Never was an experiment more severely tested, than that of emancipation in the West Indies. It seems as if God intended to prove to the world that the vitality of freedom was indestructible. In addition to the general state of insolvency to which slavery had reduced the planters, and the difficulties attending the commencement of all great changes in the social system, there were an unusual number of fortuitous calamities. In 1843, an earthquake made dreadful devastation in the Leeward Islands. Out of one hundred and seventy-two sugar mills in Antigua, one hundred and seventeen were demolished, or nearly so. A third of the houses in St. John's were flung down, and the remainder too much injured to be habitable. Then came a hurricane which blew down churches, uprooted trees, destroyed a great many houses and huts, did immense damage to the sugar canes. And the crowning misfortune of all, was a series of severe droughts, year after year. Between 1840 and 1849, there were only two seasons when the crops did not suffer terribly for rain. Under such a combination of disasters the anxieties and sufferings of West India proprietors must have been very severe indeed; and there, as elsewhere, there were plenty of people ready and eager to attribute all their troubles to emancipation. Yet such is the recuperative power of freedom, that Commissioners who went to Guiana in 1850, to inquire into the condition of things, reported: "Every symptom of change for the better is apparent. Cultivation has extended and crops increased. The laboring population are working more steadily, and evince signs of speedy improvement." In the first part of this Tract it has been mentioned that in twelve years, during slavery, the laboring class in eleven of the islands had _decreased_ more than 60,000. In the twelve years following emancipation, in ten Colonies there was an _increase_ of more than 54,000. That fact alone is a significant indication of the vast change for the better in their condition. The following statistics I copy from an able article in the _Edinburgh Review_, April, 1859. They are quoted from the Colonial Reports:-- _Barbadoes._ In ten years, "between 1842 and 1852, increase of sugar exported, is 27,240 hogheads." The Report for 1851, states, "There has been more sugar shipped from this island this year, than in any one year since it has been peopled; and it is a remarkable fact that there will be more _laborers_' sugar made this year, than previously. By laborers' sugar is meant that raised by the negroes on their own patches of ground, and sent to the proprietor's mill for manufacture." The Report for 1853 announces "vast increase in trade. So far the success of cultivation by free labor is unquestionable." Report for 1858: "A great increase in the value of the exports." "The large proportion of land acquired by the laboring classes furnishes striking evidence of their industry."