126 STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE 



issued weekly. Then labor hired for a short term will super- 

 sede labor hired for life; or, as the Europeans would say, free 

 labor will supersede vassalage. In the mean time, whatever 

 accelerates the condensation of populousness tends to bring on 

 the European plan of payment and whatever retards the in- 

 crease of people tends to defer the European plan of pay- 

 ment. The abolition of the slave-trade, by putting off the in- 

 crease of colonists, will needlessly delay, by half a century, 

 the emancipation of the negro vassalry : so thoughtless, so 

 suicidal is the policy, which would interfere with the natural 

 course of things. Some lascars have lately been brought to 

 Trinidad, who are intended to be let as free labourers. It will 

 soon be found, that they must adopt an owner responsible for 

 their maintenance when disemployed, because they cannot 

 raise the required pledge. It will next be found, that they 

 must leave in pawn the mass of their wages, in order to se- 

 cure the overseer, who delivers out provisions and clothes, for 

 the repayment of his advances : and thus an agreement made 

 after the European manner, will terminate in a practical vas- 

 salage. 



Locke, a friend to liberty, but a man of sense, when he 

 drew up the laws for South Carolina, recognized and esta- 

 blished the subsisting property in slaves. He did not even at- 

 tack the very questionable principle of the civil law, with re- 



