The progress in education and morality has not been at all so rapid as in wealth.  The freed slave could not at once escape from the debasing influences of years of bondage, and the planters have deliberately set themselves against any system of popular education.  Crimes against property, Sewell says, are rife, especially thieving; petty acts of anger and cruelty are also common, as well as offences against chastity; while, on the other hand, crimes of violence are almost unknown.  From the last census it appears that more than half of the children born in the island are illegitimate.  This sad condition of morals Mr. Sewell attributes principally to the imperfect education of the lowest classes,—­the schools being mostly church-schools, and somewhat expensive.  These schools, however, have increased from 27 in 1834, with 1,574 children, to 70 with 6,180 in 1857, and an infant school with 1,140; the children in Sunday-schools have increased in the same time from 1,679 to 2,071.[D]

[Footnote D:  Letter from the Bishop of Barbadoes, February 23, 1858.  It appears in the same letter that the church-attendants have increased from 5,000 in 1825 to 28,000 in 1853.]

St. Vincent is generally considered by the passing traveller as another example of the axiom that “the freed negro will not work,” and of “the melancholy fruits of emancipation.”

The decline of the wealthier classes began before emancipation, and continued after it.  The planters were deeply in debt, and their estates heavily mortgaged.  Slavery there, as everywhere, wasted the means of the masters, and exhausted the soil.  When the day of freedom came, these gentlemen, instead of prudently endeavoring to retain the laborers on their estates, offered them lower wages than were paid on the neighboring islands.  The consequence was, that the negroes preferred to buy their own little properties or to hire farms in the interior, and let the great estates find labor as they could.  Mr. Sewell states that he inquired much in regard to the abandoned sugar-estates, and never found one which was deserted because labor could not be procured at fair cost; the more general reason of their abandonment was want of capital, or debt incurred previously to emancipation.  That the condition of the island is not caused by the idleness of the negro is shown by the facts, that since emancipation houses have been built by freed slaves for themselves and their families, containing 8,209 persons; that from 10,000 to 12,000 acres have been brought under cultivation by the proprietors of small properties of from one to five acres; that the export of arrowroot (which is one of the small articles raised by the negroes on their own grounds) has risen from 60,000 pounds before emancipation to 1,352,250 pounds in 1857, valued at $750,000, and the cocoa-nut export has also increased largely.

The export of sugar has declined as follows:—­Under slavery, (1831-34,) it was 204,095 cwt.; under apprenticeship, (1835-38,) 194,228; under free labor, (1839-45,) 127,364 cwt.; in 1846, 129,870 cwt.; in 1847, 175,615 cwt.[E]