to cover all casualties and contingencies, shall multiply the residue at the same ratio, for the remainder of the term to come of his apprenticeship, and the aggregate shall be deemed the value of such apprenticed labourer, or, if the apprenticeship shall be within one year of its expiration, the said justices shall proceed upon the same principle, and fix the value of such apprenticed labourer, in proportion to the time his or her apprenticeship has to run."

Now the value that the planters put on a fieldnegro is £26 a year; one-fourth deducted would leave £19. 10s., which, multiplied by five, the unexpired term of apprenticeship, would make the valuation of a field-labourer £96. 10s. It is unnecessary to make any comment on the equity of this valuation.

The next clause is in direct violation of the first of the English Act. The object of this clause is to compel the special justice to make apprenticed labourers of the children who are free by law.

"And whereas it may happen, that children who have not attained the age of six years on the said Ist day of August, 1834, or that children who, after that day may be born to any female apprenticed labourers, may not be properly supported by their parents, and that no other person may be supposed, voluntarily, to undertake the support of such children, and it is necessary that provision should be made for the maintenance of such children in any such contingency : Be it therefore enacted, That if any child, who, on the

said first day of August, 1834, had not completed his or her sixth year, or if any child, to which any female apprenticed labourer may give birth on or after the said first day of August, 1834, shall be brought before any justice of the peace holding special commission, and if it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of such justice, that any such child is unprovided with an adequate maintenance, and that such child hath not completed his or her age of twelve years, it shall be lawful for such justice, and he is hereby required, on behalf of any such child, to execute an indenture of apprenticeship, thereby binding such child as an apprenticed labourer to the person or persons entitled to the services of the mother of such child."

Every negro child under twelve, it is evident, would be brought before the special justice on the plea of destitution, and he would hereby be required to deprive the free child of his liberty. The council fortunately rejected this bill. Mr. Batty immediately introduced another, wholly at variance with the principle of the British Act. The imperial Act declares, in the sixteenth clause, "that it shall not be lawful for any such Governor, Council, and Assembly, or for any such local legislature, or for his Majesty in council, by any such Acts of Assembly, ordinances, or orders in council, as aforesaid, to make or establish any enactment, regulation, provision, rule, or order, which shall be in any wise repugnant or contradictory to this present Act or any part thereof,

but that every such enactment, &c. shall be and is hereby declared to be absolutely null and void, and of no effect." And only two clauses lower down it is declared and enacted that the special justices alone shall exercise jurisdiction in all matters between master and apprentice. The new bill of Mr. Batty transferred the authority of the special justices back to the local magistrates, whom the Governor, in the words of the Act, was "hereby required" to appoint wherever their services might be desired. Had it not been for the strenuous opposition of the Chief-Justice and the Attorney-General, this Bill would have passed the Council. It was thrown out, and again introduced with the words "hereby required" omitted, but in all other respects in as objectionable a form as it first appeared in, and passed the Council.

Whether it has yet received the sanction of the King, is not known to the public; but if it has, the framer of it has succeeded in defeating the British Act for the Abolition of Slavery.

I have stated that the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery was very reluctantly passed by the House of Assembly. In an address in the month of June, 1834, to His Excellency the Marquis of Sligo, the House openly avows its reluctance.

"It affords us satisfaction to learn, that the bill passed last session to give effect to the slavery abolition act of the British parliament, has received

the royal assent, and been declared adequate to establish the right of this island, to participate in the grant of money awarded by England, as a compensation to the owners of slaves; but the house must again frankly declare, that, in giving effect to that Act, in the shape in which it was pressed upon them, they did so against their better judgment, and to avert the still greater danger of opposing it."

To this the Governor very properly replied—

"I observe, with regret, the sentiments you express relative to your own measure of the last session, passed unanimously, by which you took the lead of the other colonies, and have in consequence been the first of them all to receive the notification, that your island has rendered its right to share in the compensation-money indefeasible."

And in reference to another part of their address

"I do not quite comprehend the meaning of your term unaided by the mother country.' The sum of twenty millions just granted by that country, for compensating her colonies on the change of their system, her never-failing replies to the applications made to her in any cases of real emergency, in which no colony has more largely participated than Jamaica, show that the term · unaided' can hardly be maintained. It is scarcely necessary for me to recall to your recollection, that, within the last three years, you have received three hundred thousand pounds as a loan to individuals who suffered in the late rebellion.-That the parent state took upon herself the whole payment of the troops for the two years subsequent to that re

bellion; and that, only within these few days, the island has received another loan of two hundred thousand pounds in coin, at a reduced rate of interest, and payable at a protracted period. These facts unquestionably prove that Jamaica has derived her full share of the fostering attention of the mother country."

A little later in the same month, lest the executive should have left his Majesty in ignorance of the disposition of the House towards the new state of things, a long memorial was addressed to the King in Council, which could not possibly leave his Majesty any longer in ignorance of the Assembly's sentiments on the subject of the abolition of slavery. These sentiments were tolerably strongly expressed in the following passage from "The Humble Address and Memorial of the Assembly of Jamaica.”

"The Act declared the slaves to be free on a day therein named. It contained numerous details, showing equal ignorance of our institutions, and disregard of our public and private rights; and the compensation it gave was very far below the value of the property it took away. Nevertheless, no time was afforded us for remonstrance, but it was arbitrarily decreed, that, if the legislature of Jamaica did not adopt the Act, with all its errors, hardships, and manifest injustice, the claim of their constituents to a portion of the indemnity should be entirely and irrevocably forfeited. It was enacted by a British Parliament, that, unless we yielded our property by a certain day, and for an inadequate, and, as it has proved, uncertain compen