"In St. Vincent, the returns for 1857 show that no less than 8209 persons were then living in their own houses, built by themselves since emancipation. Within the last twelve years, from ten to twelve thousand acres have been brought under cultivation by small proprietors, owning from one to five acres, and growing arrow-root, provisions, and minor articles for export. The statistical returns from which I gather these figures further state that _there are no paupers on the island_." "In Trinidad, there is, unquestionably, a certain amount of idleness and vagabondism among the Creole laborers; but I see no evidence that these vices exist in larger proportion among them, than they would exist among any other class of laborers similarly situated. In leaving the estates, the great majority were actuated by a desire to better their circumstances, and to lead a more independent life. Land was cheap and abundant, and they preferred to have their own property, rather than labor at low wages in a condition of precarious servitude. Added to this, the course of the planters contributed greatly to the very evil which they dreaded, and from which they afterward so severely suffered. Instead of endeavoring by liberal terms to induce the laborers to remain on the estates, they commenced, shortly after emancipation, a system of giving less wages, and exacting more work; and when the laborers retired from estate to field work, they were summarily ejected from the houses and lands they occupied on the estates, and their provision grounds were destroyed. The emancipated laborers had, therefore, no resource left but to separate themselves from the planting interest. Five-sixths of them became proprietors of from one to ten acres, which they now own, and which they grow in provisions for themselves and families. To supply other wants, they give casual labor to the estates; but they are free of the estates, and can work for whom they deem the best paymaster. If any doubts that a very large number, a very astonishing number, of the emancipated laborers have become independent proprietors, let him look at the score of villages built up since abolition, and so thickly scattered throughout the cultivated districts of Trinidad that it would be superfluous in me to point them out."