might gain, by lulling a mistaken security into repose -by suppressing facts that may be disagreeable to hear, but injurious to all parties to conceal. "I am fully persuaded," says Lewis, "that instances of tyranny to negroes are now very rare in this island. But I must still acknowledge, from my own sad experience, since my arrival, that, unless a West India proprietor occasionally visit his estates himself, it is utterly impossible for him to be certain that his deputed authority is not abused, however good may be his intentions, and however vigilant his anxiety.

"When the estates became mine, the one upon which I am now residing was managed by an attorney considerably advanced in years, who had been long in our employment, and who bore the highest character for probity and humanity. He was both attorney and overseer; and it was a particular recommendation to me that he lived in my own house, and, therefore, had my slaves so immediately under his eye, that it was impossible for any subaltern to misuse them without his knowledge. His letters to me expressed the greatest anxiety and attention respecting the welfare and comfort of the slaves.

“This man died about two years ago.

"While I fancied my attorney to be resident on Cornwall, he was, in fact, generally attending to a property of his own, or looking after estates of which he had also the management in distant parts of the island. During his absence, an overseer of his own appointing was left in absolute possession of his power, which he abused to such a degree, that every slave of respectability was compelled to become a runaway. The property was nearly ruined, and at length he committed an act of such severity, that the negroes, one and all, fled to Savannah la Mar, and threw themselves upon the protection of the magistrates, who came over to Cornwall, and investigated the complaint; and now at length the attorney, who had known frequent instances of the overseer's tyranny, had frequently re

buked him for them, and had redressed the sufferers, but who still dared to abuse my confidence so grossly as to continue him in this situation, upon this public exposure thought proper to dismiss him. Yet, while all this was going on while my negroes were groaning under the iron rod of this petty tyrant-and while the public magistrature was obliged to interfere to protect them from this cruelty-my attorney had the insolence and falsehood to write me letters, filled with assurances of his perpetual vigilance for their welfare-of their perfect good-treatment and satisfaction; nor, if I had not come to Jamaica, in all probability, should I ever have had the most distant idea how abominably the poor creatures had been misused."

And what was the result of Lewis's interference in his own affairs, and what the effect of the remedial measures he introduced on his properties? They are best given in the proprietor's own words:

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I cannot but own myself most richly rewarded for all my pains and expense in coming hither, for every risk of the voyage, and for every possible sacrifice of my pleasures. There is nothing earthly that is too much to give for the power of producing an effect so beneficial."

In the above account, Lewis speaks of his estate in Westmoreland: he now visits his other plantation in St. Thomas, in the east, and the following brief extract describes the condition of that property:

I

"Report had assured me that Hordley was the bestmanaged estate in the island; and, as far as the soil was concerned, report appeared to have said true: but my trustee had also assured me that my negroes were the most contented and best disposed; and here there was a lamentable incorrectness in the account. found them in a perfect uproar; complaints of all kinds stunned me from all quarters: all the blacks accused all the whites, and all the whites accused all the blacks; and, as far as I could make out, both parties were in the right. There was no attachment to the soil to be VOL. II.

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found here. The negroes declared, one and all, that if I went away and left them to groan under the same system of oppression, without appeal or hope of redress, they would follow my carriage and establish themselves at Cornwall. I had soon discovered that, although they had told me plenty of falsehoods, many of their complaints were but too well-founded. Trusting to these fallacious reports of the Arcadian state of happiness at Hordley, I supposed that I should have nothing to do but grant a few indulgences, and establish the regulations already adopted with success on Cornwall. It was, however, considerable relief to me to find, upon examination, that no act of personal ill-treatment was alleged against the trustee himself, who was allowed to be sufficiently humane in his own nature, and was only complained of for allowing the negroes to be maltreated by the book-keepers and other inferior agents with absolute impunity. Being an excellent planter, he confined his attention entirely to the cultivation of the soil; and when the negroes came to complain of some cruelty committed by the book-keepers or the black governors, he refused to listen to them, and he left their complaints uninquired into, and consequently unredressed. The result was, the negroes were worse off than if he had been a cruel man himself; for his cruelty would have given them only one tyrant, whereas his indolence left them at the mercy of eight."

Lewis proceeded to establish tranquillity on his property. He appointed a neighbouring gentleman, of a humane disposition, to the office of protector of the negroes: one book-keeper was dismissed for oppressive conduct, which was admitted by the trustee, and stigmatized in the strongest terms; the other book-keeper ran away the next morning: the black governor was also got rid of;-and these sources of discontent being removed, additional holidays, allowances, and other indulgences granted, in a few days he left his negroes, "with tears running down their cheeks, and all with thanks for the protection he had shown them, and ear

nest entreaties that he would soon come to visit them again."

Such were the means Lewis took to improve his plantations: he looked beyond the crops of this year or the next, and he accordingly improved the condition of his negroes, well assured that in so doing he was serving his own interests better than by making it his only study to exact the utmost labour, and to obtain present advantages at any sacrifice of future interests. But what is the use of referring to past times? what need to make long quotations from a work so recently published, and so easily to be procured? The utility of the reference consists in the application of the observations I have cited to the present times. The necessity of quoting these accounts is occasioned by the erroneous opinions that prevail with respect to the condition of the properties of absentees, on which every thing is supposed to be going on well so long as the returns are not suddenly diminished: and that necessity more strongly suggested itself to me, because the motives of every person who is unconnected with colonial property, who is opposed to the present system of management, are suspected of hostility to Jamaica interests. But Lewis, a proprietor of two valuable estates, the owner of nearly six hundred negroes, cannot be suspected of being desirous of injuring a country from which he derived, I believe, his only means.

Things have not changed with respect to the management of the absentees' estates, since Lewis was in Jamaica. The Abolition Bill has put an end to fieldpunishments, but there are innumerable vexations which that measure has left untouched; and I speak advisedly when I assert that my own experience, in parallel instances, bears out the account of Lewis in all particulars.

In the parish I am now in, and, I believe, in all the large towns, there are few agricultural negroes; consequently, there can be no grievances of the nature. of those I have alluded to. In what I have stated of the management of the country property, I am influ

enced by no feelings adverse to the attorneys: I have never been on any other than good terms with them, and having the pleasure of being acquainted with a great number of them, I freely admit, in private life they generally are as estimable gentlemen, and as honourable men, as any class of persons in any other country. It is the system I object to, and not the agents. The master who has but his own property to attend to, must surely be able to devote more attention to it than an agent who has the management of twenty. That agent, I contend, no matter how conscientious he may be, can never feel a master's interest in the soil. The negroes cannot regard that agent, however lenient he may be to them, as they would their master. There is a natural dislike to delegated authority. The Irish peasant abhors it in the middle man; the negro labourer loves it just as little in the attorney.-I fear I have exhausted your patience; I will tax it no farther than to give you the result of Lewis's experiment on the negro character, and on the condition of his estates, in the last words of his journal: "What other negroes may be, I will not pretend to guess; but I am certain there cannot be more tractable or better disposed persons, take them for all in all, than my negroes of Cornwall, (he had elsewhere spoken as favourably of those of Hordley.) I only wish that in my future dealings with white persons, whether in Jamaica or out of it, I could but meet with half so much gratitude, affection, and good-will." I am, my dear Sir,

Yours very truly,

R. R. M.