injured, the property of their masters must be injured also. Forced labour, again, sends many of them to the sick-houses. Here is, at any rate, a loss of their working time. But it drives them also occasionally to run away, and sometimes to destroy themselves. Here again is a loss of their working time and of property into the bargain. _Forced labour_, then, is one of those striking parts in the West Indian husbandry, in which we see a _constant source of loss_ to those who adopt it; and may we not speak, and yet with truth, as unfavourably of some of the other striking parts in the same system? What shall we say, first, to that injurious disproportion of the articles of croppage with the wants of the estates, which makes little or no provision of food for the labourers (_the very first to be cared for_), but leaves these to be fed by articles to be bought three thousand miles off in another country, let the markets there be ever so high, or the prices ever so unfavourable, at the time? What shall we say, again, to that obstinate and ruinous attachment to old customs, in consequence of which even acknowledged improvements are almost forbidden to be received? How generally has the introduction of the plough been opposed in the West Indies, though both the historians of Jamaica have recommended the use of it, and though it has been proved that _one plough_ with _two sets of horses_ to relieve each other, would turn up as much land _in a day, as one hundred Negroes_ could with their hoes! Is not the hoe also continued in earthing up the canes there, when Mr. Botham proved, more than thirty years ago, that _two_ men would do more with the East Indian shovel at that sort of work in a day, than _ten_ Negroes with the former instrument? So much for _unprofitable instruments_ of husbandry; a few words now on _unprofitable modes of employment_. It seems, first, little less than infatuation, to make Negroes carry baskets of dung upon their heads, basket after basket, to the field. I do not mention this so much as an intolerable hardship upon those who have to perform it, as an improvident waste of strength and time. Why are not horses, or mules, or oxen, and carts or other vehicles of convenience, used oftener on such occasions? I may notice also that cruel and most disadvantageous mode of employment of making Negroes collect grass for the cattle, by picking it by the hand blade by blade. Are no artificial grasses to be found in our islands, and is the existence of the scythe unknown there? But it is of no use to dwell longer upon this subject. The whole system is a ruinous one from the beginning to the end. And from whence does such a system arise? It has its origin in _slavery_ alone. It is practised no where but in the land of ignorance and slavery. Slavery indeed, or rather the despotism which supports slavery, has no compassion, and it is one of its characteristics _never to think of sparing the sinews of the wretched creature called a slave_.