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RESULTS OF
er, whose care it is to provide for their animal wants, A slave has no power of self-protection, but his skill in lying and deception. He has no property but by sufferance, and is therefore feebly impressed with a sense of the rights of property in others. He is ex posed to a continual system of selfish fraud ; no one keeps faith with him, and he is therefore filled with suspicion and distrust. Labor, a great blessing in dis guise to man, brings him no wealth, comfort, or honor. It is degraded in his eyes by associations of coercion and punishment. Domestic comfort is unknown. Husbands and wives are not helpmeets to one another ; they rarely reside in the same hut, or even on the same estate ; for a slave does not, more than an European, choose his partner from the females of his own village. They work in the field without distinction of sex. The decencies of civilized life are to a most revolting and guilty extent unobserved. Wives and daughters are subject to the brutal caprice and absolute will of their owners. The sacred character of the marriage tie is therefore little understood, or lightly esteemed. Such is an imperfect catalogue of the evils of slavery. As far as a system can degrade man to the level of the lower creation, he is so animalised by slavery, that the most successful efforts of missionaries and teachers, and even of humane proprietors, can only palliate its inherent malignity. The Antigua negros, as a body, are not elevated above the stage of moral and intellectual child hood. Their character is distinguished by shrewdness, by petty vice, great want of reflection, and above all by distrust. They are, however, in a rapid course of improvement. They are gaining prudence and fore sight from the influence of newly acquired responsi bilities. They feel the security of their pi-operty.