Nevertheless, he it was that was branded as the tyrant and the destroyer of morals and of life; and public opinion--the public opinion of the same people who had absorbed so large a portion of the product of negro labour--drove the government to the measure of releasing the slave from compulsory service, and appropriating a certain amount to the payment, first, of the mortgage debts due in England, and, second, of the owner, who, even if he found his land delivered to him free of incumbrance, was in most cases left without a shilling to enable him to carry on the work of his plantation. The slaves were set free, but there existed no capital to find them employment, and from the moment of emancipation it became almost impossible to borrow money on mortgage security. The consequences are seen in the extensive abandonment of land and the decline of its value. Any quantity of it may be purchased, prepared for cultivation, and as fine as any in the island, for five dollars an acre, while other land, far more productive than any in New England, may be had at from fifty cents to one dollar. With the decline in the value of land the labourer tends toward barbarism, and the reason of this may be found on a perusal of the following paragraph:-- "They have no new manufactories to resort to when they are in want of work; no unaccustomed departments of mechanical or agricultural labour are open to receive them, to stimulate their ingenuity and reward their industry. When they know how to ply the hoe, pick the coffee-berry, and tend the sugar-mills, they have learned almost all the industry of the island can teach them. If, in the sixteen years during which the negroes have enjoyed their freedom, they have made less progress in civilization than their philanthropic champions have promised or anticipated, let the want I have suggested receive some consideration. It may be that even a white peasantry would degenerate under such influences. Reverse this, and when the negro has cropped his sugar or his coffee, create a demand for his labour in the mills and manufactories of which nature has invited the establishment on this island, and before another sixteen years would elapse the world would probably have some new facts to assist them in estimating the natural capabilities of the negro race, of more efficiency in the hands of the philanthropist than all the appeals which he has ever been able to address to the hearts or the consciences of men." _Bigelow's Jamaica_, p. 156.