rking class is estimated here
at 70,000 souls. They present the singular spectacle, which we can
contemplate in no other part of the world, of a people hardly escaped
from slavery, enjoying already properties in land and houses for which
they have paid nearly L100,000."

In a single county, (Berbice,) says Cochin, there had been built in
1843, since emancipation, 1184 houses, and 7,000 additional acres had
been put under cultivation. In the whole colony there were 15,906 landed
proprietors among the negroes who had become such since 1834. The
imports, according to Lord Stanley, during the last six years of
slavery, were about $13,915,000; during apprenticeship, about
$17,890,000; in the first year of liberty, over $20,000,000; in the
second year, about $17,463,670.

* * * * *

We have given, perhaps, a rather dry account of the effects of
emancipation on a portion of the British West Indies. But it should be
remembered that this question, as it now stands before the world, is
mainly a question of figures. The great and damning argument against
emancipation is the supposed experience of the West Indies, _that the
negro will not work except under slavery_. The evidences of labor are
in part given by figures: the number of freeholds, the price of land,
the amount of the productions, the quantity consumed, and the quantity
exported. The amount of imports, too, shows the desire and the means of
the people to procure foreign commodities. By these plain and
irrefutable evidences, we have proved that free labor in the Windward
Islands, Trinidad, the Leeward Islands, and Guiana has "paid" much
better than slave labor.

As Mr. Sewell has summed it up with reference to four colonies,--British
Guiana, Barbadoes, Trinidad, and Antigua,--the total annual export of
sugar before emancipation was 187,300,000 pounds, while now it is
265,000,000 pounds; showing an advantage under free labor of
_seventy-seven million, seven hundred thousand pounds_! The total
imports of the same colonies amounted before emancipation to $8,840,000;
they are now $14,600,000; showing an excess of imports under free labor,
as compared with slave labor, of the value of _five million, seven
hundred and sixty thousand dollars_!

It is a remarkable experience of the West Indies, to be seriously
considered in the settlement of our American problem, that the islands
which abolished slavery the most summarily and entirely succeede