dant debts of the
last, and only managing to keep their heads above water so long as the
people of England, by favoring them with a highly protective system,
enabled them still to compete against those who grew sugar on better and
more economical plans. The whole island was given over to neglect and
mismanagement. The emancipated negroes took but little trouble to
cultivate the plots of ground they had obtained, and were quite content
if they could scratch enough from the soil to enable them barely to
live. Therefore Jamaica did at a certain time fall far below the level
of her former seeming prosperity.

The other islands had been better managed. Their estates were less
encumbered by debt, and they passed through each successive crisis
without sustaining any noticeable injury. In most of these islands the
product increased steadily after the emancipation of the slaves. The
negroes then began to work earnestly, and education grew not greatly but
distinctly among all classes. Jamaica, the most unfortunate among the
islands, has been constantly the scene of little outbursts of more or
less serious rebellion. As the late Lord Chief Justice of England
observed in a charge on a famous occasion, "The soil of the island might
seem to have been drenched in blood." But these disturbances, or
insurrections, or whatever they may be called, did not increase in
number after the abolition of slavery and after the equalization of the
sugar duties, but, on the contrary, decreased. During our time only one
considerable disturbance has taken place in Jamaica, and in former years
such tumult was of frequent recurrence. In the West Indies we have,
therefore, the most severe test to which the principle of free trade
could well be subjected. It is not too much to say that in the more
fortunate of these islands it has established its claim, and that even
in the least fortunate no evidence whatever has been given that the
people would have been in any way the better off if the old system had
been retained.

The navigation laws had, too, a certain external attraction about them
which induced many men, not actually Protectionists, to believe in their
necessity. The principle of the navigation laws was to impose such
restrictions of tariff and otherwise as to exclude foreign vessels from
taking any considerable part in our carrying trade. The law was first
enacted in Oliver Cromwell's day, at a time when the Dutch were rivals
on the sea, and wh