fact they were at present in a state of increase; for that the births in
that island, at this moment, exceeded the deaths by one thousand or eleven
hundred per annum. Barbadoes, Nevis, Antigua, and the Bermudas, were, like
Jamaica, lessening their decrease, and holding forth an evident and
reasonable expectation of a speedy state of increase by natural population.
But allowing the number of negros even to decrease for a time, there were
methods which would ensure the welfare of the West India islands. The lands
there might be cultivated by fewer hands, and this to greater advantage to
the proprietors and to this country, by the produce of cinnamon, coffee,
and cotton, than by that of sugar. The produce of the plantations might
also be considerably increased, even in the case of sugar, with less hands
than were at present employed, if the owners of them would but introduce
machines of husbandry. Mr. Long himself, long resident as a planter, had
proved, upon his own estate, that the plough, though so little used in the
West Indies, did the service of a hundred slaves, and caused the same
ground to produce three hogsheads of sugar, which, when cultivated by
slaves, would only produce two. The division of work, which, in free and
civilized countries, was the grand source of wealth, and the reduction of
the number of domestic servants, of whom not less than from twenty to forty
were kept in ordinary families, afforded other resources for this purpose.
But, granting that all these suppositions should be unfounded, and that
every one of these substitutes should fail for a time, the planters would
be indemnified, as is the case in all transactions of commerce, by the
increased price of their produce in the British market. Thus, by contending
against the abolition, they were defeated in every part of the argument.
But he would never give up the point, that the number of the slaves could
be kept up by natural population, and without any dependence whatever on
the Slave-trade. He therefore called upon the house again to abolish it as
a criminal waste of life--it was utterly unnecessary--he had proved it so
by documents contained in the report. The merchants of Liverpool, indeed,