76
PRESENT STATE OF THE NEGRO.
cine when they are ill, and a certain quantity of molasses and rum when doing certain work. Besides all this, they have the liberty of picking what wood they please, of keeping what stock they like, provided they keep their pigs, sheep, and goats, confined or tied up, that they may not injure the young canes, which injunction they regularly break. Then, again, they pick the grass, sheep and goat meat, growing upon the property, which they bring into the capital of an evening, and generally sell for three bits, another shilling sterling. And not only this ; but as West Indian property is but seldom enclosed, they think it but fair to gather what fruit they choose from the several trees growing about the estates, and , which they also bring into town, and sell in the market. Would that many of our poor English peasantry were as well off as the negroes now are, instead of suffering, as they often do, from cold and hunger. What Englishman would let them help themselves to the produce of their orchards ! I have often before remarked how much 1 detest the name of slavery—-there is something so revolting in the idea of men selling and buying their fellow-creatures ; but I cannot hear the West Indian negroes pitied for their hard lot, when I know that in these days it is so much the contrary, without trying to put my English friends in possession of the real state of things. It is observable, that but few negroes are to be met with who do not possess some money ; and, in dress, they deny themselves nothing that pleases them, or, as they say, “ fills their eye." Many, since emancipation, have purchased many spots of land, built houses, and appear to have many comforts, and almost every head negro keeps his pony or his horse, while others run their stanhopes. As I have already observed at the beginning of this chapter, many may think I am writing paradoxes ; but such is not the case, and any one intimate with West Indian affairs will confirm my statements. The fact is, great changes have taken place in this island as well as everywhere else ; in former days, when those