7, a royal
commission found that the average slave prices as gathered from sale
records between 1822 and 1830 varied from a range in the old and stagnant
colonies of L27 4_s_. 11-3/4_d_. in Bermuda, L29 18_s_. 9-3/4_d_. in the
Bahamas, L47 1_s_. in Barbados and L44 15_s_. 2-1/4_d_. in Jamaica, to L105
4_s_., L114 11_s_. and L120 4_s_. 7-1/2_d_ respectively in the new and
buoyant settlements of Trinidad, Guiana and British Honduras.[93] If the
interstate transfer had been stopped, the Virginia, Maryland and Carolina
slave markets would have been glutted while the markets of every
southwestern state were swept bare. Slave prices in the former would have
fallen to such levels that masters would have eventually resorted to
manumission in self-defence, while in the latter all existing checks to the
inflation of prices would have been removed and all the evils consequent
upon the capitalization of labor intensified.

[Footnote 93: _Accounts and Papers_ [of the British Government], 1837-1838,
vol. 48, [p. 329].]

Another conceivable plan would have been to replace slavery at large by
serfdom. This would have attached the negroes to whatever lands they
chanced to occupy at the time of the legislation. By force of necessity it
would have checked the depletion of soils; but by preventing territorial
transfer it would have robbed the negroes and their masters of all
advantages afforded by the virginity of unoccupied lands. Serfdom could
hardly be seriously considered by the citizens of a new and sparsely
settled country such as the South then was.

Finally the conversion of slaves into freemen by a sweeping emancipation
was a project which met little endorsement except among those who ignored
the racial and cultural complications. Financially it would work drastic
change in private fortunes, though the transfer of ownership from the
masters to the laborers themselves need not necessarily have great effect
for the time being upon the actual wealth of the community as a whole.
Emancipation would most probably, however, break down the plantation system
by making the labor supply unstable, and fill the country partly with
peasant farmers and partly with an unattached and floating negro
population. Exceptional negroes and mulattoes would be sure to thrive upon
their new opportunities, but the generality of the blacks could be counted
upon to relax into a greater slackness than they had previously been
permitted to indulge in. The app