West India planter. Considerations on the emancipation of negroes and on the abolition of the slave-trade. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Debrett, 1788. The Making of the Modern World (accessed February 12, 2023). [5]- If, therefore, a Weft-India planter, by being difpoffeffed of his interelt in his slaves, is obliged to have the work of his estate done by freedmen, at an expence so great as not to allow him an interest on his capital equal to what he made before, or to what he might get in any other way; it will be incumbent on the legifla- ture to indemnify him;-and that can only be done by taking his lands and all their appendages at their present just value. Now the value of the lands, with their eretions and appendages, and live flock, cannot be less, at a medium, than twice as much as the gross amount of the saves which were employed to cultivate it. If, therefore, the fum, required to indemnify the planters for the emancipation of their slaves, be at least twenty millions sterling, the fum, that will be required to indemnify them for their lands, &c. will be forty millions; which, ad- ded to the twenty millions for the negroes, will form the enormous mass of sixty millions flerling. 1 imagine it will not be necessary to do more than briefly to hint at this consequence of emancipating the negroes, to convince the warmest advocate for the measure of the absurdity of indulging any fur- ther speculations on a point, which is so unlikely to be accomplilhed.
