Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/340

322 by the eagerness of the English farmer, at seed-time and harvest, to get his work done at the exact time; but our ideas are very inadequate of the importance attached to the shortness of the period in which the work can be accomplished in those hot climates, and the difference in the harvest, whether a certain process was completed in six days or ten.

This venerable and benevolent proprietor proceeded still farther; in fact, adopted a measure which went to altering the very condition of the slaves, and placing them somewhat on the footing of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors in feudal times. This was to form his plantation into manors, and register all his adult slaves as copyholders, to each of whom he gave separate tenements of land, sufficient, with industry, for their comfortable maintenance, and descendible to their heirs. In return for this, they were to give him 260 days' labour, or an equivalent rent, reserving the remainder entirely to themselves, or if working for their master, at regular wages. The result of his benevolent scheme was highly satisfactory. He was spared to the age of ninety-one to witness the growing comfort and civilization of his negroes, when governed by fixed laws, instead of arbitrary controul [sic], and stimulated to industry by the hope of advantage. He brought them to that condition from which he was sure they might safely be transferred to the rank of freemen, and probably would have proceeded to that crowning act of liberality and justice, had his life been yet further prolonged. The happiness he conferred was his highest reward, but the weight of argument from his example with West Indian planters lay in the