Great Britain will prefer a slow and sure, to an impetuous and uncertain, measure.

The colonies certainly produce a great revenue, and the loss of this great revenue would, as certainly, not promote the payment of our national debt: a truism which is, I think, clear to the comprehension even of the fourth estate of the realm.

CHAPTER XLVII.

· DOMESTIC AND TOWN SLAVES-THEIR LIVES.

"The greatest part of them live in a state of complete idleness, and are usually ignorant and debauched to the last degree." Six Months in the West Indies.

In a preceding chapter I promised the reader that I would notice the condition of the domestic and town negroes, which will include all those to whom the description I have given of the life of slaves on estates will not apply.

The life, then, of a town negro is totally different from that of a slave in the country. An inhabitant of a West India town is, perhaps, the possessor of six, eight, ten, or even a dozen slaves; and out of this number he selects three or four of the most valuable for his own domestic purposes, and generally hires out the rest to serve, in the capacity of servants, those persons who may not, like himself, have any negroes of their own.

Too many of these slaves are worthless and bad, from many causes; and, among others, from the bad discipline in which they are kept by their masters.

The master expects to receive a certain sum, monthly, from his slave; that sum usually varies from four to eight dollars, according to the age or

abilities of the negro, and it too often happens that, provided it is regularly deposited in the hands of the master, he gives himself very little trouble or concern about the manner in which it is acquired.

Hence arises the great difficulty of obtaining good servants, and the still greater one of getting bad ones punished as they deserve.

Their petty larcenies, their great impositions, their infamous neglect, their frequent disobedience of orders, and their total indifference to the pleasure or displeasure of those who hire them, must be tolerated and endured; for nontoleration and nonendurance would be not only useless but impolitic. You may complain to the owner, but he regularly receives his stipend, and what cares he? you may scold and abuse the slave, but he laughs at you in his sleeve, and continues in his old road; what cares he? you may tell your friends and acquaintance that your case is very hard, they will pity you, and say, "So it is;" but what care they? Therefore all ye who may be hereafter doomed to cross the broad Atlantic, and to vegetate in the tropics, on this subject listen to one of those whom experience hath taught, and take the advice of the initiated. Your servants, if they be hired slaves, will plague, tease, worry, torment, discompose, unphilosophise (to use a word out of my own dictionary), vex, irritate, put you out of temper, and make you perspire beyond all calculation; therefore you must suffer yourselves to be wronged, robbed, imposed upon, displeased, and disobeyed; only when all this happens you must not complain, you must

not make a fuss, you must be quite quiet, quite civil, quite calm, and quite cool; and since you have no chance of redress by a statement of your grievances, and a very slight one of bettering your situation by changing your servants, you had better let them rob, steal, displease, and disobey as much as their slaveships may please so to do; and then, like true philosophers, join your friends in the exclamation, what care we? This is my advice, reader, and unless you follow it you will have very little comfort, and it may be, very little peace.

I have said that the slave usually carries a stipend to his master of from four to eight dollars, according to his ability, out of his monthly earnings, I will now tell how he himself exists.

If he be let by his master, he is probably hired by a resident for a certain sum, say six dollars per month, and this money is regularly paid to the owner. In his new place the slave is provided with a Negro house, of which there are a certain number attached to every dwelling, and he is either fed, or receives half a dollar (about two shillings and twopence) per week to feed himself. If, however, as is often the case, the owner say to the slave, you are at liberty to go and hire yourself out, only you must be sure to bring me six dollars a month for your labor, the fellow generally contrives to hire himself for three or four dollars extra, which he, of course, deposits, with all the coolness of a philosopher, into whichever pocket of his pantaloons has no hole at the bottom.

I should further mention that his owner engages to furnish him with clothes.

Thus it appears that he receives a certain stipend, part of which he pays over to his possessor by whom he is clothed, that he is housed and fed by the resident who hires him, and that all this is for his domestic services. Let us now examine what those domestic services are.

Certainly, then, they are not remarkable either for their multitude or their magnitude.

The condition of a hired domestic is little short of a sinecure. He, or she, is most frequently idle; but when very busily employed, one need have but little penetration to discover that it is either in doing nothing, or in doing mischief.

Every poor devil who, like your very humble servant, hath lived in the West Indies without possessing slaves of his own is aware that one's household affairs, however circumscribed, are never carried on without the connivance and cooperation of a certain body of ministry. In fact, the establishment of mi-lor Anglois, who goes for a little while to the West Indies, is quite a nation in miniature.

His dwelling, par exemple, of moderate dimensions, and with a neatly shingled roof, is the representative of a country; then he has his negro houses, his kitchen, and his stables, fit receptacles, by my faith, for his lords, his commons, and his ministry. A tall, stout, hale, hearty obstinate, and unbending butler by way of premier, a cook, a housemaid, a washer