RUIN. 49 
former slaves for daily bread. People talk of the cruelty 
of the slave system, but we may safely affirm that the 
negro on a plantation was far better off before the emanci- 
pation than now. The change was made too suddenly, 
and in an unnatural way. Serfdom in European coun- 
tries went out slowly and its downfall caused few diffi- 
culties ; the slave emancipation on the contrary produced 
awful consequences which are seen and felt down to the 
present day. 
The great downfall came in 1838 and trouble fell at 
once upon the planter. The mortgagees came down 
like a flock of carrion crows and in most cases secured 
the compensation money as instalments on account, 
Only on account, however, for few estates had liens so 
small as a third of the value of their negroes. Wages 
had now to be paid and those who could pay got labour 
of a sort—others were perforce obliged to give up. 
Fortunate indeed were those who sold their estates to 
the freedmen, for they escaped the further difficulties pro- 
duced by the abolition of the differential sugar duties, 
Eight years passed after the emancipation before those 
_duties were abolished. Those planters who had not 
been ruined by the first revolution were struck down by 
the second. Only here and there was an exception ; for 
example WILLIAM (afterwards Sir WILLIAM) ARRINDELL 
kept on Zeelandia by money gained in his legal praétise. 
Lawyers of course did very well, for there were so many 
foreclosures and suits, but everybody eise suffered more 
or less. Merchants failed, progress on every line was 
checked, the public roads were in many places quag- 
mires, and in some quite impassable, and altogether every 
prospect of recovery was gone. 
