FEBRUARY 17.
Some of the free people of colour possess slaves, cattle, and
other property left them by their fathers, and are in good circumstances;
but few of them are
industrious enough to increase
their possessions by any honest exertions of their own. As to
the free blacks, they are almost uniformly lazy and improvident,
most of them half-starved, and only anxious to live from hand to
mouth. Some lounge about the highways with pedlar-boxes
stocked with various worthless baubles ; others keep miserable
stalls provided with rancid butter, damaged salt pork, and other
such articles: and these they are always willing to exchange
for stolen rum and sugar, which they secretly tempt the negroes
to pilfer from their proprietors ; but few of them ever endeavour to earn
their livelihood
creditably. Even those who
profess to be tailors, carpenters, or coopers, are, for the most part,
careless, drunken, and dissipated, and never take pains sufficient
to attain any dexterity in their trade. As to a free negro hiring
himself out for plantation -labour, no instance of such a thing
was ever known in Jamaica; and probably no price, however
great, would be considered by them as a sufficient temptation.
