The main object of slavery in the sugar colonies is the obtaining, by compulsion, the labour of negroes in the cultivation of the land.

It is maintained by the planters, that there are no other possible means by which West India produce can be raised; because Europeans, as they allege, cannot, and negroes, in a state of freedom, will not, till the soil in that climate. The former of these propositions was disputed by some early writers in the abolition controversy, who were not personally acquainted with the West Indies; and there are certainly some plausible grounds for denying that it is strictly and universally true; but it has never been controverted by me. Nor do I think that it can be fairly denied, to an extent material to the practical question for the sake of which it has been maintained; for Europeans certainly cannot work so much there in the tillage of the soil, without speedy destruction of health and life, as to make their labour in the raising of sugar a substitute that the planter can afford, while the black or coloured race, whether slaves or free, are their competitors.

On the first settlement of our oldest West Indian colonies, Europeans, I admit, were employed in the labours of the field; but they were chiefly transported convicts, or indented servants, who worked by compulsion; and at a time when sugar planting, incomparably the most laborious species of agriculture, was in its infancy, and was prosecuted to but a small extent.