The _Edinburgh Review_ concludes its array of evidence, by saying: "A long and thorough investigation of the case has borne us irresistibly to the conclusion that, merely as a dry question of _economy_, emancipation has _paid_; that it was an act of prudence, for which we, as a nation of shopkeepers, need not blush before that golden god, whom we are thought to worship so eagerly. Slavery and monopoly were bearing the West Indies to ruin. Under free labor and free trade they are rising to wealth. They are yearly enriching us more and more with the wealth of their fertile soil. Instead of being the plague of statesmen and the disgrace of England, they are becoming invaluable possessions of the British crown. Never did any deed of any nation show more signally that to do right is the truest _prudence_, than the great deed of Emancipation." CHAPTER V. JAMAICA.[6] I have placed Jamaica in a section by itself, because emancipation has there worked less prosperously than elsewhere, and the reasons for it need some explanation. I have already mentioned causes which were bringing all the West Indies to ruin, previous to emancipation. These operated as powerfully in Jamaica as elsewhere. They were cursed with the same coercive system, which seems ingeniously contrived to make laborers lazy and shiftless, and to array them in the most stubborn opposition to their employers. There was among the white population the same haughty contempt for useful occupations, which inevitably brings extravagance and dissipation in its train. There was the same expensive retinue of attorneys, managers, and bookkeepers, with their mistresses, servants, and horses, to be supported out of the estate. There was the same neglect and fraud, arising from the absence of proprietors; for "nine-tenths of the land in Jamaica was owned by absentees, mostly residing in England." There was the same injudicious system of apportioning the soil into large plantations, to the utter exclusion of small farmers; for slavery always renders the existence of a middling class impossible. There was the same desperate game of borrowing and mortgaging, ending in universal insolvency. Mr. Bigelow, one of the editors of the _New York Evening Post_, visited Jamaica in 1850, and carefully examined into the state of things. He says: "The island was utterly insolvent the day the Emancipation Bill passed. Nearly every estate was mortgaged for more than it was worth, and was liable for more interest than it could possibly pay. It will not be disputed by any, who are at all informed on the subject, that the whole real estate under culture in Jamaica, in 1832, would not have sold for enough to pay off encumbrances. This fact must have been disclosed sooner or later, even if slavery had been permitted to continue. Bankruptcy was inevitable; and the rapid depreciation of real estate would, of course, have been one of the first fruits of such a catastrophe. The Emancipation Act did