" The next year Mr. Steele made similar
experiments. Success attended him again; and from this time task-work,
or the _voluntary_ system, became the general practice of the estate.
Mr. Steele did not proceed to put the third question to trial till the
year 1789. The Society of Arts, which he had instituted in 1781, had
greatly disappointed him. Some of the members, looking back to the
discussions which had taken place on the subject of Slavery, began to
think that they had gone too far as slaveholders in their admissions.
They began to insinuate, "that they had been taken in, under the
specious appearance of promoting the arts, manufactures, and commerce of
Barbadoes, _to promote dangerous designs against its established laws
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.
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