In That Curious Document A Boast Is Made Of The Prodigality With Which Refreshments Are Distributed To The Condemned, And

Of the staircase which the inquisitors have had erected in the interior of the pile for the accommodation of the

Relazados (the relapsed culprits.)) How great is the difference in the condition of the slave who serves in the house of a rich family at the Havannah or at Kingston, or one who works for himself, giving his master but a daily retribution, and that of the slave attached to a sugar estate! The threats employed to correct an obstinate negro mark this scale of human privations. The coachman is menaced with the coffee plantation; and the slave working on the latter is menaced with the sugar house. The negro, who with his wife inhabits a separate hut, whose heart is warmed by those feelings of affection which for the most part characterize the African race, finds that after his labour some care is taken of him amidst his indigent family, is in a position not to be compared with that of the insulated slave lost in the mass. This diversity of condition escapes the notice of those who have not had the spectacle of the West Indies before their eyes. Owing to the progressive amelioration of the state even of the captive caste in the island of Cuba, the luxury of the masters and the possibility of gain by their work, have drawn more than eighty thousand slaves to the towns; and the manumission of them, favoured by the wisdom of the laws, is become so active as to have produced, at the present period, more than 130,000 free men of colour. By considering the individual position of each class, by recompensing, by the decreasing scale of privations, intelligence, love of labour and the domestic virtues, the colonial administration will find the best means of improving the condition of the blacks.

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