Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/178

( 144 ) 3.That, taking into consideration the retarding of the deaths of the working slaves, and the augmenting of their number, they might not, in three or four years be so reduced, but that their number might be then equal to what it was on the day of stopping the importation, when the whole of the efficient hands under the former wretched system were not thus called into employ.

4.That even if no augmentation could be made to the number of working slaves, and their natural deaths were as frequent as before, it by no means follows that the cultivation need be impeded till the rising generation could grow up; because a much less number of hands, assisted by cattle and the implements mentioned, would evidently do much more work than a greater, under the present system.

In short, after the circumstances stated, and considering also that there is now in the colonies a series of Creoles of all ages, ready to supply successively the places of many that would go off by natural death, no man can rationally suppose, that the number of working slaves could ever be reduced so low, while the rising generation were growing up, as not to be as fully adequate to the cultivation of the colonies, as they are at present. Mr. Botham says, that by means of two-thirds, nay even one-half of the present force (and he speaks experimentally) the islands might be much better cultivated) under certain regulations, than under what he terms, the present miserable management: and yet the regulations suggested by Mr. Botham are not so numerous as those deduced from the evidence, in the preceding chapters.

Many domesticks [sic] could also be spared if necessary.

If, however, any one should dispute this point, he must be told, that the colonists have yet many other resources. They have generally, in the first place, a number of domestick [sic] slaves that are supernumerary and useless. They have a great number of superfluous domesticks [sic] at Barbadoes, says Woodward, in town and country. Mr. Giles thinks half the domesticks [sic] of Grenada and Montserrat unnecessary. Lieutenant