252
JAMAICA.
The preceding letter, signed by all the Baptist missionaries in the island, is addressed through us to the British anti-slavery public, to whose attention we earnestly recommend its important contents, which express the deliberate and well-considered sentiments of men, who, of all others, are the best qualified to form an unprejudiced judgment of the condition of the negros under the apprenticeship, and of their capacity for a true appreciation of the blessings of freedom. The testimony which it bears to the abuses of the existing system is the result of painful, personal obser足 vation ; and is but a reiteration of a similar and even still stronger statement forwarded last year by six of the same missionaries to the Secretary of their Board in London ; and which, it is much to be regretted, was not published, as was doubtless the intention of its writers. In the course of the day, we saw a negro from Glasgow estate, the property of R. W A L L A C E , M.P., for Greenock, whose affecting narration is inserted here as a further illustration of the present state of negro slavery in Jamaica. In the Appendix will be found a statement* of the same negro to a gentleman resident in the colony, which corresponds with the subjoined relation of the sufferings of himself and his fellow-apprentices. We are quite willing to believe that the proprietor of this estate has been kept in ignorance of the treatment of his negros ; and it is not without great regret, that we bring these facts under his notice and that of the public in the present manner; but we are strongly impressed with the conviction, that there are no estates more oppressively and even cruelly managed, than those of many liberal, humane, and even religious proprietors resident in England. * See Appendix F, Sec. iv.