Emancipation began there in 1838 and was accomplished through the agitations of Exeter Hall. Jamaica is one of the most fertile spots on the earth’s surface; and tilled under the direction of Englishmen, it was a garden spot, producing vast quantities of coffee and sugar, yielding a large revenue to the government. Indolence followed emancipation, and the once beautiful plantations became waste places. Poverty and want prevailed, revenues failed, and the parliament appointed committees to investigate. The evidence taken showed that the negroes had quit work, the plantations had grown up in bush, and they had squatted in the forests and along the streams. The Exeter Hall Society made many excuses and explanations, and all failing to account for the negro’s degeneracy, they finally urged that he be given the right to vote, in order to encourage him; and under the tireless exertions of these fanatics, parliament enacted a universal suffrage law, with a proviso that the voter should own some real estate, but without specifying the amount. The land had been abandoned and had little value, and the Exeter Hall Society bought a tract of about 1,200 acres, and gave it in small parcels to the negroes until 50,000 of them were qualified to vote under the law, which was not passed anticipating such a result. The negroes then had a majority over the whites, and speedily took charge of the government of the island, and nearly all white men left their property and the country. “That Jamaica,” says a British official, “was a land of wealth, rivaling the East in its means of riches—nay, excelling it as a market for capital, as a place in which money might be turned; and that it now is a spot on the earth almost more poverty stricken than any other, so much is known to almost all men.” The little island of Barbadoes contained 160,000 negroes and about 300 white men, and as there was no waste land for the negroes to squat upon, and the white men took care that they obtained no land so as to qualify, that island has remained a highly cultivated, prosperous and happy country. These last named islands furnish striking contrasts, and the islands of Jamaica and Hayti are irrefragable proofs that unrestricted negro suffrage and negro government bring desolation and ruin to both races; and there is no instance to the contrary in all of the emancipation colonies, including the Hispano-American colonies. San Domingo, once a Spanish colony, and in which emancipation had taken place, is naturally the most fertile of these islands, and was abandoned by Spain. During General Grant’s term of office, a commission was sent there to examine this island and its resources, with a view of appropriating it, and establishing a negro state, by emigration from the United States. Senator Sumner, the leading exponent of abolition, defeated its ratification in the Senate, well knowing the negro’s incapacity for self-government.