374
CONCLUSION.
those, who now wantonly outrage the rights of their dependent bondsmen. Few will be prepared to dispute the advantages, which the division and combination of labor, imder the direction of capital and skill, offer in compari son with that simple condition of society, in which each individual supplies all his various wants with his own hands. It is, therefore, desirable that the cultivation of the great staples of the colonies should go on with uninterrupted success. Such has been the result in Antigua, such might have been the result in Jamaica ; and if the Apprenticeship should be brought to an early and peaceable termination, such perhaps might be the result still. Nothing can exceed the dis position manifested by the negro population, to acquire the comforts and even the luxuries of civilized life. The world has seen no example of so general and in tense a desire for education and religious instruction, as has been shewn by the apprentices on behalf of them selves and their children within the last few years. Their conduct and their character are full of promise for the future ; full of tokens of their capacity to become, when free, a well ordered, industrious, and pros perous community. Their oppressors continue to ma lign them, but the shafts of calumny have spent their force. None of those dreams of danger and difficulty, which were put forth as pretexts for delaying the Abo lition of Slavery, ever had any other basis, than frau dulent design or guilty fear. From the time, when it was maintained, that the negro was of the lower crea tion, to the present day, when he is recognised as of the common brotherhood of man, every pro-slavery dogma respecting his character and capabilities, has been, disproved by experience ; every pro-slavery pro-