It was notorious, that when any planter was in distress, and sought to relieve himself by increasing the labour on his estate by means of the purchase of new slaves, the measure invariably tended to his destruction.

What then was the importation of fresh Africans but a system, tending to the general ruin of the islands?
But it had often been said, that without fresh importations the population of the slaves could not be supported in the islands.

This, however, was a mistake.

It had arisen from reckoning the deaths of the imported Africans, of whom so many were lost in the seasoning, among the deaths of the Creole-slaves.

He did not mean to say, that under the existing degree of misery the population would greatly increase; but he would maintain, that, if the deaths and the births were calculated upon those, who were either born, or who had been a long time in the islands, so as to be considered as natives, it would be found that the population had not only been kept up, but that it had been increased.
If it was true, that the labour of a free man was cheaper than that of a slave; and also that the labour of a long imported slave was cheaper than that of a fresh imported one; and again, that the chances of mortality were much more numerous among the newly imported slaves in the West Indies, than among those of old standing there (propositions, which he took to be established), we should see new arguments for the impolicy of the trade.
It might be stated also, that the importation of vast bodies of men, who had been robbed of their rights, and grievously irritated on that account, into our colonies (where their miserable condition opened new sources of anger and revenge), was the importation only of the seeds of insurrection into them.