single instance of bad behaviour on their parts, not even of a refusal to work, or of disobedience to orders.  Much less have I seen frightful commotions, or massacres, or a return of evil for evil, or revenge for past injuries, even when they had it amply in their power.  In fact, the Negro character is malleable at the European will.  There is, as I have observed before, a singular pliability in the constitutional temper of the Negroes, and they have besides a quick sense of their own interest, which influences their conduct.  I am convinced, that West India masters can do what they will with their slaves; and that they may lead them through any changes they please, and with perfect safety to themselves, if they will only make them (the slaves) understand that they are to be benefited thereby.

Having now established, I hope, two of my points, first, that emancipation is practicable, and, secondly, that it is practicable without danger, I proceed to show the probability that it would be attended with profit to those planters who should be permitted to adopt it.  I return, therefore, to the case of Mr. Steele.  I give him the prior hearing on this new occasion, because I am sure that my readers will be anxious to learn something more about him; or to know what became of his plans, or how far such humane endeavours were attended with success.  I shall begin by quoting the following expressions of Mr. Steele.  “I have employed and amused myself,” says he, “by introducing an entire new mode of governing my own slaves, for their happiness, and also for my own profit.”  It appears, then, that Mr. Steele’s new method of management was profitable.  Let us now try to make out from his own account, of what these profits consisted.

Mr. Steele informs us, that his superintendant had obliged him to hire all his holing at 3 l. currency, or 2 l. 2s. 10d. sterling per acre.  He was very much displeased at these repeated charges; and then it was, that he put his second question to trial, as I have before related, viz. whether he could not obtain the labour of his Negroes by voluntary means, instead of by the old method by violence.  He made, therefore, an attempt to introduce task-work, or labour with an expected premium for extraordinary efforts, upon his estates.  He gave his Negroes therefore a small pecuniary reward over and above the usual allowances, and the consequence was, as he himself says, that “the poorest, feeblest, and by character the most indolent Negroes of the whole gang, cheerfully performed the holing of his land, generally said to be the most laborious work, for less than a fourth part of the stated price paid to the undertakers for holing.”  This experiment I have detailed in another place.  After this he continued the practice of task-work or premium.  He describes the operation of such a system upon the minds of his Negroes in the following words:  “According to the vulgar mode of