instruction himself, and he has also attended Sunday schools, and he observed that instruction produced a great improvement in their general conduct, and a great superiority in all respects to others. He had also admitted on one of his estates a Wesleyan missionary, with whom he was satisfied. But he supposed, though he had no personal knowledge of any such circumstance, that religious instruction, injudiciously administered, might do harm (p. 376).

When Mr. Simpson left the island Sunday markets were being discontinued, and Saturday markets more frequent. The slaves had thus an opportunity of attending worship on Sundays.*

The slaves, whom he knew to possess as much as £3000, were in the habit of hiring other persons to attend to their concerns (p. 377) (a fact, however, not very consistent with other parts of Mr. Simpson's evidence). These hired persons work separately, and, of course, without compulsion. Slaves also often rent themselves of their master, paying to him a certain proportion of their earnings; this is frequently done by slave mechanics by monthly or annual payments; but he never knew it done for field labour. Mr. Simpson could not recollect any instance of persons of colour possessing property acquired by their own exertions. He found, however, that the slaves, when improved by religious instruction, became more temperate and more industrious, and thus increased their personal property; and, he thinks, this effect of religious instruction is perfectly well known to all planters they are deeply sensible of it.‡

Mr. Simpson says he was in the habit of giving to his slaves, for the purpose of religious instruction, as much in some cases as one day in the week. This he represents as having been generally done; and he cites the fact as a decisive proof of the universal desire to give religious instruction to the slaves (p. 380).||

Mr. Simpson denies most stoutly that there is any severity in the treatment of slaves, or that there is any difficulty in their obtaining redress for any well-founded complaint; but that they are very apt to complain on slight or no grounds. And, in illustration of this fact, he tells a long story of a complaint preferred, not by a slave, but by a white medical gentleman, against an overseer with whom he had

The utter untruth of this statement we shall take another opportunity of exposing more fully.

And can this be wondered at?

We shall never cease our astonishment at the evidence of this planter. We must frankly say that we greatly doubt this statement. Mr. Simpson must certainly labour under some defect of memory. We, therefore, call upon him to name the estate or estates under his charge on which a day in the week was so given to the slaves for their religious instruction, together with the year or years in which such grants were made, and the person whom he employed, on the day thus appropriated, to convey to the slaves this religious instruction, and who, we presume, must have been some minister or missionary. We are willing to stake the accuracy of the whole of Mr. Simpson's evidence on the correctness or incorrectness of this one fact, when established by adequate proof. The original plantation journals must still be in existence; and we are willing to submit to their inspection as the test of its truth.

quarrelled, and which, on investigation, proved to have had no foundation in truth. This story brings out incidentally a circumstance of some importance. It is admitted that formerly it was very possible for masters or overseers to employ force to subject the slaves under them to their licentious appetites. But, adds Mr. Simpson, such a thing would now be impossible: no man would dare to attempt it; or if he did the female, on repairing to a magistrate, would obtain instant redress* (p. 381).

There then follows, in pages 382 to 390, an examination of Mr. Simpson on West Indian economics, in which we shall not attempt to follow him, because to us it is utterly unintelligible, in many parts, we can say with truth, most inaccurate, and totally at variance with notorious facts (p. 382-386).

The value of the clothing given to the slaves, Mr. Simpson estimates at 35s. or 40s. a head. On turning to Mr. Scott's evidence (see above, p. 422), we find his account (not one of mere estimate, but of actual distribution) to be somewhat different. It may be thus stated:-4 yards of pennistones, 5s.; 9 yards of Osnaburgh, 4s. 6d.; 2 yards of check, 2s.: in all 11s. 6d. But let it be taken with all charges at 15s., and we shall still be very far below Mr. Simpson's estimate (p. 386).

One of the allowances Mr. Simpson states to be regularly made to the slave on an estate is about three shillings' worth weekly of sugar and rum, all the year round. This of itself would make for each slave £7. 16s. a year; and would amount to about 3 cwt. of sugar and 50 gallons of rum to each in a year. Can this possibly be true?— There must be some strange habit of miscalculation or some singular defect of memory about this witness. It must be admitted that Mr. Simpson has guarded against the charge of wilful inaccuracy; for he has told us (quest. 5756 and 5757) that it is utterly out of his power (though he has had charge of upwards of 7000 Negroes belonging to absent proprietors, and still, we presume, has charge, by means of his commercial house in Kingston, of a considerable number) to give in

