Prosperity the result of justice.

Ten years have rolled into the past since the Rosebrook family-moved by a sense of right to enquire into the errors of a bad system of labour-resolved to try the working of a new scheme.  There was to be no cutting, nor lashing, nor abusing with overburdening tasks.  Education was to regulate the feelings, kindness to expand the sympathies, and justice to bind the affections and stimulate advancement.  There were only some fifty negroes on the Rosebrook plantation, but its fame for raising great crops had resounded far and wide.  Some planters said it “astonished everything,” considering how much the Rosebrooks indulged their slaves.  With a third less in number of hands, did they raise more and better cotton than their neighbours; and then everything was so neat and bright about the plantation, and everybody looked so cheerful and sprightly.  When Rosebrook’s cotton was sent into the market, factors said it was characteristic of his systemised negroes; and when his negroes rolled into the city, as they did on holidays, all brightened up with new clothes, everybody said-There were Rosebrook’s dandy, fat, and saucy “niggers.”  And then the wise prophets, who had all along predicted that Rosebrook’s project would never amount to much, said it was all owing to his lady, who was worth her weight in gold at managing negroes.  And she did conceive the project, too; and her helping hand was felt like a quickening spring, giving new life to the physical being.  That the influence might not be lost upon others of her sex in the same sphere of life, she was ever reasoning upon the result of female sympathy.  She felt that, were it exercised properly, it could raise up the menial slave, awaken his inert energies, give him those moral guides which elevate his passive nature, and regenerate that manhood which provides for its own good.

They had promised their people that all children born at and after a given date should be free; that all those over sixty should be nominally free, the only restriction being the conditions imposed by the state law; that slaves under fifteen years of age, and able to do plantation work, should, during the ten years prescribed, be allowed for their extra labour at a given rate, and expected to have the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars set to their credit; that all prime people should be required to work a given number of hours, as per task, for master, beyond which they would be allotted a “patch” for cultivation, the products of which were entrusted to Rosebrook for sale, and the proceeds placed in missus’ savings bank to their credit.  The people had all fulfilled the required conditions ere the ten years expired; and a good round sum for extra earnings was found in the bank.  The Rosebrooks kept faith with their slaves; and the happy result is, that Rosebrook, in addition to the moral security he has founded for the good of his people-and which security is a boon