ABSTRACT
Labour, which had once been a point of communion betwixt the two ranks of society, now became a barrier of separation; contempt and severity succeeded to affectionate care; punishments were multiplied as they came to be inflicted by inferiors, and as the death of one or several slaves did not lessen the steward’s wealth. The disadvantages of slave cultivation were sufficient to offset all the advantages of fertility, climate, the absence of taxes, and monopoly. The question of emancipation, the substitution of another cultivation for slave cultivation, presents without doubt difficulties; but that is above all relative to the vigorous protection owed to a race a long time oppressed, as against the consequences of moral degradation to which we have subjected it. In no other system of cultivation does the owner oblige himself to furnish the machinery of a farm three thousand miles away from his home.
