of 9 l.
currency, or between forty and fifty shillings sterling per acre, and
the wages for a man belonging to the first gang at 7-1/2d. currency
or 6d. sterling per day. As to the rent for the personal services, it
is not mentioned.

With respect to labour and things connected with it, Mr. Steele entered
the following among the local laws in the _court-roll_ of the tenants
and tenements. The copyholders were not to work for other masters
without the leave of the lord. They were to work ten hours per day. If
they worked over and above that time, they were to be paid for every
hour a tenth part of their daily wages, and they were also to forfeit a
tenth for every hour they were absent or deficient in the work of the
day. All sorts of work, however, were to be reduced, as far as it could
be done by observation and estimation, to equitable task-work. Hoes were
to be furnished to the copyholders in the first instance; but they were
to renew them, when worn out, at their own expense. The other tools were
to be lent them, but to be returned to the storekeeper at night, or to
be paid for in default of so doing. Mr. Steele was to continue the
hospital and medical attendance at his own expense as before.

Mr. Steele, having now rent to receive and wages to pay, was obliged to
settle a new mode of accounting between the plantation and the
labourers. "He brought, therefore, all the minor crops of the
plantation, such as corn, grain of all sorts, yams, eddoes, besides rum
and molasses, into a regular cash account by weight and measure, which
he charged to the copyhold-storekeeper at market prices of the current
time, and the storekeeper paid them at the same prices to such of the
copyholders as called for them in part of wages, in whose option it was
to take either cash or goods, according to their earnings, to answer all
their wants. Rice, salt, salt fish, barrelled pork, Cork butter, flour,
bread, biscuit, candles, tobacco and pipes, and all species of clothing,
were provided and furnished from the store at the lowest market prices.
An account of what was paid for daily subsistence, and of what stood in
their arrears to answer the rents of their lands, the fines and
forfeitures for delinquencies, their head-levy and all other casual
demands, was accurately kept in columns with great simplicity, and in
books, which checked each other."

Such was the plan of Mr. Steele, and I have the pleasure of being able
to announce, that the