p. 129.

"They have no new manufactories to resort to when they are in want of work; no unaccustomed departments of mechanical or agricultural labor are open to receive them, to stimulate their ingenuity and reward their industry. When they know how to ply the hoe, pick the coffee-berry, and tend the

That the artisan has always been the ally of the agriculturist ir. his contest with the trader and the government, is shown in every page of the world's history. The first desires to tax him by buying cheaply and selling dearly. The second taxes him for the privilege of maintaining commerce; and the more distant the place of exchange, the greater is the power of taxation. The artisan coming nearer to him, the raw materials are converted on the spot, subject to no tax for the maintenance of ship-owners, commission-merchants, or shopkeepers-and then commerce grows with great rapidity.

In a piece of cloth, says Adam Smith, weighing eighty pounds, there are not only more than eighty pounds of wool, but also "several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the working people;" and it is the wool and the corn that travel cheaply in the form of cloth. What, however, finally becomes of the corn? Although eaten, it is not destroyed. Going back upon the land, and paying the debt of him by whose labor it had been produced, the land itself becomes enriched, the larger become the crops, and the greater is the power of the farmer to make demand for the services of the artisan. The reward of human effort growing with the growth of value in land, all become rich and free together and thus it is that the interests of all the members of a community are so closely connected with the adoption of a policy looking to increase in the amount of commerce, and in the value of land. The more perfect the power of combination among men, the greater will be the development of individual faculty, the less will be the power of the trader—and the greater will always be the freedom of man.

The colonial policy above described-looking to the production of results directly the reverse of this forbade association, sugar-mills, they have learned almost all the industry of the island can teach them. If, in the sixteen years during which the negroes have enjoyed their freedom, they have made less progress in civilization than their philanthropic champions have promised or anticipated, let the want I have suggested receive some consideration. It may be that even a white peasantry would degenerate under such influences. Reverse this, and when the negro has cropped his sugar or his coffee, create a demand for his labor in the mills and manufactories of which nature has invited the establishment on this island, and before another sixteen years would elapse the world would probably have some new facts to assist them in estimating the natural capabilities of the negro race, of more efficiency in the hands of the philanthropist than all the appeals which he has ever been able to address to the hearts or the consciences of men."-Ibid., p. 156.

because it limited the whole people to a single pursuit. It forbade the immigration of artisans, the growth of towns, or the establishment of schools; and, consequently, forbade the growth of intellect among the laborers, or their owners. It forbade the growth of population, because it drove the women and children to the culture of sugar among the richest and most unhealthy soils of the island. It thus impoverished the land and its owners, exterminated the slave, and weakened the community-making it a mere instrument in the hands of the people who effected and superintended the exchanges-the class of persons that, in all ages, has thriven at the cost of the cultivators of the earth. By separating the consumer from the producer, they were enabled, as has been shown, to take to themselves three-fourths of the whole product, leaving but one-fourth to be divided between the land and labor that had produced it. They, of course, grew strong, while the land-holder and laborer grew weak; and the weaker the latter became, the less was the need for regarding their rights of person or of property.

In this state of things it was, that the master was required to accept a fixed sum of money as compensation for relinquishing his claim to demand of the slave the performance of the work to which he had been accustomed. Unfortunately, however, the system pursued had effectually prevented that improvement of feeling and taste required for producing in the latter a desire for any thing beyond what was indispensable to the maintenance of existence. Towns and shops not having grown, he had not been accustomed even to see the commodities by which his fellowlaborers in the French islands were tempted to exertion. Schools not having existed, even for the whites, he had acquired no wish for books for himself, or for instruction for his children. His wife had acquired no taste for dress having always been limited to field labor. Suddenly emancipated from control, he gratified the only desire that had been permitted to grow up in him — the love of perfect idleness, to be indulged to whatsoever extent was consistent with obtaining the little food and clothing needed for the support of life.

Widely different would have been the state of affairs had they been permitted to make their exchanges at home-giving cotton and sugar for cloth and iron produced by the labor, and from the

soil, of the island. The producer of sugar would then have had all the cloth given for it by the consumer, instead of obtaining a fourth of it—and then the land would have increased in value, the planter would have grown rich, and the laborer would have become free; and that, by virtue of a great natural law, which provides that the more rapid the augmentation of wealth, the greater must be the demand for labor, the greater must be the quantity of commodities produced by the laborer, the larger must be his proportion of the product, and the greater must be the tendency toward his becoming a free man, and himself a capitalist.

The more perfect the power of association and combination, the less is the need of man for machinery required for effecting changes of place, because his exchanges are chiefly made at home-but the greater is his power to obtain that machinery, because combination enables him to obtain command over the great natural forces given for his use. The less his power to maintain commerce, the greater is his dependence on machinery of transportation, and the less his power to obtain it; and that such was the case in the West Indies is shown by the fact, that in the capital of the rich island of Jamaica, Spanishtown, with a population of five thousand, there was not, five years since, to be found a single shop, nor a respectable hotel, nor even a dray-cart ;* and in the whole island there was not a stage, nor any other mode of regular conveyance, by land or water, except on the little railroad, of fif teen miles, from Kingston to the capital. As a necessary consequence of this state of things, so large a proportion of the labor of the community was required for performing the work of transportion within and without the limits of the island, that but a very small proportion of it could be given to any other purpose.‡

§ 5. The power to command the services of nature grows with the growth of the power of association — and that the latter may increase, it is essential that larger numbers should be enabled to

† Ibid. p. 69.

* Bigelow's Notes on Jamaica, p. 31. Heavy duties on refined sugar still prevent the colonies from making any step towards improvement. But recently, the governor of Demerara, in a despatch to the British government, stated that by a very trifling additional outlay the planter could ship his whole crop of a quality almost equal to refined sugar, though made, bona fide, by a single process from the raw materials;" but that he dared not do, because it would thereby be subjected to a duty so high as to be prohibitive.