The projected apprenticeship, while it destroyed the means of an instant coercion in a state of involuntary labor, equally withdrew or neutralized all those urgent motives which constrain to industrious exertion in the case of freemen.

It abstracted from the master, in a state of things then barely remunerative, one fourth of the time and labor required in cultivation, and gave it to the servant, while it compelled the master to supply the same allowances as before.

With many irksome restraints, conditions, and responsibilities imposed on the master, it had no equivalent advantages.

There appeared no reason, in short, why general emancipation would not do as well in 1834 as in 1840.
Finally, a strong conviction existed that from peculiarity of climate and soil, the physical wants and necessities of the peasantry would compel them to labor for their subsistence, to seek employment and wages from the proprietors of the soil; and if the _transformation_ could be safely and quietly brought about, that the _free_ system might be cheaper and more profitable than the other." The general testimony of planters, missionaries, clergymen, merchants, and others, was in confirmation of the same truth.
There is little reason to believe that the views of the colonists on this subject have subsequently undergone much change.

We did not hear, excepting occasionally among the missionaries and clergy, the slightest insinuation thrown out that _slavery was sinful_; that the slaves had a right to freedom, or that it would have been wrong to have continued them in bondage.