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Show 256 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. water and perfect swamps, while in some places the bridges are wanting altogether. In fact the whole district is fast becoming a total wilderness, with the exception of the one or two estates which yet continue to struggle on, and which arc hardly accessible now but by water.' " 'Except in some of the best villages,* they care not for back or front dams to keep off the water; their side-lines are disregarded, and consequently the drainage is gone, while in many instances the public road is so completely flooded that canoes have to be used as a means of transit. The .Africans are unhappily following the example of the Creoles in this district, and buying land on which they settle in contented idleness; and your commissioners cannot view instances like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of squatting is allowed to exioend to the immigrants also, there is no hope for the colony.' "t We might fill a volume with extracts to the same effect. We might in like manner point to other regions, especially to Guatemala, to the British colony on the southern coast of *West coast of Berbice River. t Quoted in Carey's Slave Trade. ARGUMENT FHOI\1 TITE PUBLIC GOOD. 257 Af.-ica, and to the island of IIayti, in all of which emancipation has been followed by precisely similar results. But wo must hasten to consider how it is that emancipation has wrought all this ruin and desolation. In the mean time, we shall conclude this section in the ever-memorable words of Alison, the historian: "The negroes," says be, "who, in a state of slavery, were comfortable and prosperous beyond any peasantry in the world, and rapidly approaching the condition of the most opulent serfs of Europe, have been by the act of emancipation irretrievably consigned to a state of barbarism." § III. The manner in which emancipation has ruined the British Colonies. By the act of emancipation, Great Britain paralyzed the right arm of her colonial industry. The laborer would not work except occasionally, and the planter was ruined. The morals of the negro disappeared with his industry, and he speedily retraced his steps toward his original barbarism. All this had been clearly foretold. "Emancipation," says Dr. Channing in 1840, "was resisted on the ground that the slave, 1\f restored to h;~. rights, >could fall into |