Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/105

Rh field negro brings four hundred dollars, but most of the work is done by free blacks and people from the main at a much cheaper rate; and as these are generally employed by foreigners, this accounts for their succeeding better than our own countrymen, who are principally from the old islands, and are unaccustomed to any other management than that of slaves; however, they are coming into it fast. In Trinidad, there are upwards of fifteen thousand free people of color; there is not a single pauper amongst them; they live independently and comfortably, and nearly half of the property of the island is said to be in their hands. It is admitted that they are highly respectable in character, and are rapidly advancing in knowledge and refinement.' Mr Mitchell, a sugar planter who had resided twentyseven years in Trinidad, and who is the superintendent of the liberated negroes there, says he knows of no instance of a manumitted slave not maintaining himself In a paper printed by the House of Commons in 1827, (No. 479,) he says of the liberated blacks under his superintendence, that each of them possessed an allotment of land which he cultivated, and on which he raised provisions and other articles for himself and his family; his wife and children aiding him in the work. A great part, however, of the time of the men (the women attending to the domestic menage) was freely given to laboring on the neighboring plantations, on which they worked not in general by the day, but by the piece. Mr Mitchell says that their work is well executed, and that they can earn as much as four shillings a day. If, then, these men who have land on which they can support themselves are yet willing to work for hire, how is it possible to doubt that in case of general emancipation, the freed negroes who would have no land of their own would gladly work for wages?"

"A few years ago, about 150 negro slaves, at different times, succeeded in making their escape from Kentucky into Canada. Captain Stuart, who lived in Upper Canada from 1817 to 1822, was generally acquainted with them, and employed several of them in various ways.—He found them as good and as trustworthy laborers, in every respect, as any emigrants from the islands, or from