wing that they could thus command
labor for the merest necessities of life, which was much cheaper than
maintaining the non-effective as well as effective slaves in a style
which decency and interest, if not humanity, required, willingly
accepted half their value, and at once realized far more than the
interest on the other half in the diminution of their expenses, and the
reduced comforts of the _freemen_. One of your most illustrious judges,
who was also a profound and philosophical historian, has said "that
villeinage was not abolished, but went into decay in England." This was
the process. This has been the process wherever (the name of) villeinage
or slavery has been successfully abandoned. Slavery, in fact, "went into
decay" in Antigua. I have admitted that, under similar circumstances, it
might profitably cease here--that is, profitably to the individual
proprietors. Give me half the value of my slaves, and compel them to
remain and labor on my plantation, at ten to eleven cents a day, as they
do in Antigua, supporting themselves and families, and you shall have
them to-morrow, and if you like dub them "free." Not to stickle, I would
surrender them without price. No--I recall my words: My humanity revolts
at the idea. I am attached to my slaves, and would not have act or part
in reducing them to such a condition. I deny, however, that Antigua, as
a community, is, or ever will be, as _prosperous_ under present
circumstances, as she was before abolition, though fully ripe for it.
The fact is well known. The reason is that the African, if not a
distinct, is an inferior race, and never will effect, as it never has
effected, as much in any other condition as in that of slavery.

I know of no _slaveholder_ who has visited the West Indies since slavery
was abolished, and published _his_ views of it. All our facts and
opinions come through the friends of the experiment, or at least those
not opposed to it. Taking these, even without allowance, to be true as
stated, I do not see where the abolitionists find cause for exultation.
The tables of exports, which are the best evidences of the condition of
a people, exhibit a woful falling off--excused, it is true, by
unprecedented droughts and hurricanes, to which their free labor seems
unaccountably more subject than slave labor used to be. I will not go
into detail. It is well known that a large proportion of British
legislation and expenditure, and that proportion still const