But if freedom is better than slavery, she will be sure to vindicate her superiority in due time, and is little beholden to overzealous friends who cannot be content meanwhile that present facts shall tell their own story, whatever it be. There is much, very much, in the present condition of Jamaica, to cause an honest man to think twice before setting it down as testifying favorably for emancipation, or before dismissing it as not testifying unfavorably against it. And first, all rose-colored accounts of the Jamaica negro may be summarily dismissed. He is not a proficient in industry, economy, intelligence, morality, or religion, but, though rising, is yet far down on the scale in all these respects. Nor is it true that all his peculiar vices are to be referred to slavery. The sensuality, avarice, cunning, and litigiousness of the Creole[1] negro correspond exactly with Du Chaillu's and Livingstone's descriptions of the native African.[2] But on the other hand, the accounts of these travellers bear witness to a freshness and independence of spirit in the native African, which has been crushed out of the enslaved negro. Several missionaries have gone from Jamaica to Africa, and they speak with delight of the manliness and vigor of character which they find among the blacks there, as contrasted with the abjectness of those who have been oppressed by slavery and infected with its sly and cringing vices. Although the faults of the negro, except this servile abjectness, may not have been created by slavery, yet slavery and heathenism are so identical in character and tendency that there is scarcely a heathen vice, and, as we have found of late to our sorrow, scarcely a heathen cruelty, which slavery would not create if it did not exist, and of course scarcely one already existing which it does not foster and intensify. The unsocial selfishness of the emancipated black man, his untrustworthiness and want of confidence in others, are traits that his race may have brought with it from Africa, but they have been nourished by slavery, until it seems almost impossible to eradicate them. I am happy to say, however, that the young people who have been subjected to the best influences, exhibit already the virtues of public spirit and faithfulness to a very gratifying degree. The trouble is that they are a minority of the whole. And until the character of the negroes can be so elevated as to bring them to put some confidence in one another, they may improve in individual industry, as they manifestly are improving, but the benefits resulting from combined action can be enjoyed only in a very limited measure. Even now two black men can hardly own so much as a small sugar mill in common. They are almost sure to quarrel over the division of the profits. The consequence is, that, whereas they might have neighborhood mills and sugar works of the best quality at much less expense, now, where the small settlers raise the cane, each man must have his little