Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

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MONTSERRAT.

sure of skill and knowledge of which their masters are not always aware, and which the slaves value in proportion to its rarity. The colonists have no more power to arrest this slow but unceasing march of intelligence than they could have to stop a mountain in its fall, or divert a torrent in its downward course. They would be crushed or drowned in the attempt, and I am not sure that their fate in such a case would be much lamented. Now if there is one owner of slaves who believes that sooner or later those slaves, themselves or their descendants, will and must be educated, is it not plainly his interest to bind them to him by every moral tie imaginable, and is it not as obviously dangerous to encourage or permit a mode of education which necessarily tends to alienate them from him ? Can there be a bond of connexion more sacred or lasting than identity of religious worship ? can there be a source of hostility more sure or prolific than sectarian zeal ? At present, the educated planter may despise the poor black methodist slave; but we may be sure, if another system be not adopted, the time will come when the methodist slave will be the methodist freeman, and the power to coerce will precisely cease, when the force and danger of license will more than ever call for it. That the Methodists have done some present good amongst the negros in many of the islands I do not deny; it is partly a shame to England, and partly to the colonial clergy, that


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