FREE LABOUR. Free Labour to be the Standard or Medium of Traffick instead of Cafh.-Times of Labour (publick or hired) to be general and uniform.Evening Prayer and the Advantages of it.Limitation of Labour per Day to eight Hours. -And only Six Hours on Saturdays, that the People may attend the Courts and Folkmotes to improve their Decernment of Good and Evil. HUMAN Labour is more effential and valuable than any other article in new fettlements, which chiefly depend on the cultivation and produce of the earth for their fubfiftence and commercial profit. On this account, though the price of provifions is generally lower in new fettlements than in communities of long standing, yet the price of Free Labour is always much higher; and higher ftill, or rather infinitely more expenfive expenfive (however flaveholders may reckon) is the labour of flaves, befides the abominable injustice, the corruption of manners, the danger, and other curfes, which always attend the toleration of flavery! Free labour, therefore, in all new settlements, ought to be made the ftandard, or medium, whereby to rate the value of all the neceffaries of life, as well as of all articles of commerce in the settlement: a cow, sheep, or hog, or a bushel of corn, should each be valued at a proportionable number of days labour, eftimated at eight hours. actual labour per day; and a pig, rabbit, or fowl, at fo many hours labour, according to their refpective fizes; and for the fractional eftimation of smaller articles, the hours may be reduced to minutes, and thereby afford an excellent fubftitute for money as a medium of traffic and exchange, whereon a paper currency may be eftablished, which will always always bear an intrinfick value, without diminution, as hereafter explained under the head of Publick Revenue. The daily commencement of publick labour and of hired labour, and all the neceffary ceffations from labour for reft and refreshment, fhould be limited to ftated periods of time, rendered uniform and general, throughout the fettlement, by the periodical fummons of a publick bell, as in our dock yards and great manufactories, for the more effectual prevention of impofition by the employer or employed. By the limitation of labour to eight hours per day, the rateable or legal day's work (inftead of continuing from fix in the morning to fix in the evening, as with us) will end at four in the afternoon, including two whole hours for neceffary refreshment and reft; unless it fhould fhould be thought more convenient in general to begin at five in the morning, and to work three hours till eight, and then, after refting half an hour at breakfaft, to work three hours and an half more till noon, when a moderate and temperate meal, fuitable to the heat of the climate, may be rendered more refreshing and healthful to the labourer by a general feftoo, or fleeping time, during the meridian heat till half past one; which reft of one hour and an half, at one time, will be amply fufficient to : recruit them for the remaining burthen of the rateable labour, or legal day's work, viz. one hour and an half more, ending at three o'clock in the afternoon, when the evening of the antients commenced, and the appointed hour of evening facrifice in the patriarchal times. If, therefore, the new fociety would agree to affemble at that hour, in whatever place they shall afterwards appropriate to religious worship, and there join together in a very short general form of prayer and evening facrifice of thanks (in which, to remove all objections about the value of time, they need not be detained much longer than about five minutes, to exprefs all that may be abfolutely neceffary for every good purpose of prayer and thanksgiving, at least as a daily fervice) they will foon be convinced that no human meafure is fo well calculated to add a real dignity to the ordinary la bourer, as well with refpect to his own internal improvement, as in the outward esteem and confideration which it will neceffarily infure to him from others by continually reminding the rich and higher ranks of men that the daily la bourer is their brother and their equal in the fight of God, and that all men ought to be equally fervants to the fame Lord! I could wish that a fhort daily morning prayer might also be adopted at |