prenticeship, and says, it gives satisfaction. The apprentices are paid for task-work, not by the day, and find themselves in food and clothing. On another estate, unqualified freedom was given, on the 1st of August, to all the slaves, amounting to 264; of whom only thirty-six continued to work on the estate for hire, and these not regularly; the remainder having dispersed themselves over the island. We suspect that the proprietor of this estate was an absentee, and that the attorney to whom it was then let, was unpopular.' There is no reason to believe that otherwise so large a proportion would have left the spot.

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The scheme of uniting free labour with the apprenticeship has been adopted by a Nevis planter on one of two estates which he holds in that island, where the apprenticeship system is working worse than in any other colony visited by Mr. Innes: on his other estate, the apprentices reject the arrangement!' Nevis does not contain half the number of negroes that are found in St. Kitt's; but the contrast between the state of the two adjoining islands is very striking. The explanation given by Mr. Innes is, that many of the estates there are managed by inexperienced persons; the overseers are frequently hired merely for crop 'time; and the consequence is, constant complaints both by and against the apprentices.' Not only is the agriculture of this island far behind that of St. Kitt's, but the handful of whites who have here enacted the two-fold part of legislators and slaveholders, appear to enjoy an unenviable pre-eminence in every moral disqualification. It is a fact which speaks strongly against the planters of Nevis, as compared with those of St. Kitt's; that while, on the slave population of the latter, amounting in 1817 to 20,168, there was a decrease of only 100 in the ten years following, the decrease in Nevis during eleven years, on a population of 9,600, was 190, or nearly four times as great.

Nevis is the island in which, about twenty years ago, Edward Huggins was indicted by the law-officer of the crown for flogging a slave to death in the public market-place, and was acquitted, on the ground that the Act on which he was tried was never intended to be enforced, but was passed only to silence the zealots in England. The facts were admitted; but their diabolical perpetrator was defended and upheld by the majority of the planters; and some members of the House of Assembly lost their seats at the next election for taking part against him! The proceedings of that iniquitous petty legislature, in mockery and defiance of the recommendations of the Home Government, have vied in their spirit with those of the Jamaica Assembly *; and we infer from a statement in the last Report of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, that a similar feeling prevails with respect to

* See Anti-Slavery Reporter, Vol. III. pp. 73, 81..

the labours of the missionaries there. The passage we refer to is as follows:

We have in the course of the year opened one new chapel, and enlarged our other three; but, notwithstanding having thus provided above 1,100 extra sittings, our places of worship are still well filled, and sometimes overflowing. The above new chapel was kindly and spontaneously fitted up for our use at the sole expense of the Hon. G. Webbe, Chief Justice of the island, whose liberal and friendly disposition has not only vindicated our character and conduct when aspersed both in and out of the Legislature, during the powerful excitement connected with the change in the negroes' condition, but has also aided us in carrying into effect many plans for the extension of our work. We feel it a duty to acknowledge the hand of God in raising us up such a friend, at a time when the tide of popular feeling among a certain class ran powerfully against us."* Report for 1835, p. 56.

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Mr. Innes tells us, that there is no police force in this island, nor any treadmill, nor any cells for solitary confinement; that, consequently, there is little use in ordering punishments; that to send an apprentice to prison is to gratify him, the rations 'being liberal, with abundant space for exercise. Such were the representations, no doubt, which he received from the planters; and which shew that they still rely upon coercion alone, in order to enforce the labour allowed by law. We hear nothing of schools; and the pious efforts of the missionaries are evidently not countenanced by the legislature. Under such circumstances, who can wonder to find it stated, that the greatest gloom and despondency prevail'? Mr. Innes says, he should not be 'surprised to find it proposed in the House of Assembly to forego the apprenticeship'; although, he adds, he cannot understand how labour can be secured in freedom, when, under apprenticeship, the attempt to enforce it thus fails.' That, after visiting Antigua, he should not understand this, is strange. The apprenticeship worked by means of the treadmill, must prove more costly and unsatisfactory to all parties than the system of free labour.

We now turn to Barbadoes, where Mr. Innes found the apprenticeship working as satisfactorily as the most sanguine could 'have anticipated.' It is true that, on his second visit to that colony, he found the apprentices had been giving trouble,' and were not working so well in June as in the March preceding. This was ascribed to the disallowance of the Police Bill, which had led the apprentices to suppose that there were no means of coercing labour. The system of coercion, then, is not altogether

* The total number of members in society in Nevis is reported to be 1,170.

abandoned. In so large an island, we might expect, indeed, that very different results would attend the working of a plan which admits of so material a modification, according to the character and policy of the individual planter. The circumstances under which the experiment has to be made in Barbadoes, are somewhat peculiar; some of them favourable, others unfavourable to its success. Among the latter may be mentioned the following. First, the expedients elsewhere adopted for the abridgement of labour are unknown in Barbadoes; the plough, which might be extensively used, is not in general approved of, and the estates are not large enough to admit of the expense of machinery.? Secondly, it is not the custom of this island to allow negroes land for raising provisions; the planters supply food. There is consequently neither the same hold upon the negroes, whose attachment to their provision-grounds fixes them to the soil, nor the same encouragement to their industry. Thirdly, owing either to the stigma attaching to field labour, or to prohibitory enactments, no free persons are found labouring in the field; and so long as this is the case, the apprentices must be expected to submit to this labour with reluctance. The circumstances favourable to the working of the system are thus enumerated by Mr. Innes, in contrast with the state of things in British Guiana, which he had just left.

