The Assembly of Jamaica had
given it also as their opinion, "that when once the sexes should become
nearly equal in point of number, there was no reason to suppose, that the
increase of the Negros by generation would fall short of the natural
increase of the labouring poor in Great Britain." But the inequality, here
spoken of, could only exist in the case of the African Negros, of whom more
males were imported than females; and this inequality would be done away
soon after the trade should cease.
But the increase of the Negros, where their treatment was better than
ordinary, was confirmed in the evidence by instances in various parts of
the world. From one end of the continent of America to the other their
increase had been undeniably established; and this to a prodigious extent,
though they had to contend with the severe cold of the winter, and in some
parts with noxious exhalations in the summer. This was the case also in the
settlement of Bencoolen in the East Indies. It appeared from the evidence
of Mr. Botham, that a number of Negros, who had been imported there in the
same disproportion of the sexes as in West India cargoes, and who lived
under the same disadvantages, as in the Islands, of promiscuous intercourse
and general prostitution, began, after they had been settled a short time,
annually to increase.
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