Rev. Mr. Bleby says: "Before I left Jamaica (which was previous to 1848), no less than 50,000 colored people had become freeholders, as the fruit of their own industry. We are told these people will not work. How did they obtain these freeholds then? Some of them have mahogany bedsteads and side-boards in their houses. How do they get such furniture, except as the result of their own toil?" JAMAICA AFTER 1846. Now we are coming upon sad times. It has been stated that the West Indies had the monopoly of sugar in the British market, at an immense cost to the consumers. This had frequently called out remonstrances from the British people; and in 1846 government repealed the tariff, which excluded other countries from competition. The result was a sudden and great fall in the price of sugar. "In 1840, sugar sold in bond at 49s. a cwt. ($11.86.) In 1848, it had sunk to 23s. 5d. ($5.65.") The result was many millions of dollars less in the receipts for their crops; and that was far from being the worst feature in the case. Business in the West Indies had for generations been carried on upon credit; and now credit was gone. The writer in the _Edinburgh_ thus states the case: "The vast capital requisite for the production of sugar had been annually advanced by merchants in London, on the security of the crops. But, of course, when it was known that sugar had fallen so enormously in value, the merchants took fright, and the credit of the planter was gone. He was embarked in transactions on which a vast capital had been laid out, and which required a vast capital to carry them on; and capital he could not obtain." The suffering was dreadful. Thousands of families accustomed to the luxuries of wealth were reduced to poverty, without any of the habits that would have enabled them to bear it bravely. Their cry of distress resounded through the world. Pro-slavery presses in England and America exultingly proclaimed, "Behold the effects of emancipation?" and people without examining the subject, echoed the railing accusation. But one very important circumstance was overlooked; viz., that when this cry of distress arose, _slavery had been abolished fourteen years, and the apprenticeship had been abolished ten years_. By a little examination they might have ascertained that, previous to the repeal of the tariff, things were going on prosperously in the West Indies; which is sufficiently indicated by the fact that just before the blow came, they had been making an outlay to produce larger crops; a circumstance which rendered the blow all the heavier. Even Jamaica, with all her wretched mismanagement and financial disorders, was _beginning_ to be prosperous, in consequence of emancipation, as we have shown.