244 



NEGRO MOETALITY. 



interval of three centuries, by reducing them to slavery ! 

 Much cannot be said in commendation of the ^reatment of 

 the blacks in the southern parts of the United States ; but 

 there are degrees in the sufferings of the human species. 

 The slave who has a hut and a family, is less miserable than 

 he who is purchased, as if he formed part of a flock. The 

 greater the number of slaves established with their families 

 in dwellings which they believe to be their own property, 

 the more rapidly will their numbers increase. 



The annual increase of the last ten years in the United 

 States (without counting the manumission of 100,000), was 

 twenty-six on a thousand, which produces a doubling in 

 twenty-seven years. Now, if the slaves at Jamaica and 

 Cuba had multiplied in the same proportion, those two 

 islands (the former since 1795, and the latter since 1800) 

 would possess almost their present population, without 

 400,000 blacks having been dragged from the coast of 

 Africa, to Port-Eoyal and the Havannah. 



The mortality of the negroes is very different in the island 

 of Cuba, as in all the West Indies, according to the nature 

 of their treatment, the humanity of masters and overseers, 

 and the number of negresses who can attend to the sick. 

 There are plantations in which fifteen to eighteen per cent, 

 perish annually. I have heard it coolly discussed, whether 

 it were better for the proprietor not to subject the slaves to 

 excessive labour, and consequently to replace them less fre- 

 quently, or to draw all the advantage possible from them in 

 a few years, and replace them oftner by the acquisition of 

 bozal negroes. Such are the reasonings of cupidity, when 

 man employs man as a beast of burden ! It would be unjust 

 to entertain a doubt, that within fifteen years negro mor- 

 tality has greatly diminished in the island of Cuba. Several 

 proprietors have made laudable efforts to improve the plan- 

 tation system. 



It has been remarked, how much the population of the 

 island of Cuba is susceptible of being augmented in the 

 lapse of ages. As the native of a northern country, little 

 favoured by nature, I may observe that the Mark of Bran- 

 debourg, for the most part sandy, contains, under an admi- 



nistration favourable to the progress of agricultural industry, 

 on a surface only one-third of that of Cuba, a population 



ion 



