THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.


VOL. IX.--MARCH, 1862.--NO. LIII.



THE FRUITS OF FREE LABOR IN THE SMALLER ISLANDS OF THE BRITISH WEST
INDIES.


The emancipation of an enslaved race seems, at first thought, a most
uncertain and perilous undertaking. To do away with inherited and
constantly strengthening tendencies toward irresponsibility and
idleness,--to substitute the pleasure of activity or the distant good
from industry for the very palpable influence of compulsion,--to implant
forethought and alertness and ingenuity, where, before, labor was stolid
and sulky and unthinking,--to confer the habit of self-dependence and
the courage for unknown tasks on a people timid, childish, and
dependent,--to teach self-control in place of the custom of control by
masters, or by caprice and passion,--in a word, to make a free man out
of a born slave,--appears at first sight the most difficult task which
any legislator or reformer could ever attempt.

Leaving out of view all possible moral changes which might be induced by
time and patient labor on such a being, we should say beforehand that at
least economically--that is, regarding the production for the wants of
the world by the freed man--the experiment of emancipation would prove,