Jamaica received from Africa in the space of three hundred years 850,000 blacks; or, to fix on a more certain estimate, in one hundred and eight years (from 1700 to 1808) nearly 677,000; and yet that island does not now possess 380,000 blacks, free mulattos and slaves. The island of Cuba furnishes a more consoling result; it has 130,000 free men of colour, whilst Jamaica, on a total population half as great, contains only 35,000. On comparing the island of Cuba with Jamaica, the result of the comparison seems to be in favour of the Spanish legislation, and the morals of the inhabitants of Cuba. These comparisons demonstrate a state of things in the latter island more favorable to the physical preservation, and to the liberation of the blacks; but what a melancholy spectacle is that of Christian and civilized nations, discussing which of them has caused the fewest Africans to perish during the interval of three centuries, by reducing them to slavery! Much cannot be said in commendation of the treatment of the blacks in the southern parts of the United States; but there are degrees in the sufferings of the human species. The slave who has a hut and a family is less miserable than he who is purchased as if he formed part of a flock. The greater the number of slaves established with their families in dwellings which they believe to be their own property, the more rapidly will their numbers increase. The annual increase of the last ten years in the United States (without counting the manumission of 100,000), was twenty-six on a thousand, which produces a doubling in twenty-seven years. Now, if the slaves at Jamaica and Cuba had multiplied in the same proportion, those two islands (the former since 1795, and the latter since 1800) would possess almost their present population, without 400,000 blacks having been dragged from the coast of Africa, to Port-Royal and the Havannah. The mortality of the negroes is very different in the island of Cuba, as in all the West Indies, according to the nature of their treatment, the humanity of masters and overseers, and the number of negresses who can attend to the sick. There are plantations in which fifteen to eighteen per cent perish annually. I have heard it coolly discussed whether it were better for the proprietor not to subject the slaves to excessive labour and consequently to replace them less frequently, or to draw all the advantage possible from them in a few years, and replace them oftener by the acquisition of bozal negroes. Such are the reasonings of cupidity when man employs man as a beast of burden! It would be unjust to entertain a doubt that within fifteen years negro mortality has greatly diminished in the island of Cuba. Several proprietors have made laudable efforts to improve the plantation system.