AGRICULTURE IN 1829. 281 
spoken ; that he freed the Indian at the expence of the 
negro, and was the first phz/anthropist that introduced 
the traffic in negro slaves into the West Indies. ROBERT- 
SON in his History of America speaks on this head 
with his accustomed accuracy of authority and justness 
of feeling, as if he had contemplated in our day the 
change that would again be attempted, of freeing the 
negro at the expense of the poor unoffending Hindu. 
We whose hopes are centred in cultivation by the hands 
of a hardy race of negro slaves, may be supposed to 
have somewhat of a bias in favor of their employment. 
But whilst it is known that, in the East Indies, a certain 
caste of natives are bought and sold with the soil, and 
that their labour is compulsory by the owner of that soil, 
with the sole obligation of allowing them a subsistence, 
not equal to one-third of the usual allowance to negroes, 
what purpose can it answer, that the manufadture of 
sugar should be transferred from the West Indies to the 
East, or taken from the shoulders of the robust negro, to 
crush the slender frame of the Hindu slave. It is true that 
the distance of the East Indies is greater, and they may 
suppose from this, that the tears of slavery from that cir- 
cumstance may be weakened in their effet, or drowned in 
their passage. But how is humanity bettered by this sub- 
terfuge ? Slavery must still exist, though at the distance of 
a six months voyage instead of six weeks. Norcan any 
arrangement prevent it as long as commerce gives the in- 
habitants of one climate the means of enjoying the luxu- 
ries of another situated within the tropics. In these 
regions, where indolence and ease are the natural pre- 
disposition of mankind, nothing but compulsion will 
procure that superfluity of the produ€tions of nature which 
