He therefore tried _rewards_,
which immediately roused the most indolent to exertion. His experiments
ended in _regular wages_, which the industry he had excited among his
whole gang enabled him to pay. Here was a natural, efficient, and
profitable reciprocity of interests. His people became contented; his
mind was freed from that perpetual vexation and that load of anxiety,
which are inseparable from the vulgar system, and in little more than
four years the annual neat clearance of his property _was more than
tripled_." Again, in another part of the work, "Mr. Steele's plan may no
doubt receive some improvements, which his great age obliged him to
decline"--"but it is perfect, as far as it goes. _To advance above 300
field-negroes, who had never before moved without the whip, to a state
nearly resembling that of contented, honest and industrious servants,
and, after paying for their labour, to triple in a few years the annual
neat clearance of the estate_,--these, I say, were great achievements
for an aged man in an untried field of improvement, pre-occupied by
inveterate vulgar prejudice. He has indeed accomplished all that was
really doubtful or difficult in the undertaking, and perhaps all that is
at present desirable either for owner or slave; for he has ascertained
as a fact, what was before only known to the learned as a theory, and to
practical men as a paradox, that _the paying of slaves for their labour
does actually produce a very great profit to their owners_.
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