Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

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ST.

CHRISTOPHERS.

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cloned for a more decent and effectual stipend. The sincere and active minister of the Gospel in the West Indies is a most meritorious m a n ; he is the living source of intelligence and good order to every class of people in his neighbourhood, and to him, animated and strengthened, as he now is, by the exhortations, example, and protection of the Bishop of the diocese, do I principally look for a substantial advancement in the morals, knowledge, and relative behaviour of white and coloured, of bond and free. The planter is as much interested in the abilities and virtues of the minister of his parish as his own slaves can possibly b e ; and it does really become him now to give up that petty tyranny, which has been hitherto exercised over the colonial clergymen, and to rescue them from that dependence on vestries*, churchwardens and others, which is destructive of the utility of one party, and degrading to the character of both. The money which is spent in the liberal maintenance of a competent number of well-educated ministers in each island is money laid out to great advantage; the security is good, and the returns will be a hundredfold. The first night of being in St. Kitt's I lodged at a place called the Camp, and slept for half an hour in a bed without a curtain. In this * It is much to the credit of Jamaica that this object has been effected by a recent Act of the Legislature in that island.


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