heir children
would have an opportunity of obtaining such instructions, as are
necessary to the common occasions of life; and thus both parents and
children might gradually become useful members of the community. And
further, where the nature of the country would permit, as certainly the
uncultivated condition of our southern and most western colonies easily
would, suppose a small tract of land were assigned to every Negroe
family, and they obliged to live upon and improve it, (when not hired
out to work for the white people) this would encourage them to exert
their abilities, and become industrious subjects. Hence, both planters
and tradesmen would be plentifully supplied with chearful and
willing-minded labourers, much vacant land would be cultivated, the
produce of the country be justly increased, the taxes for the support of
government lessened to individuals, by the increase of taxables, and the
Negroes, instead of being an object of terror,[A] as they certainly must
be to the governments where their numbers are great, would become
interested in their safety and welfare.

[Footnote A: The hard usage the Negroes meet with in the plantations,
and the great disproportion between them and the white people, will
always be a just cause of terror. In Jamaica, and some parts of
South-Carolina, it is supposed that there are fifteen blacks to one
white.]

CHAP. XV.

Answer to a mistaken opinion, that the warmth of the climate in the
West-Indies, will not permit white people to labour there. No complaint
of disability in the whites, in that respect, in the settlement of the
islands. Idleness and diseases prevailed, as the use of slaves
increased. _The great_ advantage which might accrue to the British
nation, if the slave trade was entirely laid aside, and a fair and
friendly commerce established through the whole coast of Africa.

It is frequently offered as an argument, in vindication of the use of
Negroe slaves, that the warmth of the climate in the West Indies will
not permit white people to labour in the culture of the land: but upon
an acquaintance with the nature of the climate, and its effects upon
such labouring white people, as are prudent and moderate in labour, and
the use of spirituous liquors, this will be found to be a mistaken
opinion. Those islands were, at first, wholly cultivated by white men;
the encouragement they then met with, for a long course of years, was
such as occasioned a great inc