ng to
decay; the comforts and luxuries which belong to industrial prosperity
have been cut off, one by one, from her inhabitants; and the day, I
think, is at hand when there will be none left to represent the wealth,
intelligence, and hospitality for which the Jamaica planter was once
distinguished."[176]

"It is impossible," says Mr. Carey, "to read Mr. Bigelow's volume,
without arriving at the conclusion that the freedom granted to the negro
has had little effect except that of enabling him to live at the expense
of the planter so long as any thing remained. Sixteen years of freedom
did not appear to its author to have 'advanced the dignity of labor or
of the laboring classes one particle,' while it had ruined the
proprietors of the land, and thus great damage had been done to the one
class without benefit of any kind to the other.

From a statistical table, published in August, 1853, it appears, says
one of our northern journals, that, since 1846, "the number of sugar
estates on the island that have been totally abandoned amounts to one
hundred and sixty-eight, and the number partially abandoned to
sixty-three; the value of which two hundred and thirty-one estates was
assessed, in 1841, at L1,655,140, or nearly eight millions and a half of
dollars. Within the same period two hundred and twenty-three
coffee-plantations have been totally, and twenty partially, abandoned,
the assessed value of which was, in 1841, L500,000, 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
by 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."[177]

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, that parties still inhabiti