trates, (planters or their friends,) and mulcted in
their wages, fined otherwise, and committed to jail or the house of
correction. And yet those harassed people remained patient, orderly and
submissive. _Their treatment now is much improved. The planters have
happily discovered, that as long as they kept the cultivators of their
lands in agitations and sufferings, their own interests were
sacrificed._"
TENTH PROPOSITION.--The negroes are _more trust-worthy, and take a
deeper interest in their employers' affairs_, since emancipation.
"My laborers manifest an increasing attachment to the estate. In all
their habits they are becoming more settled, and they begin to feel that
they have a personal interest in the success of the property on which
they live."--_Mr. Favey_.
"As long as the negroes felt uncertain whether they would remain in one
place, or be dismissed and compelled to seek a home elsewhere, they
manifested very little concern for the advancement of their employers'
interest; but in proportion as they become permanently established on an
estate, they seem to identify themselves with its prosperity. The
confidence between master and servant is mutually increasing."--_Mr.
James Howell_.
The Hon. Mr. Nugent, Dr. Daniell, D. Cranstoun, Esq., and other
planters, enumerated among the advantages of freedom, the planters being
released from the perplexities growing out of want of confidence in the
sympathy and honesty of the slaves.
S. Bourne, Esq., of Millar's, remarked as we were going towards his mill
and boiling-house, which had been in operation about a week, "I have not
been near my works for several days; yet I have no fears but that I
shall find every thing going on properly."
The planters have been too deeply experienced in the nature of slavery,
not to know that mutual jealousy, distrust, and alienation of feeling
and interest, are its legitimate offspring; and they have already seen
enough of the operation of freedom, to entertain the confident
expectation, that fair wages, kind treatment, and comfortable homes,
will attach the laborers to the estates, and identify the interests of
the employer and the employed.
ELEVENTH PROPOSITION.--The experiment in Antigua proves that emancipated
slaves can _appreciate law_. It is a prevailing opinion that those who
have long been slaves, cannot at once be safely subjected to the
control of law.
It will now be seen how far this theory is supported by fac
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