to whom the consignment is of considerable value. It is immaterial what the debt is, an estate in possession of a mortgagee is generally made to pay full commissions to the attorney employed for it. In justice to all parties the most is to be made of the property, and it is soon found that the negroes upon it are not equal to the returns it is capable of making, consequently hired negroes are added to the plantation-gangs, to plant, weed, and take off the crop; the works are extended, to be adequate to the proposed increase; more stock, more carts are bought, more white people employed. To keep pace with these grand designs, _the poor plantation negroes are of course overworked_. What is the result? A great deal of sugar and rum is made, to the credit as well as profit of the attorney, and by which the merchant is benefited, as the consignments are augmented; but six per cent. interest on the principal, six per cent. on that interest by compound arithmetic become principal, six per cent. commissions, with the contingent charges for labour, improvements, stores, etc., absorb the whole produce, and the planter daily sinks under an accumulating debt, till he is completely ruined. _The greater the distress, the more the attorney fattens_; in a war, for instance, a considerable additional benefit occurs; he becomes lumber-merchant, and having the rum of the estate at his command, and perhaps a little sugar, though in the latter article he is usually restricted, as the disposal of it in the island would interfere with the loading of ships and consignments, he purchases wholesale cargoes, and retails them out to the estate at a large profit. Staves bought by the attorney at £18 per thousand, have been known to be sold to the estate for £45 per thousand; and the cart belonging to the property has carried the rum to pay for them. _It is well known that the rum made upon an estate will seldom pay its contingent expenses, and that frequently bills are drawn on Great Britain to the amount of one thousand pounds, and sometimes two thousand pounds, for the excess of the contingencies over and above the amount of the sale of the rum_: here the attorney finds another avenue of amassing for himself. Settling the excess from his own means, he appropriates the bills which it enabled him to draw to the purchase of the remainder of a cargo of negroes, after the best have been culled at the rate of from ninety to ninety-five pounds per head: these inferior negroes he disposes of to his dependent overseers, jobbers, doctors, tradesmen, distillers, and book-keepers, at forty or fifty pounds a head profit; nor is it without example, that the very estates on the credit of which some of the bills are drawn, have been supplied with negroes in the same manner, and at the same rate. This manoeuvre indeed is ventured only on estates of minors, whose trustees are merchants in