In 1792, a committee of the Jamaica House of Assembly reported that "the abolition of the slave trade" must be followed by the "total ruin and depopulation of the island." "Suppose," said they, "A planter settling with a gang of 100 African slaves, all bought in the prime of life. Out of this gang he will be able at first to put to work, on an average, from 80 to 90 labourers. The committee will further suppose that they increase in number; yet, in the course of twenty years, this gang will be so far reduced, in point of strength, that he will not be able to work more than 30 to 40. It will therefore require a supply of 50 new negroes to keep up his estate, and that not owing to cruelty, or want of good management on his part; on the contrary, the more humane he is, the greater the number of old people and young he will have on his estate."--_Macpherson_, iv. 256. In reference to this extraordinary reasoning, Macpherson says, very correctly-- "With submission, it may be asked if people become superannuated in twenty years after being in _the prime of life_; and if the children of all these superannuated people are in a state of infancy? If one-half of these slaves are women, (as they ought to be, if the planter looks to futurity,) will not those fifty women, in twenty years, have, besides younger children, at least one hundred grown up to young men and women, capable of partaking the labour of their parents, and replacing the loss by superannuation or death,-- as has been the case with the working people in all other parts of the world, from the creation to this day?" To this question there can be but one reply: Man has always increased in numbers where he has been well fed, well clothed, and reasonably worked; and wherever his numbers have decreased, it has been because of a deficiency of food and clothing and an excess of work. It was at this period that the Maroon war was again in full activity, and so continued until 1796, when it was terminated by the employment of bloodhounds to track the fugitives, who finally surrendered, and were transported to Lower Canada, whence they were soon after sent to Sierra Leone. From 1792 to 1799, the _net_ import was 74,741; and if it continued at the same rate to 1808, the date of the abolition of the trade, the number imported in eighteen years would be nearly 150,000; and yet the number of slaves increased, in that period, from 250,000 to only 323,827--being an annual average increase of about 4500, and exhibiting a loss of fifty per cent. In the thirty-four years, 1775-1808, the number of negroes added to the population of the island, by importation, would seem to have been more than 260,000, and within about 50,000 of the number that, a quarter of a century later, was emancipated.