or danger:  for unquestionably their moral character must have been improved.  If they had ceased for seven years to feel themselves degraded by arbitrary punishment, they must have acquired some little independence of mind.  If they had been paid for their labour, they must have acquired something like a spirit of industry.  If they had been made to pay rent for their cottage and land, and to maintain themselves, they must have been made to look beforehand, to think for themselves and families from day to day, and to provide against the future, all which operations of the mind are the characteristics only of free men.  The case, therefore, of Mr. Steele is most important and precious:  for it shows us, first, that the emancipation, which we seek, is a thing which may be effected.  The plan of Mr. Steele was put in force in a British Island, and that, which was done in one British Island, may under similar circumstances be done again in the same, as well as in another.  It shows us, again, how this emancipation may be brought about.  The process is so clearly detailed, that any one may follow it.  It is also a case for encouragement, inasmuch as it was attended with success.

I have now considered no less than six cases of slaves emancipated in bodies, and a seventh of slaves, who were led up to the very threshold of freedom, comprehending altogether not less than between five and six hundred thousand persons; and I have considered also all the objections that could be reasonably advanced against them.  The result is a belief on my part, that emancipation is not only practicable, but that it is practicable without danger.  The slaves, whose cases I have been considering, were resident in different parts of the world.  There must have been, amongst such a vast number, persons of all characters.  Some were liberated, who had been accustomed to the use of arms.  Others at a time when the land in which they sojourned was afflicted with civil and foreign wars; others again suddenly, and with all the vicious habits of slavery upon them.  And yet, under all these disadvantageous circumstances, I find them all, without exception, yielding themselves to the will of their superiors, so as to be brought by them with as much ease and certainty into the form intended for them, as clay in the hands of the potter is fashioned to his own model.  But, if this be so, I think I should be chargeable with a want of common sense, were I to doubt for a moment, that emancipation was not practicable; and I am not sure that I should not be exposed to the same charge, were I to doubt, that emancipation was practicable without danger.  For I have not been able to discover (and it is most remarkable) a single failure in any of the cases which have been produced.  I have not been able to discover throughout this vast mass of emancipated persons a