ation, and it affects and rules resident owners even more than
absentees. Let sugar rise in price, and all cold calculations of
ultimate loss to the gang are lost in the vehement thirst of great
present gain. All, or nearly all, planters are in distressed
circumstances. They look to the next few years as their time; and if the
sun shines they must make hay. They are in the mine, toiling for a
season, with every desire to escape and realize something to spend
elsewhere. Therefore they make haste to be rich, and care little, should
the speculation answer and much sugar bring in great gain, what becomes
of the gang ten years hence. Add to all this, that any interference of
the local legislatures to discourage sordid or cruel management, to
clothe the slaves with rights, to prepare them for freedom by better
education, to pave the way for emancipation by restraining the master's
power, to create an intermediate State of transition from slavery to
freedom by partial liberty, as by attaching them to the soil, and
placing them in the preparatory state through which our ancestors in
Europe passed from bondage in gross to entire independence--all such
measures were in the absolute discretion; not of the planters, but of
the resident agents, one of the worst communities in the world, who had
little interest in preparing for an event which they deprecated, and
whose feelings of party, as well as individually, were all ranged on the
oppressor's side. All this Mr. Stephen, enlightened by experience, and
wise by long reflection, clearly and alone foresaw; all this vision of
the future was too surely realized by the event. No improvement of
treatment took place; no additional liberality in the supplies was
shown; no abstinence in the exaction of labour appeared; no interference
of the Colonial Legislature to check misconduct was witnessed; far less
was the least disposition perceived to give any rights to the slaves,
any security against oppression, any title independent of his Master,
any intermediate state or condition which might prepare him for freedom.
It is enough to say, that a measure which every man, except Mr. Stephen,
had regarded as the natural, almost the necessary effect of the
abolition--attaching the slaves to the soil--was not so much as
propounded, far less adopted; it may be even said, was never mentioned
in any one local assembly of any of our numerous colonies, during the
thirty years which elapsed between the aboli