You tell me you see plainly that "every nation has a book" to direct it towards the Almighty, and that every nation condemns the other's book. Your nation, however, I am glad to hear, is an exception, and that the "Mandingoes condemn no books, though they agree not with their readers;" and you have very properly and charitably added, that no leaf of any book tells the reader of it to do ill. Every book that is good, I agree with you, tells the reader that the vanity of the world is of no avail that it is, as you have well said, but "two or three days' high living," and there is an end of life, and we leave it as we came into it-poor and naked, despoiled of every thing.

It may be collected from your letter, that you profess the faith of Islam-a religion which was founded twelve centuries ago, on the ruins of paganism in Arabia; and, in as much as it promulgated the unity of God for its leading doctrine, I believe it effected good, and I have known a great many good men belonging to it. I have only these faults to find with it, that it was intended but for one people, and that people a very small portion of the human race; that it inculcated intolerance; that is to say, the persecution of those who could not bring themselves to believe in it; that it sanctioned injustice, one of the worst forms of which is slavery; that it debased men's notions of a future state, by making paradise a place of sensual pleasures, and hell a receptacle for all who resisted the power of your prophet, or disbelieved the doctrines he advanced. But the followers of a sect are not, I trust, accountable for the fanaticism of its founder, nor even the unreasonableness of the doctrines he has prescribed for their belief; you will, therefore, be charitable enough to consider me perfectly sincere, when I assure you, that, after observing the religions that are practised in very many countries, I might say in all parts of the world, I still prefer my own to any I have seen. In opposition to yours, I consider that mine was intended, by its founder, to apply to the whole human race; that the purity

of its character is superior to that of Islamism; that it inculcates forbearance to its enemies, and not extermination; that oppression of every kind is hateful to its law; that slavery has no authority for its injustice, and that the rewards it promises have no character of sensuality which is at variance with the spiritual idea of the Supreme Being.

For these reasons, which one better versed in religious matters might greatly multiply, I sincerely wish you entertained the same conviction of its excellence that I do. I do not expect that any arguments of mine can realize that wish. My only hope is, that persuasion may eventually accomplish for my religion what the sword, twelve centuries ago, did partially for

The eighth clause of the amended Abolition Act enabled the apprentice to redeem himself from servitude, upon payment to his master of the appraised value of his services. This clause, had it been so worded as to have prevented the misconstruction of its intent, would have been the most valuable clause in the whole Act. As it stands, the power of procuring a reasonable award is so limited, that I have latterly been obliged to dissuade almost every applicant from applying for a valu

spe

ation. The corporation have proved stronger than the British Parliament. When a negro applies to the cial justice to purchase his liberty, the latter calls upon the master to appoint a local magistrate, to proceed to a valuation. When the two magistrates meet, they name a third, who must also be a local magistrate; and, according to the age, sex, health, and occupation of the negro, they ought to decide. There is one thing obvious at the first glance: there are two local magistrates, and one special justice; and it is evident the interests of the owner have been most looked to in this arrangement. The matter respecting the mode of conducting the valuation is so vaguely expressed in the Act, that the amount to be adjudicated is left entirely to the discretion of the magistrates, without reference to any scale of valuation; and this unfortunate defect has been the occasion of an immense deal of misunderstanding between the special and local magistrates. In some instances the estimate has been as high as £170, a sum which no negro certainly has sold for, for many a year in Jamaica; in others, it has been as low as £20 for an adult, and from £10 to £15 for children. Recollect this is in currency, about one-third less in sterling. In Kingston, there have been more applications from ne groes to purchase their liberty, than, I believe, in all the rest of the island, with the exception of Spanish Town. In all, eighty apprentices have obtained their freedom before me, either by valuation or mutual agreement; and the average valuation has been £25. In one instance, a tradesman was valued at £80; in the others, it varied from £16 to £35. I have been now almost a year in the island; I have attended a great many slave-sales, and I have seen no negro sell for more than £30; and I believe the very last slave that had been levied on for an owner's debt, and sold in Jamaica by public auction, I saw put up, on the day previous to the 1st of August, on the steps of Harty's Tavern, in this town,-the last exhibition of this kind that was to disgust the beholder; and, in this instance, the

property put up was a young woman, strong and healthy, and she was knocked down to the highest bidder, which happened to be the only one, for £5 6s. 8d. But it may be said, these sales are no criterion of the value of negroes on plantations; that the negroes sold by public auction, with their iron collars about their necks, were brought to the market from the jail, and, consequently, were worthless characters. In the first place, though they might come from the workhouse, it by no means followed that they were there for crime, a vast number being their for their owners' debts. In the next place, the crimes for which the negroes used to be sent to the workhouse, excepting that of running away, were not generally of a character to deter people from purchasing them. The great qualification looked to in a negro is ability to work; and I have seen a great number of able-bodied men sold for less than £30. Now, there is another criterion, the price that negroes have fetched on plantations that have been sold for six months previous to August. Various coffee-plantations, especially, have been sold with the negroes; and the purchase, in no instance that has come to my knowledge, has exceeded £30 a head; and this sum, in three or four instances, even including the purchase of the land.

In the high and palmy state of the prosperity of Jamaica, Bryan Edwards estimates the annual clear value of every negro on a plantation to his master at £10 a head. It were well for the planters if a negro's labour was worth that now, bearing in mind that the master has to feed, clothe, and lodge the negro, to pay doctors' bills and workhouse-fees for him, and taxes likewise, and that the risk of life is also to be taken into consideration. I think all the first items, however economically the supplies be managed, cannot be estimated at an amount under £15 per annum, which, for six years, is £90, and that the clear profit to the owner, from each negro's labour, for the term of six years, cannot be fairly estimated beyond £45 currency; and this sum, in my opinion, is as much at the highest calVOL. II.

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culation as any adult field-negro can be said to be worth, for the term of six years, taking into consideration the reduced labour that can be now legally obtained from him.

In Kingston, where the negroes are non-predials, and their time of servitude shorter, by two years, than the field-negroes, and the difficulty of obtaining regular wages or employment for them greater than in the country, the value of their services is consequently so much proportionally abridged, and, therefore, my average valuations have been about £25. It is needless to say any thing of difficulties in such matters: they could not be inconsiderable where one arbitrator sometimes valued the worth of the services in question at £100, and his brother arbitrator at £25. But I would be doing a great injustice to the magistrates of Kingston, if I did not acknowledge there are some gentlemen among them in whom I found a spirit of impartial justice practically displayed on every occasion in which fortunately happened to be associated with them;-I allude to Mr. Dallas, the Custos of Port Royal, to Dr. Chamberlaine, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Jerdan, and, I might add, Mr. Evans; but, except the latter, these gentlemen were very seldom suffered by the proprietors to be associated with me. Now, what I have contended for in these valuations is, that the valuers have nothing to do with the injury inflicted on slave property, by the Abolition act; the simple question that should come before them is, what are the services of this negro worth to his or her employer, for the term of six or four years, taking into consideration the health, age, sex, and employment, of the person to be valued. For the injury done to slavery in general, the compensation, however inadequate it may be, is the fund that is devoted to the colonists for their indemnity. It may, perhaps, amount to £25 sterling; now, this amount in currency, together with that which was the average of my valuations, would amount to about £60 currency; and this sum, I maintain, is more than negroes have been worth for a great many years: at different epochs