Yet a great improvement is manifest among the people.  Small proprietors have much increased; even the field-hands now possess houses and lands of their own.  There are 2,500 freeholders, and 2,800 tax-payers.  The average church-attendance is 41 per cent, of the whole population; the average school-attendance, 1,600.  Commerce is rapidly advancing.  The imports have risen from L50,307 in 1854 to L59,994 in 1856; and the exports from L49,754 to L79,789 in the same time.

In st. Lucia the planters have followed a more wise and liberal policy towards the emancipated slaves.  Better wages have been offered; liberal inducements have been held out to the negroes to cultivate the estates; efforts have been put forth to improve the social and moral condition of the laboring class.  Tenancy-at-will is unknown, and the melairie system (laboring on shares) has been introduced.  In other words, the rich and educated have manifested some kind of humane interest for the laborers, and in return the latter have worked well and cheerfully.

Yet, in St. Lucia, as in so many other West India colonies, the financial condition of the planters, at the time of emancipation, was exceedingly embarrassed:  their registered debts amounting in 1829, according to Breen, to L1,189,965.

The export of sugar is stated in Cochin’s carefully prepared tables as follows:  In the period of slavery, (1831-34,) 57,549 cwt.; during the apprenticeship, (1835-38,) 51,427 cwt.; under free labor, (1839-45,) 57,070 cwt; in 1846, 63,566 cwt.; in 1847, 88,370 cwt.

The imports have not risen till recently, and indicate a greater consumption of articles grown on the island.  In 1833,[G] they were in value, L108,076; in 1840, L114,537; in 1843, L70,340; in 1851,[H] L68,881; in 1857, L90,064.

    [Footnote G:  Breen.]

    [Footnote H:  Sewell.]

Of the total value of exports Breen gives tables only to 1843.  In that year, they were L96,290 against L71,580 in 1833.

Since emancipation, 2,045 of the negroes have become freeholders, and 4,603 pay direct taxes.

In Trinidad, the question of the effects of emancipation has some peculiar elements.  The island is a very large, fertile country, with a sparse population, where of course land is cheap and labor dear.  Out of its 1,287,000 acres,[I] only some 30,000 are cultivated.  Its whole population is but about 80,000, of whom the colored number near 50,000.  Emancipation would work upon such a country somewhat as it might on Texas, for instance.  There were 11,000 field-hands on the estates when slavery was abolished.  The planters undertook to maintain or introduce the tenancy-at-will system, and to reduce the wages below the market-rate.  Whenever the negroes retired from the estate-work, they were summarily ejected from their houses and lands, and their little gardens were destroyed.  The natural effect of such an injudicious policy was, that the negro preferred squatting on the government lands about him, or buying a small, cheap plot, or hiring a farm, to remaining under the planters, and soon some 7,000 laborers had left the estates.