interest on the value of the slaves, would bring up the cost of labor to a much higher price than that given for free labor in any of the British colonies. I need scarcely remind you that the cost per head of slaves must be calculated on the entire population, men, women, and children, a considerable per centage of which will furnish no labor in return.

It may interest you to know the comparative value of property in this island during slavery and freedom. The estate just referred to, containing 300 acres of land, was worth, during slavery, £50 per acre, or £15,000; and I have estimated the slaves round at £50 each, which would be £11,500. I am not aware what the compensation money amounted to per head in Barbadoes, but I have no doubt to £30 at least. (N. B. It was upward of £47.) After the award of compensation for the slaves, the estate was sold during the apprenticeship for £25,000, and was purchased a few years ago by the present proprietor for £30,000; which price I have no doubt he could obtain for it at any moment. It is proper I should add that I have taken the estate, regarding which I have furnished you with the foregoing particulars, as furnishing a fair illustration of the comparative productiveness and cost of cultivation during slavery and freedom. I could multiply instances in which there have been similar results.

"I shall now proceed to the consideration of the complaint against the creoles of African descent that they are indolent, and that they have abandoned the sugar plantations. This is a subject involved in much greater difficulty than the one on which I have already treated. I admit that the planters generally, in several of the British colonies, would vehemently maintain the correctness of this charge. I am, however, bound to affirm that, after a most patient investigation, I have been unable to arrive at such a conclusion. There is no doubt that the condition of the laboring classes ought to be worse in Barbadoes than in any of the other colonies. In Barbadoes land is exorbitantly dear, being worth, in small quantities, from $400 to $600 per acre. Wages are from tenpence to one shilling per day, as I have already stated. There are only five working days in the week, except during crop time. With all these disadvantages, the small proprietors in this island, holding less than five acres of land, increased in sixteen years from about 1,100 to 3,537. I doubt much whether such a proof of industrious habits could be furnished with regard to a similar class of laborers in any other country in the world. I adduce the above remarkable fact to prove that in this island there has been no want of industry on the part of creoles of African descent. I think that in those colonies in which the sugar estates have been partially abandoned, we must look to other causes than the indolence of the laborers. In all those colonies land is abundant and comparatively cheap, and I need not remind any one acquainted with the settlement of land in America, whether in the United States or the British Provinces, that where land is cheap and abundant, labor will be dear and scarce. The poor Irish immigrant pursues exactly the same course in Canada which the creole of African descent does in Guiana or Trinidad. He endeavors to get land of his own, and to become a proprietor instead of a laborer.

"In this island there can be no doubt whatever that emancipation has been a great boon to all classes. Real estate has increased in price, and is a more certain and advantageous investment than in the time of slavery; the estates are much better and more economically cultivated; and the proprietors are, I am inclined to think, perfectly contented.

"With regard to the condition of the African race, I can answer your queries with unmixed satisfaction, and with the conviction that there will be little, if any, difference of opinion among well-informed persons on that subject. The improvement which has taken place in the religious condition of the people of all classes, and the progress of education, are quite equal to what could reasonably have been expected. The creoles are advancing rapidly

in civilization. You have yourself made the acquaintance of men who were formerly slaves, and who are now in independent circumstances, and enjoying a large share of public respect. . . . It is impossible to compare the present statistics of crime with those during slavery, when the great bulk of our ordinary offenses, petty thefts and assaults, were summarily punished by the managers and overseers of estates. You have had an opportunity of satisfying yourself that the offenses in this island are not of an aggravated character. That there is much greater security for person and property now than there was during slavery does not admit of a doubt."

Similar testimony might have been given at much greater length, but sufficient has been adduced to show the fallacy of those assumptions which have been so confidently advanced as to the failure of emancipation, and the ruin which it is alleged to have brought both upon the proprietors and the peasantry of the West Indies. These assumptions are made in ignorance of the financial history of the colonies prior to the abolition of slavery, and the embarrassed and ruined condition into which they had sunk when the change took place; and also of their actual state since emancipation and at the present time. If insolvent planters, ruined by slavery and their own reckless extravagance, have failed to carry on an expensive sugar or coffee cultivation, without the necessary capital to pay the wages of their laborers, and have consequently been compelled to relinquish their estates to mortgagees, or throw them out of cultivation altogether; if others have not succeeded in the attempt to make free men work without wages, and have injured their own or their employer's interests by driving the laborers from the plantations; and if the British government by suddenly destroying the monopoly of the British markets, which, through the whole history of slavery, the West India colonist enjoyed, and thus threw them into a competition with other producers which they were ill-prepared to enter upon, and which consummated with many the ruin which had been in progress for more than half a century; none of these things can with truth be classed among the results of emancipation. They have retarded the success of the great experiment, but have not prevented it. The triumphant results which it has already wrought out in many of the colonies, notwithstanding these several hinderances, and which it is now working out in all the others, prove that it is always both wise and safe to do what is just and right, and leave the consequences of such well-doing to the great and wise Disposer of all events. Most completely have the predictions of alarmists been falsified. It would be difficult to conceive a wider contrast between the condition of things as the planters imagined they would be (the idleness, riot, and debauchery, the ruin and desolation they anticipated as sure to follow the emancipation of the slaves) and those pictures of rural industry and

social comfort, improving agriculture and growing opulence, awaking intelligence and moral progress, which are exhibited in the extracts we have furnished. Slavery was the destroyer, emancipation is the restorer. The one tended always, through its history, to impoverishment and ruin; the other has awakened industry and confidence, and laid the foundation of prosperity and wealth.