* Mr. Simpson may possibly have been acquainted with the Rev. Mr. Trew, the late Rector of St. Thomas in the East, in Jamaica. Let him, then, turn to the testimony of that gentleman, as he will find it in the 4th volume of the AntiSlavery Reporter, No. 76, pp. 107 and 108, for a contradiction of every part of his present apologetical statement; and he has only to consult the Index to that work for numerous proofs of the inaccuracy of the assertion so confidently made by him of the certainty of redress for even undisputed acts of cruelty. The contrary stands on official documents, which cannot be contradicted, and all of recent occurrence. Besides, let us ask Mr. Simpson to point out a single clause in any one act of the Jamaica statute book which, down to the year 1832, inflicts the very slightest penalty on any overseer who puts a female slave in the stocks all night, and works her all day in the field for weeks together; or who orders that same female to have her limbs exposed naked to the gaze of the whole gang, and to receive, upon her bared posteriors, 39 lashes of the cart-whip, and even to repeat these 39 lacerations the moment the former wounds are healed. We challenge him (and we permit him to call Mr. Burge, the late AttorneyGeneral of Jamaica, to aid him in making out his case) to point out any

such law.

formation respecting the various items of expense attending West Indian estates. Of one thing, indeed, he seems to be quite certain, namely, that on the Duke of Buckingham's estate of Hope the Negroes have the opportunity of realizing about £125 annually for every three acres of land they may be able to cultivate on the 1000 acres of land attached to that estate, and appropriated to their use; so that, supposing the number of able slaves upon it to be one-third of its population, that population being, in 1830, 368, the annual income within their reach would amount to about £15,500. Is this quite credible?

There follows, at pages 391 and 392, a not very seemly attempt to put the credit due to the representations.of Admiral Fleming in competition with those of Admiral Halsted and of Mr. Simpson; but, we apprehend, with pretty much the same success which we have already shown to have attended the attempt to discredit the statements of Mr. Taylor: but we pass over that part of the evidence as wholly immaterial to the real objects of the enquiry.

Mr. Simpson farther testifies that from the time he had taken charge of estates, which was about the year 1817 or 1818, he had done all he could to encourage marriage amongst the slaves; and that marriage was accordingly frequent* (p. 394).

The emancipated Negroes employ themselves in different ways. They are seldom seen in distress. Then come some admissions of the comforts and luxuries that slaves are enabled to procure, but which they would not, according to Mr. Simpson, have the same facilities of procuring when they are free.-There is such an utter extravagance in supposing that a man whose seven days in the week are his own should have fewer facilities of accumulating property than the man who has only twenty-six week-days in the year and his Sundays, that we are at some loss to divine Mr. Simpson's end in giving such evidence. He cannot expect it to be received as true (quest. 5931). But what are these facilities? The horses, and cattle, and waggons, and wains of their masters and of themselves. And this is said by one who,

The parishes in which Mr. Simpson states himself to have been chiefly concerned are Vere, Clarendon, St. Mary, St. George, St. Andrew, St. David, Port Royal, and St. Thomas in the East. Now we have parliamentary returns of the marriages which took place in these parishes of Jamaica, from 1808 to 1825 inclusive, the very period during which Mr. Simpson exercised his large powers; and the results during those seventeen years are as follows, showing clearly that marriages cannot have been very frequent, and that in some parishes they have been remarkably rare, viz.—

Vere
Clarendon

St. Mary

containing 8,000 slaves marriages in seventeen years 2

St. George

St. David

Port Royal

St. Thomas in the East

From St. Andrew the returns are wanting for the last five years (see the Parliamentary Papers for 1823, No. 347, and for 1826, No. 353). The result in St. Thomas in the East is owing to the zeal of the Rev. Mr. Trew.

living in Kingston for twenty-four years, must have been the weekly witness how few of the slaves coming to the Kingston market had any means of conveyance but their heads, on which their loads were brought into town on the Sunday morning (p. 398, 399).

Mr. Simpson does not believe in the efficacy of wages to induce the slaves to work. He admits, however, that during his twenty-four years' stay in Jamaica, and with his extensive means of making experiments, he had never tried the effect of wages on the slave, nor endeavoured to ascertain whether he might not work for remuneration as well as from compulsion. This is a remarkable fact, and at least explains Mr. Simpson's prejudice against free labour. He says, canehole digging and the whole work of a sugar estate is far from laborious; for women perform it as well as men: and yet he is quite confident that Negroes, when free, will never be prevailed upon, by any inducement, to cultivate sugar (p. 400)!

Mr. Simpson is again examined about night work and spell keeping in crop, and again puzzles himself and the committee most completely. It is evident that Mr. Simpson never kept spell himself, or he would have been able to make the matter intelligible.

