He has then all the stimulus of a free man, and he is,
therefore, _during such work_ (though unhappily no longer) really, and
in effect, and to all intents and purposes, as much _a free labourer_ as
any person in any part of the globe. But if he be a free man, while he
is working for himself, and if in that capacity he does twice or thrice
more work than when he works for his master, it follows, that it would
be cheaper for his master to employ him as a free labourer, or that the
labour of free men in the West Indies would be cheaper than the labour
of slaves.
That West Indian slaves, when they work for themselves, do much more in
a given time than when they work for their masters, is a fact so
notorious in the West Indies, that no one who has been there would deny
it. Look at Long's History of Jamaica, The Privy Council Report,
Gaisford's Essay on the good Effects of the Abolition of the Slave
Trade, and other books. Let us hear also what Dr. Dickson, the editor
of Mr. Steele, and who resided so many years in Barbadoes, says on this
subject, for what he says is so admirably expressed that I cannot help
quoting it. "The planters," says he, "do not take the right way to make
human beings put forth their strength. They apply main force where they
should apply moral motives, and punishments alone where rewards should
be judiciously intermixed. They first beslave their poor people with
their cursed whip, and then stand and wonder at the tremour of their
nerves, and the laxity of their muscles.
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