if circumstances should permit and encourage such a procedure. Mr.
Steele thought, after mature consideration, that he could accomplish all
these objects, and he resolved to make the experiments gradually upon
his own estates.

At the end of the year 1783 he put the first of these questions to
trial. "I took," says he, "the whips and all power of arbitrary
punishment from all the overseers and their white servants, which
occasioned _my chief overseer to resign_, and I soon dismissed all his
deputies, who _could not bear the loss of their whips_; but at the same
time, that a proper subordination and obedience to lawful orders and
duty should be preserved, I created a _magistracy out of the Negroes_
themselves, and appointed a court or jury of the elder Negroes or
head-men for trial and punishment of all casual offences, (and these
courts were always to be held in my presence, or in that of my new
superintendant,) which court _very soon grew respectable_. Seven of
these men being of the rank of drivers in their different departments,
were also constituted _rulers_, as magistrates over all the gang, and
were charged to see at all times that nothing should go wrong in the
plantations; but that on all necessary occasions they should assemble
and consult together how any such wrong should be immediately rectified;
and I made it known to all the gangs, that the authority of these rulers
should supply the absence or vacancy of an overseer in all cases; they
making daily or occasional reports of all occurrences to the proprietor
or his delegate for his approbation or his orders."

It appears that Mr. Steele was satisfied with this his first step, and
he took no other for some time. At length, in about another year, he
ventured upon the second. He "tried whether he could not obtain the
labour of his Negroes by _voluntary_ means instead of the old method by