It was a Barbadian lady who once exclaimed in a public company in England, "O, I wish we had Wilberforce in the West Indies, I would be one of the very first to tear his heart out!" If such a felon wish could escape the lips of a female, and that too amid the awing influence of English society, what may we conclude were the feelings of planters and drivers on the island! The opposition was maintained even after the abolition of slavery; and there was no colony, save Jamaica, with which the English government had so much trouble in arranging the provisions and conditions under which abolition was to take place.
From statements already made, the reader will see how great a change has come over the feelings of the planters.
He has followed us through this and the preceding chapters, he has seen tranquillity taking the place of insurrections, a sense of security succeeding to gloomy forbodings, and public order supplanting mob law; he has seen subordination to authority, peacefulness, industry, and increasing morality, characterizing the negro population; he has seen property rising in value, crime lessening, expenses of labor diminishing, the whole island blooming with unexampled cultivation, and waving with crops unprecedented in the memory of its inhabitants; above all, he has seen licentiousness decreasing, prejudice fading away, marriage extending, education spreading, and religion preparing to multiply her churches and missionaries over the land.
_These_ are the blessing of abolition--_begun_ only, and but partially realized as yet, but promising a rich maturity in time to come, after the work of freedom shall have been completed..