ufficient
supply of slaves during a war. The losses likewise, at all times, were
great, as many of the slaves were unable to support the fatigue and
changes of temperature, to which they were exposed on the journey from
Vera Cruz to Curnavaca, and perished, either on the road, or soon
after their arrival.

"Several of the great proprieters were induced by these circumstances
to give liberty to a certain number of their slaves annually, and by
encouraging marriages between them and the Indians of the country, to
propagate a race of free labourers, who might be employed when a
supply of Slaves was no longer to be obtained.

"This plan proved so eminently successful that on some of the largest
estates there was not a single slave in the year 1808.

"The policy of the measure became still more apparent on the breaking
out of the revolution in 1810.

"The planters who had not adopted the system of gradual emancipation
before that period saw themselves abandoned, and were forced, in many
instances, to give up working their estates, as their slaves took
advantage of the approach of the insurgents to join them en masse;
while those who had provided themselves with a mixed cast of free
labourers, retained even during the worst times, a sufficient number
of men to enable them to continue to cultivate their lands, although
upon a smaller scale."

The same work for September 1829, speaking of free and slave labour,
remarks.

"The controversy is fast tending to its termination. The march of
events will scarcely leave room much longer, either for
misrepresentation or misapprehension. The facilities already given in
Bengal by Lord W. Bentinck, to the investment of British capital and
the development of British skill in the cultivation of the soil; the
almost certainty that those fiscal regulations which have hitherto
depressed the growth of sugar in Bengal, and prevented the large
increase of its imports into this country, will soon be repealed; the
prospect of an early removal of the other restrictions which still
fetter the commerce of our Eastern possessions: the rapidly increasing
population and prosperity of Haiti; the official statements of Mr.
Ward, as to the profitable culture of sugar by free labour in Mexico;
and the rapid extension of the manufacture of beet root sugar in
France; a prelude as we conceive, to its introduction into this
country, and especially into Ireland; all these circumstances
combined, afford a