meal.

Under slavery, the value of American imports was not more than L60,000
per annum. Under freedom, it is from L300,000 to L400,000.

The shipping before emancipation (in 1832) numbered 689 vessels of
79,000 tons. In 1856, 966 vessels of 114,800 tons.

The population of Barbadoes is supposed to be now about 140,000, of whom
124,000 are blacks. Of these, only 22,000 are believed to be field
laborers, against 81,000, just before emancipation, of men, women, and
children, who labored in the field,--a fact which shows the aversion
slavery had implanted to laboring on the soil, as well as the indiscreet
policy of the planters. Yet, despite this decrease of the most
profitable kind of labor, so great is the advantage of freedom over
slavery, that the island has been enabled to make this prodigious
increase in production and wealth since emancipation,--more than
doubling its export of sugar, increasing its imports by $1,200,000,
quintupling its imports from America, and doubling the value of land.

The progress in education and morality has not been at all so rapid as
in wealth. The freed slave could not at once escape from the debasing
influences of years of bondage, and the planters have deliberately set
themselves against any system of popular education. Crimes against
property, Sewell says, are rife, especially thieving; petty acts of
anger and cruelty are also common, as well as offences against chastity;
while, on the other hand, crimes of violence are almost unknown. From
the last census it appears that more than half of the children born in
the island are illegitimate. This sad condition of morals Mr. Sewell
attributes principally to the imperfect education of the lowest
classes,--the schools being mostly church-schools, and somewhat
expensive. These schools, however, have increased from 27 in 1834, with
1,574 children, to 70 with 6,180 in 1857, and an infant school with
1,140; the children in Sunday-schools have increased in the same time
from 1,679 to 2,071.[D]

[Footnote D: _Letter from the Bishop of Barbadoes_,
February 23, 1858. It appears in the same letter that the
church-attendants have increased from 5,000 in 1825 to 28,000 in
1853.]

ST. VINCENT is generally considered by the passing traveller as another
example of the axiom that "the freed negro will not work," and of "the
melancholy fruits of emancipation."

The decline of the wealthier classes began before emancipation, an