fficient substitute for it, in most of the islands, in the wholesome
hardships of natural exigencies. The really beneficent 'whip' of hunger
and cold was not substituted for the human cruelty from which they had
escaped. In Barbadoes alone, perhaps, the pressure of a dense
population, with the absence of any waste mountain lands on which the
negroes could squat, rent free, was an efficient substitute for the
terrors of slavery. And, consequently, in Barbadoes alone, has the
Emancipation Act produced unalloyed and conspicuous good. The natural
spur of competition for the means of living, took the place there of the
artificial spur of slavery, and the slow, indolent temperament of the
African race was thus quickened into a voluntary industry essential to
its moral discipline, and most favorable to its intellectual culture."

In further commenting on the figures quoted, the _Economist_ remarks:

"These results, do not of course, necessarily represent in any degree
the fresh spur to diligence on the part of the old population, caused by
the new labor. In islands like Trinidad, where the amount of unredeemed
land suited for such production is almost unlimited, the new labor
introduced cannot for a long time press on the old labor at all. But
wherever the amount of land fitted for this kind of culture is nearly
exhausted, the presence of the new competition will soon be felt. And,
in any case, it is only through this gradual supply of the labor market
that we can hope to bring the wholesome spur of necessity to act
eventually on the laboring classes. Englishmen, indeed, may well think
that at times the good influences of this competitive jostling for
employment are overrated and its evil underrated. But this is far from
true of the negro race. To their slow and unambitious temperament,
influences of this kind are almost unalloyed good, as the great
superiority in the population of Barbadoes to that of the other islands
sufficiently shows."

The _Economist_, in further discussing this question, favors the
introduction of a permanent class of laborers, not only that the
cultivation may be increased, but because there is "no doubt at all that
if a larger supply of labor could be attained in the West Indies,
without any very great incidental evils, the benefit experienced even by
the planters would be by no means so great as that of the negro
population themselves;" and thinks that "the philanthropic party, in
their tenderness