54 



ESTATES ABANDONED. 



pense, open during my stay on the island. The corpora- 

 tion of Kingston owns a building which has been used as a 

 theatre, and in the suburbs of the city is a plain once fa- 

 mous as a race course, but of the first, rats and spiders are 

 the only tenants, and weeds and underwood have over- 

 grown the other. 



But the island abounds with more palpable, if not more 

 significant evidences of prostration than these. 



Since the year 1833, when the British Slave Emancipa- 

 tion Act was passed, the real estate of the island has been 

 rapidly depreciating in value, and its productiveness has 

 been steadily diminishing to its present comparatively 

 ruinous standard. Whatever diversity of views may exist 

 respecting the influence which the abolition of slavery may 

 have had in producing this state of things, there is no 

 doubt, I believe, entertained by any, that the passage of 

 the Emancipation Act of 1833, was followed by the disas- 

 ters I have referred to, as promptly as it could have been 

 if it had been their cause. I will start, therefore, at that 

 point to illustrate still further, and in another aspect, the 

 present industrial condition of Jamaica. 



Since 1832, out of the six hundred and fifty-three sugar 

 estates then in cultivation, more than one hundred and 

 fifty have been abandoned and the works broken up. This 

 has thrown out of cultivation over 200,000 acres of rich 

 land, which, in 1832, gave employment to about 30,000 



