kind, viz. that the slaves in the West Indies
do much more work in a given time when _they work for themselves_, than
when _they work for their masters_. But how, it will be said, do you
prove, by establishing this fact, that it would be cheaper for our
planters to employ free men than slaves? I answer thus: I maintain that,
_while the slaves are working for themselves_, they are to be
considered, indeed that they are, _bona fide, free labourers_. In the
first place, they never have a driver with them on any of these
occasions; and, in the second place, _having all their earnings to
themselves_, they have that stimulus within them to excite industry,
which is only known _to free men_. What is it, I ask, which gives birth
to industry in any part of the world, seeing that labour is not
agreeable to man, but the stimulus arising from the hope of gain? What
makes an English labourer do more work in the day than a slave, but the
stimulus arising from the knowledge, that what he earns is _for himself
and not for another_? What, again, makes an English labourer do much
more work _by the piece_ than by _the day_, but the stimulus arising
from the knowledge that he may gain more by the former than by the
latter mode of work? Just so is the West Indian slave situated, when _he
is working for himself_, that is, when he knows _that what he earns is
for his own use_. He has then all the stimulus of a free man, and he is,
therefore, _during such work_ (though unhappily no longer) really, and
in effect, and to all intents and purposes, as much _a free labourer_ as
any person in any part of the globe. But if he be a free man, while he
is working for himself, and if in that capacity he does twice or thrice
more work than when he works for his master, it follows, that it would
be cheaper for his master to employ him as a free labourer, or that the
labour of free men in the West Indies would be cheaper than the labour
of slaves.

That West Indian slaves, when they work for themselves, do much more in
a given time than when they work for their masters, is a fact so
notorious in the West Indies, that no one who has been there would deny
it. Look at Long's History of Jamaica, The Privy Council Report,
Gaisford's Essay on the good Effects of the Abolition of the Slave
Trade, and other books. Let us hear also what Dr. Dickson, the editor
of Mr. Steele, and who resided so many years in Barbadoes, says on this
subject, for what he says is so ad