show that the labourer gives very little labour for the money he
receives; and that, as compared with the work done, wages are really
far higher than in any part of the Union. Like the Fingo of Southern
Africa, he can obtain from a little patch of land all that is
indispensably necessary for his subsistence, and he will do little
more work than is needed for accomplishing that object. The
consequence of this is that potatoes sell for six cents a pound, eggs
from three to five cents each, milk at eighteen cents a quart, and
corn-meal at twelve or fourteen dollars a barrel; and yet there are
now more than a hundred thousand of these small proprietors, being
almost one for every three people on the island. All cultivators, they
yet produce little to sell, and the consequence of this is seen in the
fact that the mass of the flour, rice, corn, peas, butter, lard,
herrings, &c. needed for consumption requires to be imported, as well
as all the lumber, although millions of acres of timber are to be
found among the unappropriated lands of the island.

It is impossible to read Mr. Bigelow's volume, without arriving at the
conclusion that the freedom granted to the negro has had little effect
except that of enabling him to live at the expense of the planter so
long as any thing remained. Sixteen years of freedom did not appear to
its author to have "advanced the dignity of labour or of the labouring
classes one particle," while it had ruined the proprietors of the
land; and thus great damage had been done to the one class without
benefit of any kind to the other. From a statistical table published
in August last, it appears, says the _New York Herald_, that since
1846--

"The number of sugar-estates on the island that have been totally
abandoned amounts to one hundred and sixty-eight, and the number