MIDDLEMEN. 



8? 



Though Mr. Stanley professes to speak upon this point 

 from personal observation, I incline to doubt whether he 

 brought to the investigation, either the zeal or the patience 

 which sustained him in collecting evidences of the poverty 

 and prostration of the colonies. If he had, I am sure his 

 experience would have been less inconsistent with mine, as 

 well as with all the presumptions suggested by the obser- 

 vations of experienced men. 



I hardly conversed with any man of substance in Jamaica 

 on this subject who had not some story, within his own 

 observation, to tell me, of the carelessness, the improvidence 

 and corruption of these middlemen, in whose hands was 

 the control of most of the real estate of the island. It is 

 a common thing, I was told, for the overseers to keep down 

 the returns, and to increase the expenses of estates, by 

 devices perfectly familiar here, until the owner becoming 

 anxious to rid himself of the cares of a property which 

 yielded nothing but anxiety and expense, should send out 

 authority to sell it for what it would bring. These over- 

 seers would then buy it in themselves at a ruinous sacrifice. 

 I lived myself for some time here in a house of which a 

 man had been robbed by this very process. 



But even when there is no fraud, there is great inattention 

 and heedlessness, such as no proprietor would ever be 

 guilty of himself. I met a gentleman one day, who had 

 recently come from England to look after an estate, which 



