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Show 240 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. clred and twenty-three coffee-plantations have been totally, and twenty partially, abandoned, the assessed value of which was, in 1841, .£500,000, or two millions and a half of dollars; and of cattle-pens, (grazing farms,) one hundred and twenty-two have been totally, and ten partially, abandoned, the value of which was a million and a half of dollars. The aggregate value of these six hundred and six estates, which have been thus ruined and abandoned in the island of Jamaica, within the last seven or eight years, amounted hy the regular assessments, ten years since, to the sum of nearly two and a half millions of pounds sterling, or twelve and a half millions of dollars."* In relation to Jamaica, another witness says:. "The marks of decay abound. Neglected fields, crumbling houses, fragmentary fences, noiseless machinery-these are common sights, and soon become familiar to observation. I sometimes rode for miles in succession over fertile ground, which used to be cultivated, and which is now lying waste. So rapidly has cultivation retrograded, and the wild luxuriance of nature replaced the conveniences of art, th..t * Quoted by Mr. Carey. .ARGUMENT FROM TnE PUBLIC GOOD. 241 parties still inhabiting these desolated districts have sometimes, in the strong language of a speaker at Kingston, 'to seek about the bush to find the entrance into their houses.' " The towns present a spectacle no less gloomy. A great part of Kingston was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at all, diminished. The explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing, and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge in the abodes of others, where some means of subsistence are still left; and in the absence of any discernible trade or occupation, the lives of crowded thousands appear to be preserved from day to day by a species of miracle. The most busy thoroughfares of former times have now almost the quietude of a Sabbath. " 'The finest land in the world,' says Mr. Bigelow, ' may be had at any price, and almost for the asking.' Labor 'receives no compensation, and the product of labor does not seem to know how to find the way to market.' "* Q * Carey'! Slave TrtLdo. 2l |