BENEFITS FROM EMANCIPATION.
157
Since the period of emancipation, (1834,) Antigua has suffered from many casualties. There were the severe hurricane, and the long and harassing droughts of 1835. In 1836, and part of the following year, the drought returned with increased severity, and blasted, in great measure, the crops. In 1840, the planters had again to contend with a season of dry weather, and yet, under all these disastrous circumstances, the free system has gloriously worked its way ; and by producing larger average crops, (as well as other advantages, both as regards exports and imports,) has claimed from all a tribute of praise. Although there are some few persons who deny that free labour is less expensive than slavery, yet the general voice pronounces it to be a system beneficial to the country. It has been proved to demonstration that estates which, under the old system, were clogged with debts they never could have paid off, have, since emancipation, not only cleared themselves, but put a handsome income into the pockets of the proprietors. Land has also increased greatly in value. Sugar plantations that would scarcely find a purchaser before emancipation, will now command from 10,000l. sterling, while many estates that were abandoned in days of slavery ; are now once more in a state of cultivation ; and the sugar-cane flourishes in verdant beauty, where for so many years nothing was to be seen but rank and tangled weeds, or scanty herbage. In days of slavery it required an immense capital to establish a sugar plantation, as well as a large annual expenditure to carry on the affairs of the estate when established. Perhaps a sugar estate had a gang of two hundred slaves upon it, yet out of this large number possibly there might not be more than sixty or seventy efficient negroes, the surplus being composed of helpless old men and women, children and infants, and emaciated and cureless invalids. Still the law obliged the owner to feed, clothe, house, and procure medical attendance for the entire number ; and little as their allowance was, yet, in dry seasons in par-