CHAPTER IX. 



Absenteeism and Middlemen. 



1 had no occasion to exaggerate the consequences of that 

 fell inheritance which slavery always entails upon the na- 

 tion that tolerates it — the degradation of field labor ; for, 

 in the first place, it is well-known, at least by my own 

 countrymen, that the evil can hardly be over-stated, and in 

 the next place, many other causes of the prostration I see 

 about me, might be enumerated, which must have dragged 

 this island down to poverty and ruin, though no change 

 had ever been made in the character of the labor employed 

 or in the tariff by which it was protected. Of these, the 

 next in importance to the one I have already mentioned, is 

 the non-residence of the landholders. I have ascertained 

 that nine-tenths of the land under cultivation before the 

 Emancipation Act, was owned by absentees, and that that 

 proportion has not been diminished materially, except by 

 the abandonment of properties, as it is called — that is, the 

 ceasing to cultivate them, selling off their moveable im- 



