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250  EMANCIPATION IN

EMANCIPATION IN THE WEST INDIES.

The following extracts from a letter written in the West Indies, may show the salutary effects of emancipation in the British islands. Its date is Sept. 20th, 1836. "I am highly gratified to witness the course you are pursuing in regard to that overwhelming curse of our country, slavery. In the providence of God, I have been placed in circumstances to know what slavery is, and has been, in the West Indies, and daily now to see and feel what emancipation is.

2. "I went to Trinidad in November, 1831 : I had learned at home, of the persevering opposition which emancipation had met in these islands, and I naturally supposed it would be necessary to be guarded in my remarks about it. I therefore kept very still, thinking that perhaps even a few words might occasion a tumult, as I had been taught to believe that the liberated negroes only wanted an occasion to rise and murder all the whites.

3. "I very soon found that no alarm was felt- people speaking as freely about emancipation as of any thing else. All the negroes appeared cheerful and harmless, and not seldom did I hear the remark, even from planters, that emancipation was a great blessing! The scales fell from my eyes! I found that all the predictions I had heard of mas-

THE WEST INDIES.  251

sacres, insurrections, &c., &c., were no better than nursery tales. Indeed, it was plain to be seen, that emancipation had been the very thing to take away, at once and for ever, all danger of violence on the part of the colored people.

4. "I afterward visited Grenada and St. Vincent. The same may be said of them as of Trinidad. I have resided on this island (Barbadoes) with the exception of a visit at home last winter, constantly since January, 1835. The town contains- say 40,000 inhabitants, and the island 130,000, of whom not more than 20,000 are whites. On the first of August, 1834, the number of slaves liberated was something more than 80,000.

5. "What a place for exhibition of that ferocity which we are told exists in the breast of the African! Now I venture to declare, that since the first of August, 1834, there has not been the slightest popular disturbance, or even the rumor of one, in any part of the island. And this is not because the blacks are overawed. They are themselves a part of the island militia, and I declare it as my firm conviction, that, as a people, they are as orderly and as little inclined to violence, as any people on earth.

6. "The general sentiment is this island, I believe to be now as much in favor of emancipation, as three years ago it was opposed to it. It has done my heart good, to hear people of the highest standing here, and those who owned great num-

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