for the emancipated Africans, are sometimes not a
little blind to the advantages of stern industrial necessities;" and
that, "what the accident of population and soil has done for Barbadoes,
it cannot be doubted that a stream of immigration, if properly
conducted, might do in some degree for the other islands."

Lest it should be thought that the _Economist_ stands alone in its
representations in relation to the failure of negro free labor in
Jamaica, we quote a statement of the Colonial Minister, which recently
appeared in the _New York Tribune_, and was thence transferred to the
_American Missionary_, February, 1859:

"The Colonial Minister says: 'Jamaica is now the only important sugar
producing colony which exports a considerable smaller quantity of sugar
than was exported in the time of slavery, while some such colonies since
the passage of the Emancipation Act have largely increased their
product.'"

Time is thus casting light upon the question of the capacity of the
African race for voluntary labor. Jamaica included 311,692 negroes, at
the time of emancipation, out of the 660,000 who received their freedom
in the whole of the West Indian islands. This was but little less than
half of the whole number. It was a fair field to test the question of
the willingness of the free negro to work. But what is the result? We
have it admitted by both the _Economist_ and the Colonial Minister, that
there has been a vast falling off in the exports from Jamaica, and that
a spur of some kind must be applied to secure their adopting habits of
industry. The spur of the "whip" having been thrown away, the remedy
proposed is to press them into a corner, by immigration from India and
China, so that the securing of bread shall become the great necessity
with them, and they be compelled to labor or starve, as has been the
case in Barbadoes. This is the opinion of the _Economist_, always
opposed to slavery, but now convinced that the "slow, indolent
temperament of the African race" needs such a "spur" to quicken it "into
a voluntary industry essential to its moral discipline, and most
favorable to its intellectual culture."

The West India emancipation experiments have demonstrated the truth of a
few principles that the world should fully understand. It must now be
admitted that mere personal liberty, even connected with the stimulus of
wages, is insufficient to secure the industry of an ignorant population.
It is intelligence, alone