368
JAMAICA.
ment, for a variety of offences, some of which do not, in the least degree, trench npon his interests. This evil is increased by the practice of some of the Special Magistrates, of ordering the apprentices to pay back the time, which they lose when sent to the workhouse ; a practice repugnant to justice and utterly illegal. Next to the consequences of the excessive activity and severity of the coercive powers of the apprentice ship, must be considered the far greater amount of suffering occasioned by the imperfection of its protec tive powers. We have shewn in our remarks on labor, maintenance, condition of the females, &c. that the negros are unprotected in the rights most expressly secured to them by the British statute. The local Abolition Act imposes no greater penalty than three pounds sterling, for the utmost injury which an ap prentice can sustain at the hands of his master ; and even the petty pecuniary mulcts, which the Special Magistrates are permitted to inflict on owners and overseers, are paid into the Island Treasury. The law does not recognise the right of the negro, to com pensation for any personal injury. Defective, how ever, as the law is, its administration is still worse. Personal observation, and the testimony of multitudes of the negros themselves, force the conviction on our minds, that many Stipendiary Magistrates act as if their sole duty was to coerce labor, and to maintain at any cost the authority of the planters. When apprentices are brought before them as offenders, they refuse to hear a word in defence or explanation, and when the negros are complainants, they award them punishment, instead of redress. Where this system has been carried to perfection, it has produced a state of things, known and described by the colonists, as " a