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Show 154 JAllfi\ICA· that exce II e nt new stone .w.a ll round "Do you see ,, said the young phys1cmn to me, the field below us · f t door surveying the delightd A B 's ron as we stoo at · · · II ould scarcely have been "That wa c . ful scenery- r the apprenticeship; the . II under slavery 0 . bmlt at a d t then have been hued at less labor coni no · U 1 necessary 15 dollars per cham. nc er than £5 currency' lor f 3 dollars and a half to 4 . cost on y rom . freedom, It . -third of the amount. Stdl cham-not one dollars per k 'b. le . h f t that the whole of it was IS t e ac mo.r e rcmd ar tah e stn. uul us of .1. ob-work, by an invalid bmlt un heor durm. g sl avery had been given up to total n. egro. , w" Thi.s was t l1 e substance of our conversa-m. ac-twthn.e informat.w n was ,a fterw,a rds fully con.f irmed tbw nth propn.e tor. 'su ch was the fresh blood mfuse.d I y e . f this decrepid person, by the gema into the vems o l h l ad been redeemed from abhand of freedom, t mt e 1 ted a noble work-bad solute use Ie ssness -had execu d finally . 1 roved his master's property-an ' greatly Ill p . f a handsome sum of money. had realized /or ~lmdsel·Irably,and undeniably illustra- Th. · 1 1act 1s a m , ' 1s smg e . . nd for that purpose tive of the principles of the case' a is as good as a tho~sand. r which bear on the A few more particulars, howeve ' . . Thy . · nd sat1sfacto1 Y· e Ol'nt may be mterestmg a 1.. d same p , . d f my r1en arc contained in the letter alre~tdy CJJte ' .r:m March 28, d t d "Mandeville, a male ' f Dr. Stewart, a c . arative expense o 1840." "With regard to the comp. I result " he " I gJ ve you t IC free and slave labor, says . ' ruh ver Tent and . 1 . ansh n' ere of my experience m t liS P' · . have bePn labor have !lOt been mingled togetlwr, pnces , JAMAICA. 155 reduced, in the picking and curing of coffee, from onethird, to one half; from £10 per tierce, to from £5 to £6 lOs. Grass land is cleaned at one-third of the former expense. A penn in this neighborhood, when cleaned in slavery, cost, simply for the contingencies of the negroes, £80. The first cleaning, by free laborfar brtter done-cost less than £24. Stone walls, the only fence used in this rocky district, cost £5 6s. 8d. per chain, the lowest £4, under slavery. The usual price now is £1, the highest £1 6s. 8d. per chain. To prepare and plant an acre of woodland in coffee, cost, twenty years ago, £20; up to the end of slavery, it never fell below £16. In apprenticeship it cost from £10 13s. 4d. to £12. Now it never exceeds £5 6s. 8d. I myself have (lone it this year for £5; that is the general price all through the district. In 1833, I hired servants at from £16 to £25 per annum. In 1838, 1839, and since, I have been able to obtain the same description of servants, vastly improved in all their qualifications, for from £8 to £10 per annum." These are pound, shilling, and pence calculations; but they develop mighty principles-they detect the springs of human action-they prove the vast superiority of moral inducement, to physical force, 'in the production of the useful efforts of mankind. It is the perfect settlement of the old controversy between wages and the whip. "I know the case of a property," observed Dr. Stewart again, "on which there WPre one hundred and twenty-five slaves-the expense amounting (at £5 per annum, for the maintenance of each slave) to £625. |