There, (in Guiana,) the population is inadequate to the wants of the agriculturist: here, it is more than adequate. There, the waste land capable of producing provisions is abundant: here, there is no productive land uncultivated. There, the wants of the negroes are few, being almost confined to food: here, civilization being further advanced, their wants are comparatively numerous. There, the local attachment is weak or unknown, from the colony being of recent settlement; here, strong to excess. Between fellow creoles, the greater remoteness of the importation of their respective ancestors confers superiority; whilst the Barbadian creole of recent standing, in yielding to such a claim, prides himself on his superiority over the creoles of every other colony. There are many other distinguishing points that might be enumerated, but these are sufficient to account for the Abolition Act pressing injuriously on the one colony, whilst it benefits the other. I use the word benefit, it being my impression that the Barbadoes planter has not to apprehend pecuniary sacrifices by the termination of the apprenticeship; and it must be delightful to him to be surrounded, and to have his land cultivated, by free labourers, instead of slaves. All classes of negroes here are very decently

clothed.'

On the subject of the education of the apprenticed labourers, Mr. Innes says not a word; giving as the reason for his silence, that the island has the good fortune to be the residence of a 'bishop and an archdeacon who are eminently qualified to impart 'the fullest information.' Barbadoes has indeed been highly fa

voured in having so faithful and exemplary an instructor and reprover among her resident clergy as Archdeacon Eliot, to whose persevering, but not unopposed labours, a great improvement in the state of things is chiefly attributable. The earliest attempt to give gratuitous school instruction to the coloured children in Barbadoes, was made by a layman, Lieut. Lugger, Royal Artillery, so recently as 1818. Since then, schools in connexion with the Established Church have been instituted throughout the colony, by the authority of Bishop Coleridge; and there is now 'scarcely a town or village throughout the diocese,' the Archdeacon says, (in 1832,)* where a knowledge of the Christian duties, accompanied with instruction in reading and writing, is not brought within reach both of the free coloured and of the slave popu'lation.' This is good, so far as it goes. We should have liked to know, however, how these schools are attended and managed. It appears, from the same high authority, that the moral condition of the slaves is degraded and vicious. The indifference ' and even opposition of the master to the marriage of his slaves,' 'the ridicule with which the marriages of slaves are often treated by those who exercise authority over them,' 'the licentious and 'unhallowed connexions openly formed between the superior and his dependent,' 'the want of legal encouragement to the marriage ' of slaves,' and the heathen ignorance in which the slave population are retained, are adduced by Archdeacon Eliot, among the causes of the prevailing licentiousness and the infrequency of marriage which he deplores. The immorality, he says, in one place, could not be greater than under the existing law. While he bears willing testimony to the kindness of many proprietors towards their dependents, he is compelled to declare, that acts of cruelty were committed without either punishment or public censure falling on the offender, and that the laws afforded no adequate protection to the bondsman. In the same work, we find the venerable Author combating the assumption that the slaves would become idle on obtaining their freedom; by remarking, that the free blacks of Barbadoes had, by their superior industry, driven the lower orders of whites from almost every trade requiring skill and continued exertion. He allows that field labour was in great disrepute, being always associated with the whip and the driver, ' and other tokens of personal degradation; we cannot therefore 'wonder,' he remarks, that it is generally shunned. The first step towards the removal of the existing dislike to this species ' of employment,' would be, he proceeds to say, 'to engage the great mass of our population in a kind of voluntary free labour,

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Eliot's "Christianity and Slavery." See Ecl. Rev., 3d Series, Vol. IX., p. 387.

of which the profits may, to a certain extent, perceptibly accrue to themselves. To work spontaneously and for our own imme'diate benefit, is the distinctive character of freemen;' (a noble axiom, which the framers of the apprenticeship scheme would have been wise to bear in mind;) nor would those who had earned advantages by field labour be likely, he contends, to regard it with dissatisfaction. Would they not rather, if permission were allowed them, continue to work for their masters as 'tenants on the estate, receiving either wages in money for their ' labour or a portion of the produce of the land? I believe the present condition of the sugar-plantations in those States of 'South America which have granted entire freedom to their slaves, 'will furnish a satisfactory answer to the question."

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The Archdeacon's suggestion seems to have induced one planter of great intelligence and experience' in the colony, to commence a system which, after eighteen months' trial, he informed Mr. Innes, was working admirably.

To a family consisting of a man, his wife, and four children, he gives two acres of land, with a comfortable cottage, in consideration of their providing themselves with every thing except medical attendance, and giving to the estate equal to eight days' labour of one person per week: when there are more than four children, an allowance is made for the extra number. The arrangement is for twelve months, and the apprentices who have entered into it are highly pleased; they find two acres sufficient for rotation of crops. The extension of the plan, the planter expects, will enable him to obtain sufficient labour after the apprenticeship.'

Can there be a doubt of it? And but for the apprenticeship, similar arrangements would have been generally adopted. Upon the whole, our readers will, we think, be enabled to judge pretty accurately, how matters stand in Barbadoes; how it is that the apprenticeship system works more beneficially there, than in Guiana and Jamaica, and why it does not work still better;namely, because it is not free labour *.

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In Grenada, the same system is reported to be working so much more satisfactorily than the planters had anticipated,' that some of them begin to look forward to the freedom of the apprentices with diminished apprehension.' A great waste of labour and a defective husbandry have hitherto prevailed, of which the planters are now becoming sensible; and some of them

* And because, it might be added, the Missions have been able to do little for Barbadoes. The Wesleyan Missionary Society had but three teachers stationed here before the Abolition Act, and numbered only 480 members in society (358 free and 122 slaves) out of a population of 100,000. The Moravians have also a small settlement in the island. 3 B

VOL. XIV.-N.S.