e portion of the negroes, too lazy to provide food by their
own labor, will rob the provision grounds of the few who will remain at
work. The latter will endure the wrong as long as they well can, and
then they will procure arms and fire upon the marauders; this will give
rise to incessant petty conflicts between the lazy and the industrious,
and a great destruction of life will ensue. Others will die in vast
numbers from starvation; among these will be the superannuated and the
young, who cannot support themselves, and whom the planters will not be
able to support. Others numerous will perish from disease, chiefly for
want of medical attendance, which it will be wholly out of their power
to provide. Such is the dismal picture drawn by a late slaveholder, of
the consequences of removing the negroes from the tender mercies of
oppressors. Happily for all parties, Mr. Thomson is not very likely to
establish his claim to the character of a prophet. We were not at all
surprised to hear him wind up his prophecies against freedom with a
_denunciation of slavery_. He declared that slavery was a wretched
system. Man was _naturally a tyrant_. Mr. T. said he had one good
thing to say of the negroes, viz., that they were an _exceedingly
temperate people_. It was a very unusual thing to see one of them drunk.
Slavery, he said, was a system of _horrid cruelties_. He had lately
read, in the history of Jamaica, of a planter, in 1763, having a slave's
_leg_ cut off, to keep him from running away. He said that dreadful
cruelties were perpetrated until the close of slavery, and they were
inseparable from slavery. He also spoke of the fears which haunted the
slaveholders. He never would live on an estate; and whenever he chanced
to stay over night in the country, he always took care to secure his
door by bolting and barricading it. At Mr. Thomson's we met Andrew
Wright, Esq., the proprietor of a sugar estate called Green Wall,
situated some six miles from the bay. He is an intelligent gentleman, of
an amiable disposition--has on his estate one hundred and sixty
apprentices. He described his people as being in a very peaceable state,
and as industrious as he could wish. He said he had no trouble with
them, and it was his opinion, that where there is trouble, it must be
_owing to bad management_. He anticipated no difficulty after 1840, and
was confident that his people would not leave him. He believed that the
negroes would not to any great e