It appears that Mr. Steele was satisfied with this his first step, and he took no other for some time.  At length, in about another year, he ventured upon the second.  He “tried whether he could not obtain the labour of his Negroes by voluntary means instead of the old method by violence.”  On a certain day he offered a pecuniary reward for holing canes, which is the most laborious operation in West Indian husbandry.  “He offered two-pence half-penny (currency), or about three-halfpence (sterling), per day, with the usual allowance to holers of a dram with molasses, to any twenty-five of his Negroes, both men and women, who would undertake to hole for canes an acre per day, at about 96-1/2 holes for each Negro to the acre.  The whole gang were ready to undertake it; but only fifty of the volunteers were accepted, and many among them were those who on much lighter occasions had usually pleaded infirmity and inability:  but the ground having been moist, they holed twelve acres within six days with great ease, having had an hour, more or less, every evening to spare, and the like experiment was repeated with the like success.  More experiments with such premiums on weeding and deep hoeing were made by task-work per acre, and all succeeded in like manner, their premiums being all punctually paid them in proportion to their performance.  But afterwards some of the same people being put without premium to weed on a loose cultivated soil in the common manner, eighteen Negroes did not do as much in a given time as six had performed of the like sort of work a few days before with the premium of two-pence half-penny.”  The next year Mr. Steele made similar experiments.  Success attended him again; and from this time task-work, or the voluntary system, became the general practice of the estate.  Mr. Steele did not proceed to put the third question to trial till the year 1789.  The Society of Arts, which he had instituted in 1781, had greatly disappointed him.  Some of the members, looking back to the discussions which had taken place on the subject of Slavery, began to think that they had gone too far as slaveholders in their admissions.  They began to insinuate, “that they had been taken in, under the specious appearance of promoting the arts, manufactures, and commerce of Barbadoes, to promote dangerous designs against its established laws and customs.”  Discussions therefore of this sort became too unpopular to be continued.  It was therefore not till Mr. Steele found, that he had no hope of assistance from this Society, and that he was obliged to depend solely upon himself, that he put in force the remainder of his general plan.  He had already (in 1783), as we stated some time ago, abolished arbitrary punishment and instituted a Negro-magistracy; and since that time (in 1785) he had adopted the system of working by the piece.  But the remaining part of his plan went the length of altering the condition of the slaves themselves; and it is of this alteration, a most important one (in 1789), that I am now to speak.