rtual slavery'--using
those very words--by an immense importation of foreign laborers, it
would be impossible to bring them to reasonable terms.

Now the condition of the South is like that of Jamaica, not like that of
the smaller islands. Were the Southern negroes emancipated, and should
they desert the plantations in a body, it is not likely that they would
starve. They could at least support themselves as well as the white
sandhillers, and probably better, considering their previous habits of
work. Besides, as in Jamaica, there would of course be many small
proprietors, who would be ruined by emancipation or before it, and from
whom the negroes could easily procure the few acres apiece that would be
required by the wants of their rude existence. Jamaica, then, is far
nearer a parallel to the South than most of the smaller islands, and for
this reason an inquiry into the true workings of emancipation there is
of prime interest and importance.

The writer is very far indeed from pretending to have carried through
such an inquiry. His personal acquaintance extends to but seven of the
twenty-two parishes of the island, and he is intimately acquainted with
not more than three of those seven. He has but a meagre knowledge of
statistical facts, bearing on the workings of emancipation in the
island, and indeed the statistics themselves, as Mr. Sewell complains,
are very meagre and very hard to get. Still the writer has been able to
gather some facts which will speak for themselves, and he claims for his
personal impressions on points concerning which he cannot give
particular facts the degree of confidence deserved by one who has
resided five years and a half in a rural district, who has lived
familiarly conversant with negroes and with whites of all classes, who
has heard all sides of the question from valued personal friends, and
who neither carried to Jamaica nor brought away from it any peculiar
disposition to an apotheosis of the negro character.

There is, however, an excess of candor affected by some writers on this
question, which is neither honorable to them nor wholesome to their
readers. They would have us believe that they began their inquiries
entirely undecided whether slavery or freedom is the normal condition of
the African race, and that their conclusions, whatever they are, have
been purely deduced from the facts that they have gathered. The writer
lays claim to no such comprehensive indifference. He woul