None but dreaming enthusiasts could have expected that emancipation would at once restore the wasted substance of the planters, or suddenly, as if by miracle, advance the down-trodden negroes, debased and embruted by years of slavery, and excluded from mental and moral culture, to a high degree of civilization, intelligence, and virtue, such as can be found only among those who have enjoyed through life the advantages of education and civil and religious liberty. All that could be reasonably hoped for has been realized. The nation has been freed from the shame and guilt of sanctioning and perpetuating what the conscience of the people felt to be a monstrous system of oppression and crime, which reflected the darkest dishonor upon a Christian people and government. The dread of insurrection and servile war which, day and night, continually haunted the colonists while slavery existed, has given place to a sense of perfect security; so that instead of a considerable military force, supported by a formidable and expensive militia embodiment, to keep slaves in awe, a few native police, appointed chiefly from among the peasantry themselves, are found sufficient for the maintenance of peace and good order. A more profitable market has been opened for the employment of British shipping, and the consumption of British manufactures; while hordes of wretched, discontented slaves, robbed of all the rights of humanity, ground to the dust by oppression and cruelty, and rapidly wasting to depopulation, have been transformed into a satisfied, industrious, and improving peasantry, rapidly increasing in numbers, and grateful for the advantages which the philanthropy and the religion of the nation have conferred upon them.

If due attention had been given to the instruction of the juvenile portion of the emancipated people in the several colonies immediately after the abolition of slavery, there might have been even a better state of things than now exist. But none of the local governments, except that of British Guiana, have taken any effectual measures for establishing a general system of education. In all the other colonies this has yet to be done, and it may yet be a work of considerable time, as some of the influential men in the local parliaments have yet to be awakened to a sense of its importance, and are more afraid of the effects of education than of ignorance. It reflects

credit upon the colored class that, in the face of the manifold disadvantages under which they have labored, they exhibit unmistakable proofs of intellectual and moral progress. In two of the islands, where a system of responsible government similar to that of Canada has been adopted, its chief administration has been intrusted to colored men; while, in another, one of the same class has filled the highest office known in the colony, that of lieutenant governor. Several members of the privy council in Jamaica, and also of the legislative council, are Creoles of African descent, and one of pure African blood; while on the judicial bench and at the bar, in the halls of legislation, among the magistracy of the islands, in the pulpit and the medical faculty, among the most enterprising merchants, and wealthy planters and proprietors, they are to be found, exhibiting equal intelligence and ability with competitors of fairer hue, and practically refuting the pitiful and senseless slander which would brand the colored man as an inferior type of humanity, and exclude him from the common brotherhood of the human race.

ART. III-LAY REPRESENTATION.

THE Methodist Episcopal Church is again excited to some extent by the discussion of this subject. Another effort is in progress to effect a change by which laymen shall be admitted to a participation in its sovereignty and to seats in all its councils. About thirty-one years since an agitation, which had been kept up for seven or eight years, resulted in a secession, and the formation of the Methodist Protestant Church. That Church is an exemplification of the tendencies of the measures now contended for. If lay delegates are to act equally with the ministry upon all questions which concern the latter, as has been suggested by an eminent writer, they must go, not only into the general and annual conferences, but also into the councils by which the appointments are made. This will soon result in a dismissal of our episcopacy and presiding eldership, and the Methodist Protestant organization will be reproduced. Has the success of that Church been such as to warrant the adoption of its polity by the Methodist Episcopal Church? At its organization it claimed for its distinguishing principles the approval of "the people" of Methodism. It took away at once many thousands of our members, including some of the most wealthy, with a considerable number of our ministers, including some of the most eloquent and popular. It appropriated to itself some of our

best church edifices. And yet it numbers at this time only seventy thousand. Since its origin the increase of our Church, which was thought to be so much in need of reform, including the north and the south, amounts to one million one hundred and seventy-three thousand and fifty-seven, in addition to repairing the losses caused by the secession. Indeed, the prosperity of the Methodist Episcopal Church, judging it by comparison with that of the other Churches of the land, has been truly extraordinary. We do not refer to it for the purpose of boasting, but for the purpose of argument; we are compelled to do so. The attention of the reader is invited to a single statement upon this point. The ministers of the English national establishment, from which the Protestant Episcopal Church has sprung, were in this country as early as the year 1607; the Lutherans were here in 1630; the Baptists and Presbyterians in 1636; the first Methodists landed on the shores of this western world in 1760. So that the age of Protestant Episcopalianism in this country is two hundred and fifty-three years; that of Lutheranism two hundred and thirty years; that of the Baptists two hundred and twentyfour; that of Presbyterianism about the same; that of Methodism one hundred years. The Protestant Episcopal Church has one hundred and thirty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven communicants; the Lutheran one hundred and forty-six thousand and sixty-two; the Baptist denomination nine hundred and ninety-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-one; the Presbyterians, including both the Old and the New School organizations, four hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred and twenty; the Methodist Episcopal, including north and south, one million six hundred and seventy-three thousand and fifty-seven-lacking only nineteen thousand two hundred and forty-three of having as many communicants as those four leading denominations put together.

In order to estimate justly our comparative success, we must take into the account the advantages additional to antecedence with which three of those denominations were favored. The English Episcopalians were established by law in some of the colonies, and their successors, composing the Protestant Episcopal Church, are as a Church in possession of immense wealth, the result of grants made by the British crown in colonial times. The Presbyterians were backed by the Churches of that denomination in England; by the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which was, and is now, established by law; and by the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, which was, and is now, in receipt of bounty from the British crown. The Lutherans were reinforced by men and means from the continent of Europe, where, in several countries, they were established by law. They FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XII.—15