After breakfast we took leave of the kind-hearted missionaries, whose singular devotedness and delightful spirit won greatly upon our affections, and bent our way homeward by another route.

MR. SCOTLAND’S ESTATE.

We called at the estate of Mr. J. Scotland, Jr., barrister, and member of the assembly.  We expected to meet with the proprietor, but the manager informed us that pressing business at court had called him to St. John’s on the preceding day.  The testimony of the manager concerning the dry weather, the consequent failure in the crop, the industry of the laborers, and so forth, was similar to that which we had heard before.  He remarked that he had not been able to introduce job-work among his people.  It was a new thing with them, and they did not understand it.  He had lately made a proposal to give the gang four dollars per acre for holding a certain field.  They asked a little time to consider upon so novel a proposition.  He gave them half a day, and at the end of that time asked them what their conclusion was.  One, acting as spokesman for the rest, said, “We rada hab de shilling wages.”  That was certain; the job might yield them more, and it might fall short—­quite a common sense transaction!

At the pressing request of Mr. Armstrong we spent a day with him at Fitch’s Creek.  Mr. A. received us with the most cordial hospitality, remarking that he was glad to have another opportunity to state some things which he regarded as obstacles to the complete success of the experiment in Antigua.  One was the entire want of concert among the planters.  There was no disposition to meet and compare views respecting different modes of agriculture, treatment of laborers, and employment of machinery.  Another evil was, allowing people to live on the estates who took no part in the regular labor of cultivation.  Some planters had adapted the foolish policy of encouraging such persons to remain on the estates, in order that they might have help at hand in cases of emergency.  Mr. A. strongly condemned this policy.  It withheld laborers from the estates which needed them; it was calculated to make the regular field hands discontented, and it offered a direct encouragement to the negroes to follow irregular modes of living.  A third obstacle to the successful operation of free labor, was the absence of the most influential proprietors.  The consequences of absenteeism were very serious.  The proprietors were of all men the most deeply interested in the soil; and no attorneys, agents, or managers, whom they could employ, would feel an equal interest in it, nor make the same efforts to secure the prosperous workings of the new system.

In the year 1833, when the abolition excitement was at its height in England, and the people were thundering at the doors of parliament for emancipation, Mr. A. visited that country for his health.  To use his own expressive words, he “got a terrible scraping wherever he went.”  He said he could not travel in a stage-coach, or go into a party, or attend a religious meeting, without being attacked.  No one the most remotely connected with the system could have peace there.  He said it was astonishing to see what a feeling was abroad, how mightily the mind of the whole country, peer and priest and peasant, was wrought up.  The national heart seemed on fire.