[Footnote A:  When an apprentice signifies his wish to purchase his freedom, he applies to the magistrate for an appraisement.  The appraisement is made by one special and two local magistrates.]

Before this gentleman left, the Rev. Mr. C. called in with Mr. Pigeot, another planter, with whom we had a long conversation.  Mr. P. has been a manager for many years.  We had heard of him previously as the only planter in the island who had made an experiment in task work prior to abolition.  He tried it for twenty months before that period on an estate of four hundred acres and two hundred people.  His plan was simply to give each slave an ordinary day’s work for a task; and after that was performed, the remainder of the time, if any, belonged to the slave. No wages were allowed.  The gang were expected to accomplish just as much as they did before, and to do it as well, however long a time it might require; and if they could finish in half a day, the other half was their own, and they might employ it as they saw fit.  Mr. P. said, he was very soon convinced of the good policy of the system; though he had one of the most unruly gangs of negroes to manage in the whole island.  The results of the experiment he stated to be these: 

1.  The usual day’s work was done generally before the middle of the afternoon.  Sometimes it was completed in five hours.

2.  The work was done as well as it was ever done under the old system.  Indeed, the estate continued to improve in cultivation, and presented a far better appearance at the close of the twenty months than when he took the charge of it.

3.  The trouble of management was greatly diminished.  Mr. P. was almost entirely released from the care of overseeing the work:  he could trust it to the slaves.

4.  The whip was entirely laid aside.  The idea of having a part of the day which they could call their own and employ for their own interests, was stimulus enough for the slaves without resorting to the whip.

5.  The time gained was not spent (as many feared and prophecied it would be) either in mischief or indolence.  It was diligently improved in cultivating their provision grounds, or working for wages on neighboring estates.  Frequently a man and his wife would commence early and work together until they got the work of both so far advanced that the man could finish it alone before night; and then the woman would gather on a load of yams and start for the market.

6.  The condition of the people improved astonishingly.  They became one of the most industrious and orderly gangs in the parish.  Under the former system they were considered inadequate to do the work of the estate, and the manager was obliged to hire additional hands every year, to take off the crop; but Mr. P. never hired any, though he made as large crops as were made formerly.

7.  After the abolition of slavery, his people chose to continue on the same system of task work.