Suppose the fixed capital sunk on a coffee or cotton plantation to be 5,000_l._, and that sunk on an adjoining sugar-plantation to be 25,000_l._, while each possesses the same number of negroes. One of these from each plantation, of precisely similar capability and character, demands his freedom. The first finds there is to be an addition of but 10_l._ to his price; not from inferiority of character or skill, but from the accidental circumstance of his living on a plantation where the amount of fixed capital is small. The man from the latter, the sugar-estate, finds it, as before stated, so high as 150_l._, making the difficulty of obtaining freedom perhaps double, as compared with his companion and equal. The same argument would apply even to two estates, which both produced sugar, provided the buildings and machinery on the one were better and more complete than that of the other, or the land more productive. Thus, the more extensively that machinery has been introduced to facilitate and lighten labour, the more will it be to the prejudice of the slaves. When the supply of labourers is short, to introduce the most advanced and highest description of machinery is all-important and desirable, and the main step to advance a colony to prosperity. But in the new measure proposed, this is checked at once, because no proprietor would think of an outlay, when it could be withdrawn in no other way than by pittances wrung from his best slaves, in their eagerness for freedom. In contemplating these several facts, can there be a moment’s hesitation in regard to the discontent created? Let us imagine a serviceable man on a sugar-plantation applying for his freedom. He has formed in his own mind an estimate of what he ought to pay, and he betakes himself to the appraiser, with the money in his hand. To his astonishment he is asked a sum far beyond his means of payment; he cannot comprehend the cause; and no alternative remains to him but to go back and brood over his disappointment. When he finds his long-cherished hopes utterly frustrated; when, too, he perceives a worthless fellow, distinguished only for idleness and debauchery, now sporting and enjoying himself at liberty all day long, perhaps laughing at the deserving individual who remains in servitude; when he sees his acquaintance on some neighbouring plantation attain his freedom, merely from his chancing to live on an estate where less machinery was used, will he, in common reason, return to his duty a contented man? Is he not goaded on to renounce his better qualities, when he is thus made to feel, that they are insuperable impediments to the attainment of his natural wishes? He discovers that discontent is his surest remedy; that he has only to display the sullenness which he actually feels; that, in one word, he has but to become a bad subject, in order to obtain liberty the more speedily.