nd but
little for those upon whom your bounties were bestowed. And, then, we
cannot see the vastness of your philanthropy, in allowing such
destructive cruelties to prevail so long, and in only emancipating your
slaves when it was apparent they must soon become extinct under the
lash, as applied by the hands of Britons. We know that you claimed that
slavery was the same everywhere, and that humane men in our country were
deceived into the belief that American slavery was as ruinous to life as
British West Indian slavery. We know that the elder Mr. Buxton, in 1831,
used this language, "where the blacks are free they increase. But let
there be a change in only one circumstance, let the population be the
same in every respect, only let them be slaves instead of freemen, and
the current is immediately stopped;" and, in support of this, his
biographer adds: "This appalling fact was never denied, that at the time
of the abolition of the slave trade, the number of slaves in the West
Indies was 800,000; in 1830 it was 700,000; that is to say, in
twenty-three years it had diminished by 100,000."[41] This assertion,
that slavery is always destructive of life, was made by Mr. Buxton, in
the face of the fact, that ten distinct sets of our _Census tables_ were
then accessible to him, in each one of which he had the evidence that
American slavery, instead of reducing the number of our slave
population, tended to its rapid increase. From this and kindred acts of
that gentleman, we came to the conclusion, that, though he might be very
benevolent, he was not very truthful; and was, therefore, a very unsafe
guide to follow, as you must now acknowledge; unsafe, because your
emancipation on a small scale, before securing a general emancipation by
other countries, has thrown you under the necessity of now attempting to
establish slavery elsewhere on a large scale; unsafe, because your negro
population have not made half the moral progress under freedom, that
ours have done under slavery; and because, that, where cultivation has
depended upon the emancipated negro alone, with a single exception, the
islands have almost gone to ruin.[42]

You misinterpret facts, says Britain: our islands are not ruined; no, by
no means. Under slavery they would have been totally ruined; but
emancipation has placed them in a position favorable to a full
development of all their resources. "It is to be borne in mind that the
influx of free labor is exactly one