to carry to the works of rich planters the canes gathered by them on their own grounds; some are merchants, many hire themselves out as farmers.  Whatever may be the faults of some individuals, the ensemble of free negroes has merited the testimony rendered in 1857 by the Governor of Tobago:  “I deny that our blacks of the country are of indolent habits.  So industrious a class of inhabitants does not exist in the world.”

An admirable spectacle, and one which the history of mankind presents to us too rarely, is that of a degraded population elevating itself more and more, and placing itself on a level with those who before despised it.  Concubinage, so general in times of servitude as to give rise to the famous axiom, “Negroes abhor marriage,” is now replaced by regular unions.  In becoming free, the negroes have learned to respect themselves:  the unanimous reports of the governors mark the progress of their habits of sobriety.  Crimes have greatly diminished among them.  They are polite and well brought up, falling even into the excess of exaggerated courtesy.  They respect the aged:  if an old man passes through the streets, the children rise and cease their play.

These children are assiduously sent to schools, the support of which depends, in a great part, upon the voluntary gifts of the negroes.  Grateful to the Gospel which has set them free, the former slaves have become passionately attached to their pastors; their first resources are consecrated to churches, to schools, and sometimes, also, to distant missions, to the evangelization of that Africa which they remember to do it good.  We should be at once surprised and humiliated, were we to compare the much-vaunted gifts of our charity with those of these poor people, these freed men of yesterday, whom we think that we may rightfully treat with disdain.

Thanks to the Gospel, and it is to this that I return, the problem of the coexistence of races is resolved in the most pacific manner in the Antilles.  Among freemen, however little these freemen may be Christianized, specific inequalities become speedily effaced, and the prejudice of skin is not found to be ultimately as insurmountable as we have been told.  In these English colonies, which are true republics, governing themselves, and which also remind us, through this feature, of the Southern States, the blacks have come to be accepted as fellow-citizens.  They practise the liberal professions; they are electors and often elected, for they form of themselves alone one-fifth of the Colonial Assembly at Jamaica; they are officers of the police and the militia, and their authority never fails to be recognized by all.  I named Jamaica just now.  Some may seek to bring it as an argument against me.  The fact is, that this great island has seemed to form an exception to the general prosperity; considerable fortunes have been sunk there, and the transformation has been slower and more painful there than elsewhere.  But, when