and customs_." Discussions therefore of this sort became too unpopular
to be continued. It was therefore not till Mr. Steele found, that he had
no hope of assistance from this Society, and that he was obliged to
depend solely upon himself, that he put in force the remainder of his
general plan. He had already (in 1783), as we stated some time ago,
abolished arbitrary punishment and instituted a Negro-magistracy; and
since that time (in 1785) he had adopted the system of _working by the
piece_. But the remaining part of his plan went the length of _altering
the condition_ of the slaves themselves; and it is of this alteration, a
most important one (in 1789), that I am now to speak.

Mr. Steele took the hint for the particular mode of improving the
condition of his slaves, which I am going to describe, from the practice
of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors in the days of Villainage, which, he says,
was "the most wise and excellent mode of civilizing savage slaves."
There were in those days three classes of villains. The first or lowest
consisted of villains in gross, who were alienable at pleasure. The
second of villains regardent, who were _adscripti glebae_, or attached
as freehold property to the soil. And the third or last of copyhold
bondmen, who had tenements of land, for which they were bound to pay in
services. The villains first mentioned, or those of the lowest class,
had all these gradations to pass through, from the first into the
second, and from the second into the third, before they could become
free men. This was the model, from which Mr. Steele resolved to borrow,
when he formed his plan for changing the condition of his slaves. Me did
not, however, adopt it throughout, but he chose out of it what he
thought would be most suitable to his purpose, and left the rest. We may
now see what the plan was, when put together, from the following
account.