The conditions under which the trial of free labor is now carried on in South Carolina, are unparalleled in history. Those who are familiar with the results of emancipation in the French and English colonies, will find few points of comparison between those results and the present workings of freedom on the Sea Islands. Consider that at no previous time, and in no other country, has there ever been an immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery. France, in the frenzy of the Revolution, declared that slavery was abolished, but was forced to reestablish it under the Consulate; and, during the half century which followed before the complete and final emancipation of the slaves in 1848, we find continually acts and measures adopted which gradually paved the way to this ultimate success. England, too, after the abolition of the slave trade, made repeated efforts to ameliorate the condition of the slave population of her colonies, and when, in 1833, the Act of Emancipation was passed, it was found that, while declaring all slaves on English soil to be instantly free, it made provisions for transforming them into apprenticed laborers. In South Carolina, emancipation, proclaimed by the guns of Admiral Du Pont, was instant, unlooked for, and without conditions. However ardently it may have been desired by the slaves themselves, they surely could not have expected it, at a time when the belief universally prevailed among the planters that the forts which defended their islands were impregnable.