r interest to be upright and virtuous:
but there was a present impulse continually breaking in upon their better
judgment, and an impulse, which was known to be contrary to their permanent
advantage. It was ridiculous to say that men would be bound by their
interest, when gain or ardent passion urged them. It might as well be
asserted that a stone could not be thrown into the air, or a body move from
place to place, because the principle of gravitation bound them to the
surface of the earth. If a planter in the West Indies found himself reduced
in his profits, he did not usually dispose of any part of his slaves; and
his own gratifications were never given up, so long as there was a
possibility of making any retrenchment in the allowance of his slaves.--But
to return to the subject which he had left: He was happy to state, that as
all the causes of the decrease which he had stated might be remedied, so,
by the progress of light and reformation, these remedies had been gradually
coming into practice; and that, as these had increased, the decrease of
slaves had in an equal proportion been lessened. By the gradual adoption of
these remedies, he could prove from the report on the table, that the
decrease of slaves in Jamaica had lessened to such a degree, that from the
year 1774 to the present it was not quite one in a hundred, and that in
fact they were at present in a state of increase; for that the births in
that island, at this moment, exceeded the deaths by one thousand or eleven
hundred per annum. Barbadoes, Nevis, Antigua, and the Bermudas, were, like
Jamaica, lessening their decrease, and holding forth an evident and
reasonable expectation of a speedy state of increase by natural population.
But allowing the number of negros even to decrease for a time, there were
methods which would ensure the welfare of the West India islands. The lands
there might be cultivated by fewer hands, and this to greater advantage to
the proprietors and to this country, by the produce of cinnamon, coffee,
and cotton, than by that of sugar. The produce of the plantations might
also be considerably increased, even in the case of sugar, with less hands
than were at present employed, if the owners of them would but introduce
machines of husbandry. Mr. Long himself, long resident as a planter, had
proved, upon his own estate, that the plough, though so little used in the
West Indies, did the service of a hundred slaves, and caused the same
groun