Often it happens in human affairs, that ends the most beneficial must be obtained by painful and distressing means. Inveterate diseases can rarely be cured without disgusting or painful remedies. But how gratifying is the consideration, that in the present instance, not only is our ultimate point the seat of security and happiness, but the way by which we travel to it is a way of pleasantness and peace. Its effects cannot be produced at once, but we are all the while tending to their complete enjoyment, with an uniform and uninterrupted course. The Slaves will daily grow happier, the planters richer. The whole will be like the progress of vegetation; the effects are not at first perceptible, but the great principle, operating in ten thousand instances, will gradually change the whole face of things, and substitute fertility and beauty in the place of barrenness and desolation. And all this happy transformation we anticipate, not from carrying into execution the speculations of the most intelligent and able men, but by quitting the ways of injustice and cruelty, and by entering on those happier paths, which, by the gracious ordination of Heaven, are, on the long run, ever found to lead to safety, prosperity, and happiness. It may be right to state one consideration, which may suggest the probability, that even from the first the island stock of Slaves may not be found inadequate to the increasing demands to be made on it. [Sidenote: Waste of labour wherever slavery prevails.] It is proved by indisputable reasoning, as well as by uniform experience, that where slavery exists, there is always an immense waste of labour; there is a tendency to accomplish, by mere force, all which is elsewhere effected by machinery. How far this has been the case in the West Indies, is pointed out by various authors, and particularly with great ability, and perfect knowledge of the subject, by a late writer.[44] In order, therefore, to form a just estimate of the means of cultivating the West Indies, after the abolition shall have taken place, we must superadd, to a population gradually increasing, and advancing so much the more rapidly from the removal of the obstacles to breeding, and the positive causes of increase which have been already stated, that great and incalculable increase in the efficiency of the force actually employed, which will be effected by its becoming the immediate and pressing interest of the proprietors to economise in the labour of their Slaves, and to avail themselves of all the means by which labour may be abridged, and the same produce may be raised by fewer hands. [Sidenote: Immediate abolition preferable to gradual, both in the West Indies and in Africa.]