From several circumstances in the condition of Barbadoes, it is manifest, that there were fewer motives to cruelty there than existed in other islands.

First, the slave population was abundant, then the whole of the island was under cultivation, and again the lands were old and becoming exhausted.

Now, if either one of these things had not been true, if the number of slaves had been inadequate to the cultivation, or if vast tracts of land, as in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Demerara, had been uncultivated, or were being brought into cultivation; or, again, if the lands under cultivation had been fresh and fertile, so as to bear _pushing_, then it is plain that there would have been inducements to hard driving, which, as the case was, did not exist.
Such is a partial view of Barbadoes as it _was_, touching the matter of cruelty.

We say partial, for we have omitted to mention the selling of slaves from one estate to another, whereby families were separated, almost as effectually as though an ocean intervened.

We have omitted to notice the transportation of slaves to Trinidad, Berbice, and Demerara, which was made an open traffic until prohibited in 1827, and was afterwards continued with but little abatement by evasions of the law.
From the painful contemplation of all this outrage and wrong, the mind is relieved by turning to the present state of the colony.