The industry of the Barbadoes population is shown in the fact, that, out of the 106,000 acres of the island, 100,000 are under cultivation,[A] while the average price of land rises to the unprecedented height of five hundred dollars an acre.

    [Footnote A:  Schomburg.]

Notwithstanding the high price of land and the low rate of wages, the freed slaves have increased the number of small proprietors with less than five acres from 1100 to 3537[B] during the last fifteen years,—­an increase which alone testifies to the remarkable thrift of the emancipated negro in Barbadoes.

    [Footnote B:  Governor Hincks.]

Mr. Sewell has talked with all classes and conditions, and “none are more ready to admit than the planters that the free laborer is a better, more cheerful, and industrious workman than was ever the slave.”

“The colored mechanics and artisans of Barbadoes,” says the same author, “are equal in general intelligence to the artisans and mechanics of any part of the world equally remote from the great centres of civilization.  The peasantry will soon equal them, when education is more generally diffused.”

The surest evidences, however, on this question are those of figures.  Land has doubled in value on the island since emancipation.[C] Of the increased value of estates, we quote, as an example, the case mentioned in a published letter of Governor Hincks, January, 1858:—­

“As to the relative cost of slave and free labor in this colony, I can supply facts upon which the most implicit reliance can be placed.  They have been furnished to me by the proprietor of an estate containing three hundred acres of land, and situated at a distance of about twelve miles from the shipping port.  The estate referred to produced during slavery an annual average of 140 hogsheads of sugar of the present weight, and required 230 slaves.  It is now worked by 90 free laborers:  60 adults, and 30 under 16 years of age.  Its average product during the last seven years has been 194 hogsheads.  The total cost of labor has been L770 16s., or L3 19s. 2d. per hogshead of 1,700 pounds.  The average of pounds of sugar to each laborer during slavery was 1,043 pounds, and during freedom 3,660 pounds.  To estimate the cost of slave-labor, the value of 230 slaves must be ascertained; and I place them at what would have been a low average,—­L50 sterling each,—­which would make the entire stock amount to L11,500.  This, at six per cent. interest, which on such property is much too low an estimate, would give L690; cost of clothing, food, and medical attendance I estimate at L3 10s., making L805.  Total cost, L1,495, or L10 12s. per hogshead, while the cost of free labor on the same estate is under L4.”

    [Footnote C:  B.T.  Young’s Letter of January 12th, 1858, and
    other letters from planters, published in the National
    Era, August, 1858.]

In 1853, the French committee charged by the Governor of Martinique to visit the island reported, that “in an agricultural and manufacturing point of view the aspect of Barbadoes is dazzling.”