Mr. Simpson states the fact of a naval officer having gone on an estate as a guest, and having drawn up a long string of questions, which he addressed to one of the book-keepers to be answered, and the book-keeper answered many of them; and this fact is produced as proving the liberality of the planters of Jamaica (p. 402). Mr. Simpson, however, ought in fairness to have given the sequel of this affair, which the reader will find in a note below.*

Mr. Simpson affirms (quest. 6011) that he, the attorney of 7000 slaves, never knew of any whip being used in the field in Jamaica.— This is certainly a most extraordinary assertion; and it proves most incontestibly either that Mr. Simpson has lost his memory or that he is determined at all hazards to whitewash slavery. The assertion, we take it upon us to say, is so manifestly untrue as of itself to render the whole of his evidence absolutely valueless.†

The book-keeper in question lived in the year 1824 on Yarmouth, in Vere, an estate belonging to Lord Dudley, and was a very warm partizan of the proslavery cause. He wrote many papers in the Royal Gazette, during the years 1823 and 1824, under the assumed signature of "The Hermit in Vere," for which Mr. Simpson may refer to the files of those Gazettes at the Colonial club-room. A naval officer visited Yarmouth, and certainly gave to this book-keeper a long list of very pertinent questions, which the book-keeper undertook to answer. A copy of those questions is now in this country. They were brought hither by the book-keeper himself, who was deprived of his employment, and forced to quit Jamaica, for having dared to listen for one moment to such an application, His previous services to the pro-slavery cause availed him nothing: and he was actually persecuted to such a degree that he was forced to return to England, in consequence of the determination of the planters to refuse him employment. He convinced some planter in this country, we believe Mr. Watson Taylor, that all this persecution was unmerited, and he was sent back by him to one of his es tates, where he soon after died. And this is Mr. Simpson's exemplification of the liberality of Jamaica planters!

+We need go no further to prove the utter falsehood of Mr. Simpson's state.

VI. WILLIAM MIER, a native of the United States. He possessed in Georgia 500 slaves; and, from his knowledge of the Negro character, is led to doubt whether they would be disposed to work for wages. Slaves are very seldom emancipated in Georgia. The Americans are very tenacious of this species of property. They value it more than gold itself. No publications relative to slavery are permitted in Georgia. Though half of the Georgia slaves are Africans, yet they increase at the rate of 2 per cent. per annum; and the increase continued to 1822. The labour of growing and pounding rice was particularly hard (p. 366–369).

VII. The Rev. JOHN SHIPMAN, a Wesleyan Missionary.—The whole of this gentleman's examination turned on the wholly unimportant resolutions adopted by some of the Wesleyan Missionaries in Jamaica in 1824, and afterwards disallowed by their superiors at home (p. 405-416).

VIII. The Rev. ROBERT YOUNG, another Wesleyan Misssionary. -This gentleman's examination is also chiefly directed to that which forms the subject of Mr. Shipman's examination. Mr. Young gives it as his opinion that the justice, mercy, brotherly kindness, and charity of the Gospel are unfriendly to slavery, and in their full developement must put an end to every system of oppression, and liberate every slave. He did not think that, with the knowledge the slaves now possessed, they could be detained in bondage much longer. Slavery is the parent of numberless vices; it corrupts both the master and the slave; the principles of Christianity are therefore directly opposed to it, and without abolishing slavery altogether he did not think its evils could be obviated. At the time that he was in the island there was perfect impunity for any outrage committed on a slave, if there was no evidence to prove it but that of slaves. He was five

ments on this point than the pages of the Royal Gazette, and other papers of Jamaica, during the session of the Assembly in 1826, when the disallowed slave act of that year was under discussion. It was not even proposed on that occasion that the driving-whip in the field should be abolished, but merely that the cat should be substituted for the cart-whip in the ccercion of labour." If we adopt such an innovation," said Mr. Hilton, " in the established usages of the colony, now that the Duke of Manchester is about to leave the island, the slaves will imagine that our conduct has been disapproved by the king, and that we have been compelled to relinquish the whip, and with it every means of punishment and restraint." Mr. Mair declared that the slaves preferred "the cart-whip" to every other instrument of punishment, as being more manly, switches, &c., being only fit for children. Others confirmed the fact of the preference of " the cart-whip" to switches, as in the case of that instrument there were limits, but not to the use of switches. Many of our readers will recollect Mr. Barrett's speech on that occasion. The whole of it turns on the use of the "cart-whip," which he declares to be a horrid instrument. Mr. Barrett is now in England, and he and Mr. Simpson may settle the matter between them. Mr. Simpson's words are, "I never knew of the cart-whip being used." This is a most complete stultification both of Mr. Barrett and of the Jamaica Assembly, if it be not rather a complete stultification of Mr. Simpson himself.