cultivation, although it is
estimated there are upward of 2000 people idling in villages of their
own. The roads are in many parts several feet under 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 are hardly accessible now but by water.'

"'Except in some of the best villages,[184] 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 extend to the immigrants also, there is no hope for the
colony.'"[185]

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 Africa, and to the island of
Hayti, in all of which emancipation has been followed by precisely
similar results. But we 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 he, "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_."

Sec. 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, if
restored to his rights, _would fall into idleness and vagrancy, and even
relapse into barbarism_."

This w