ANGUILLA.
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slaves must of necessity live worse also; as their owners are less enlightened, less affected by public opinion, nay, oftentimes as barbarous, or even more so than themselves, they, the slaves, must of course profit less under the instruction, and be more completely at the mercy of the passions of such their masters. These are the two extremes: the average condition is that of the laborers in the field upon respectable estates. These constitute seven or eight tenths of the whole slave population. In point of ease and shade, their life is much inferior to that of the planter's domestic. In food, care in sickness, instruction, and regular protection, they are incomparably better off than the wretched thralls of the low inhabitants of the towns. The positive amount of their personal comforts is, as I have occasionally remarked, various in various islands; in none is it greater than, in few so great as, in Barbados. There are many things in the slave management of that colony which might be advantageously imitated by the planters of other islands; but at the same time this is a matter which depends so much upon local circumstances, that it would be presumptuous in any one to condemn, upon general principles alone, those who do not avail themselves of the example.