heart-burnings of the other colonies, and has established a better
relation between employers and employed. With a small area, a soil not
very rich, and a climate not especially adapted to sugar-growing, she
has notwithstanding taken a prominent position among the West India
islands. The prosperity of the island under free labor has been most
encouraging. Of the 70,000 acres, 38,000 are owned by large proprietors,
whose estates average 320 acres each. Its only export, with the
exception of a little arrow-root, is sugar; of this, the largest crop on
record (20,000 hogsheads) has been obtained since the slaves were
emancipated. Ten years before emancipation, the average annual export,
as given by Sewell, was 12,500 hogsheads, obtained by a field-force of
18,320 hands, of whom one-third were non-effective. From 1840 to 1850,
the average was 13,000; from 1850 to 1860, 13,500, of superior weight,
with a field-force of 6,000.

The export of sugar, according to Cochin, has been as follows: 1831-34,
180,802 cwt.; 1835-38, 143,878 cwt.; 1839-45, 189,406 cwt.; 1846,
102,644 cwt.; 1847, 200,201 cwt.

Besides this crop, the small proprietors raise arrow-root and
provisions.

The imports show the advancing prosperity of the island. From 1822 to
1832, they amounted to £130,000, of which £40,000 were from the United
States; in 1856, under free labor, they reached £266,369, of which
£106,586 were from the United States,--the American imports being mostly
articles of food. This remarkable increase of importations, it should be
observed, is not due to an increase of population, as the population of
Antigua is less now than it was twenty years since.