Sugar is the most important export.  The following were the amounts exported before emancipation, according to Schomburg and Sewell:—­

    Average export, 1720-1800, 23,000 hhds.
       " " 1800-1830, 20,000 "
    Particular export, 1830, 22,769 "
    Particular export in
    year of emancipation, 1834, 27,318 "

(The weight of a hogshead of sugar, it should be noted, was only 12 cwt. between 1826 and 1830; from 1830 to 1850, 14 cwt.; and now it is from 15 to 17 cwt.)

Yield in             1852,    48,610  hhds.
"                 1853,    38,316   "
"                 1854,    44,492   "
"                 1855,    39,692   "
"                 1856,    43,552   "
"                 1857,    38,858   "
"                 1858,    50,778   "

Average export,        1835-50,   26,000   "
"      "            1851-58,   43,000   "

That is, an average more than double the export for ten years preceding emancipation.

Besides sugar, other articles are exported now to the value of $100,000.  In addition, there is a large production for home-consumption, of such articles as sweet potatoes, eddoes, yams, cassava-root, etc.

If imports are the true expression of a nation’s economic well-being,—­as all sound political economists affirm,—­then can Barbadoes show most conclusively how much more profitable to a people is freedom than chatteldom.

Average imports,        1822-32,   L600,000
Imports,                  1845,     682,358
"                       1856,     840,000

The imports from America are increasing in rapid measure.  Thus they were in

1854,   36,416   bbls.   flour.
"       1,500    "      beef.
"       9,438    "      pork.
"      49,106    "      meal.

1858,   79,766    "      flour.
"       2,646    "      beef.
"      12,196    "      pork.
"      67,053    "      meal.

Under slavery, the value of American imports was not more than L60,000 per annum.  Under freedom, it is from L300,000 to L400,000.

The shipping before emancipation (in 1832) numbered 689 vessels of 79,000 tons.  In 1856, 966 vessels of 114,800 tons.

The population of Barbadoes is supposed to be now about 140,000, of whom 124,000 are blacks.  Of these, only 22,000 are believed to be field laborers, against 81,000, just before emancipation, of men, women, and children, who labored in the field,—­a fact which shows the aversion slavery had implanted to laboring on the soil, as well as the indiscreet policy of the planters.  Yet, despite this decrease of the most profitable kind of labor, so great is the advantage of freedom over slavery, that the island has been enabled to make this prodigious increase in production and wealth since emancipation,—­more than doubling its export of sugar, increasing its imports by $1,200,000, quintupling its imports from America, and doubling the value of land.