five hundred dollars an acre.

[Footnote A: Schomburg.]

Notwithstanding the high price of land and the low rate of wages, the
freed slaves have increased the number of small proprietors with less
than five acres from 1100 to 3537[B] during the last fifteen years,--an
increase which alone testifies to the remarkable thrift of the
emancipated negro in Barbadoes.

[Footnote B: Governor Hincks.]

Mr. Sewell has talked with all classes and conditions, and "none are
more ready to admit than the planters that the free laborer is a better,
more cheerful, and industrious workman than was ever the slave."

"The colored mechanics and artisans of Barbadoes," says the same author,
"are equal in general intelligence to the artisans and mechanics of any
part of the world equally remote from the great centres of civilization.
The peasantry will soon equal them, when education is more generally
diffused."

The surest evidences, however, on this question are those of figures.
Land has doubled in value on the island since emancipation.[C] Of the
increased value of estates, we quote, as an example, the case mentioned
in a published letter of Governor Hincks, January, 1858:--

"As to the relative cost of slave and free labor in this colony,
I can supply facts upon which the most implicit reliance can be
placed. They have been furnished to me by the proprietor of an
estate containing three hundred acres of land, and situated at a
distance of about twelve miles from the shipping port. The
estate referred to produced during slavery an annual average of
140 hogsheads of sugar of the present weight, and required 230
slaves. It is now worked by 90 free laborers: 60 adults, and 30
under 16 years of age. Its average product during the last seven
years has been 194 hogsheads. The total cost of labor has been
L770 16s., or L3 19s. 2d. per hogshead of
1,700 pounds. The average of pounds of sugar to each laborer
during slavery was 1,043 pounds, and during freedom 3,660
pounds. To estimate the cost of slave-labor, the value of 230
slaves must be ascertained; and I place them at what would have
been a low average,--L50 sterling each,--which would make the
entire stock amount to L11,500. This, at six per cent. interest,
which on such property is much too low an estimate, would give
L690; cost of clothing, food, and medical attendance I estimate
at L3 10s.,