they have exerted every influence.  The overseer was paid, housed, fed, and waited upon, all at the expense of master and slave, beside; keeping a fine stud of horses, and as many brood mares at pasture on the property as would enable him to dispose of seven or eight prime mules annually; and so long as he drove and tormented the poor negro, and made good crops for the attorney’s commissions, and supplied his horses with corn, these little perquisites were never discovered.  Now the proprietor will hardly pay for more labor than is absolutely necessary to grow and manufacture the produce of his estate; and these gentlemen must henceforth look to their own resources, for the payment of servants to attend and take care of their own interests and comforts.  An overseer’s situation on an estate making 300 hogsheads, was calculated in slavery to be equal to 2000l. a year.  Indeed no man in any town could have lived in such luxury for that sum.  If the proprietor would only come out, and live prudently, he would save all this by residing on his property, which he could easily manage by employing, for extra wages, his former steady head people. They, from long residence, know the best manner of working the land; and, as to the manufacture of sugar, they are the persons who have all their lives been working at it.  The most important part of an overseer and book-keeper’s business was to make use of their eyes.  The negro had to make use of his legs, arms and strength; and, in nine cases out of ten, his brains kept the white people in their situations, by preventing matters from going wrong.

I perfectly coincide with you, as to the propriety of the negro speedily becoming possessed of the elective franchise.  In Antigua there is very little more land than is in cultivation for the estates, but here it is widely different; and they are beginning to settle themselves by purchasing small lots very fast.  At Sligoville there are nearly fifty new freeholders.  The negroes are taught to do this by the perpetual worry of their employers, threatening to oust them on every trifling occasion, and withholding part of their wages on the plea of non-performance of work.—­The root of all evil is the Assembly and the Juries.  Nothing requires greater alteration; and I shall never rest, until I see the black man stand the same chance at the bar of his country as the white man.—­The negroes will not work under their former hard task-masters.  They determinedly resist all solicitations to labor with those who treated them ill.  They say that the pain is gone, but the mark remains, and I respect them for this proud feeling.

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