state to another:--and also to provide, that no slave should be sold,
out of the county, or town in which his master resides, without his
own consent. Provision should then be made for the introduction of a
system of general instruction on each farm or plantation; each slave
who has a family should be furnished with a hut, and a portion of land
to cultivate for his own use; for which he would pay to the landlord
an annual rent. For each day he was employed by the master or
landlord, he should be allowed a stipulated price: out of the proceeds
of his stipulated wages, those things necessary for his comfortable
maintenance, should be deducted; if furnished by the master.

The time given him to cultivate his allotment of ground should be
deducted from his annual hire. A wise and equitable system of laws,
adapted to the condition of blacks, should be established for their
government. Then a character would be formed among them; acts of
diligence and fidelity would meet their appropriate reward, and
negligence and crime would be followed by their merited chastisement.
The execution of this plan, in its fullest extent, would be followed
by increased profits to the landholder.

It would be productive of incalculable advantage to the slave, both in
his civil, and moral condition:--And thus the interest of the master,
and the melioration of the condition of the slave, would be gradually
and reciprocally advanced in the progress of this experiment. Although
legislative provisions would greatly facilitate the adoption of this
plan, it is not necessary for individuals to wait the movement of
government. Any one may introduce it on his own plantation, and reap
many of its most important advantages.

The plan now proposed is not new. It is not a Utopian and visionary
theory, unsupported by experience. It has been successfully tried in
the Island of Barbadoes, by the late Joshua Steele; and the result
exceeded his most sanguine expectations. "The first principles, of his
plan," says Mr. Dickson, "are the plain ones, of treating the slaves
as human creatures: moving them to action by the hope of reward, as
well as the fear of punishment: giving them out of their own
labours, wages and land, sufficient to afford them the plainest
necessaries:--And protecting them against the capricious violence, too
often of ignorant, unthinking, or unprincipled, and perhaps drunken
men and boys, invested with arbitrary powers, as their managers, and