from whom alone he heard words of heavenly comfort or of human sympathy, condemned to a lifetime of unrequited labor--it must not be forgotten that he could not fail to come out from this school of supreme dishonesty with its lessons so deeply imprinted on his mind that not one generation or two would eradicate them, and that of all others he would be most inclined to practise them upon the white man, whom, having always known as a plunderer, he was only too glad to have an opportunity to plunder in return. Had Jamaica been occupied by a resident proprietary, attached by hereditary affection and pride to the soil, elevated by family sanctities, connected by something like kindly ties with their bondmen, and regarded by these in turn with something of affectionate fealty, in that case, although it is not likely that the ruin of the plantations could have been averted, it might have been delayed and mitigated. Mr. Underhill indeed goes further, and quotes the testimony of an overseer in the west of the island, that he knew of no estate managed, since emancipation, by a resident owner, which had not continued profitable. But a class of hirelings, debased in morals by the cruel selfishness of their employers, tempted almost irresistibly to unfaithfulness by the five thousand miles of ocean between them and their principals, and to recklessness and tyranny by the uncertain tenure of their places, and connected with the slaves by none but the grossest and most sordid ties--such management, in such a crisis, when the ties of old subjection were suddenly dissolved, and the negro stood independent, and knowing his independence, before his masters, would have ruined any country under the sun. As to the present condition of the emancipated blacks, it is certain that the 7,340 freeholds which had been acquired in 1840, two years after emancipation, have considerably increased in number. I never heard of a negro freehold being given up,[8] while I did know of continual purchases of land by the blacks, either to make new holdings or to extend old ones.