Facts—british West Indies.

For further proof that slaves love freedom and are better off for having it, look at the British West Indies. There, as is well known, emancipation was received with a general burst of joy and gratitude, and its effect upon the slaves, was a great improvement both in outward comforts, and in mind and morals. They have more and better food and clothing and home conveniences; schools are set up for their instruction, and are well attended by the children and youth and often even by full grown men and women, the churches are thronged by crowds who had no religious teaching in the time of slavery, vice and crime are lessened, marriage is held more sacred, beneficial societies are multiplied, and other tokens of abetter social state abound. So have testified colonial governors, legislators, magistrates, planters, merchants, and visiters from abroad, some of them after careful observation, in all the principal islands, made on purpose to learn the working of freedom. One sign of the much improved outward condition of the laboring class—no longer slaves—is the great increase of imports of such articles as they use. For instance, in Jamaica, since slavery was abolished, the yearly average importation of flour, rice, corn, and bread has considerably more than doubled; of corn-meal, butter, lard and soap, almost doubled; of pork, about trebled; of candles, and of lumber, has increased nearly one half; and of cattle, more than four-fold. If exports have lessened, one reason is, a greater home-consumption. The planter sends away less, for the laborer uses more, thus having not only more comforts from abroad, but also more of those produced at home. Many of the freedmen have become small landholders, and live in easy independence on their little properties. Women, to a great extent, have left field-labor, and now attend to household duties and the care of their children, formerly, of necessity, so much neglected. Self-respect and manly bearing, have, in a good degree, taken the place of that cringing servility which generally marks the slave. Thus facts refute the falsehood that negroes are fit only to be slaves; and neither wish for freedom, nor would be bettered by it.