salt, salt fish, barrelled pork, Cork butter, flour, bread, biscuit, candles, tobacco and pipes, and all species of clothing, were provided and furnished from the store at the lowest market prices.  An account of what was paid for daily subsistence, and of what stood in their arrears to answer the rents of their lands, the fines and forfeitures for delinquencies, their head-levy and all other casual demands, was accurately kept in columns with great simplicity, and in books, which checked each other.”

Such was the plan of Mr. Steele, and I have the pleasure of being able to announce, that the result of it was highly satisfactory to himself.  In the year 1788, when only the first and second part of it had been reduced to practice, he spoke of it thus:—­“A plantation,” says he, “of between seven and eight hundred acres has been governed by fixed laws and a Negro-court for about five years with great success.  In this plantation no overseer or white servant is allowed to lift his hand against a Negro, nor can he arbitrarily order a punishment.  Fixed laws and a court or jury of their peers keep all in order without the ill effect of sudden and intemperate passions.”  And in the year 1790, about a year after the last part of his plan had been put to trial, he says in a letter to Dr. Dickson, “My copyholders have succeeded beyond my expectation.”  This was his last letter to that gentleman, for he died in the beginning of the next year.  Mr. Steele went over to Barbadoes, as I have said before, in the year 1780, and he was then in the eightieth year of his age.  He began his humane and glorious work in 1783, and he finished it in 1789.  It took him, therefore, six years to bring his Negroes to the state of vassalage described, or to that state from whence he was sure that they might be transferred without danger in no distant time, to the rank of freemen, if it should be thought desirable.  He lived one year afterwards to witness the success of his labours.  He had accomplished, therefore, all he wished, and he died in the year 1791, in the ninety-first year of his age.

It may be proper now, and indeed useful to the cause which I advocate, to stop for a moment, just to observe the similarity of sentiment of two great men, quite unknown to each other; one of whom (Mr. Steele) was concerned in preparing Negro-slaves for freedom, and the other (Toussaint) in devising the best mode of managing them after they had been suddenly made free.

It appears, first, that they were both agreed in this point, viz. that the first step to be taken in either case, was the total abolition of arbitrary punishment.