raise for themselves in the other parishes, are chiefly yams, plantains, cocoes or eddoes, potatoes, &c. The slaves are not forbidden by law, as Mr. Taylor thinks, to cultivate the sugar cane, but they incur a penalty by having sugar in their possession.*

Besides the allowance of herrings given to the slaves, clothes are annually given to them; but the quantity of clothing Mr. Taylor cannot specify. The time allowed them by law, for raising the food by which they and their families are supported, is twenty-six days in the year, besides three holidays at Christmas. This arrangement, Mr. Taylor says, has existed since 1816; but he cannot tell what time, for this purpose, the law previously gave to the slaves.t

the island of Jamaica. And yet, will it be believed that there is even here no increase of the slave population, even if we take no account of the number imported into it from neighbouring parishes; the population in 1821 being 7,887, and in 1831, after a lapse of ten years, being only 7,908?

* Throughout the whole of this examination there is a wonderful ignorance manifested, especially by the planters, of the state of the law by which they and the slaves are governed. If the reader will turn to the latest Jamaica Slave Code, that of the 19th of Feb. 1831,-and in this respect it is only a transcript of preceding codes,—he will find that by the 91st Section of that Act it is enacted, "That, to prevent and punish depredations on produce," " if any slave shall have in his possession any quantity of sugar, coffee, or pimento, in quantity not exceeding five pounds, or of rum not exceeding one gallon, unknown to his owner, overseer, or manager, without giving a satisfactory account of how he became possessed of them, such slave, on conviction thereof before any magistrate, shall suffer punishment, not exceeding thirty-nine lashes; and, if there shall be found in his possession a larger quantity than twenty pounds of sugar, coffee, or pimento, or five gallons of rum, then such slave, upon conviction thereof at a slave court, shall suffer such punishment as the court shall think proper to inflict or direct, not extending to life, transportation, or imprisonment for life." Well, therefore, may West Indians gravely testify to the unwillingness of the slaves to grow sugar, and well may Mr. Taylor testify to the infrequency of the culture of sugar by slaves. He had never heard of its being cultivated but in Manchester, where alone he has seen it voluntarily cultivated by slaves, and where also he has seen small sugar-mills in the Negroes' gardens-"but that,” he adds, ' is to be accounted for, because there they are at a distance from a sugar district." Report, p. 7, 8. See this matter further illustrated in the Anti-Slavery Reporter, vol. v., No. 101, p. 269.

↑ Before 1816 the law was as follows (See Privy Council Report of 1789,

The younger Negroes on Mr. Wildman's estates had never received any instruction prior to his visiting Jamaica for the first time in 1825. This was done in consequence of the express injunctions of Mr. Wildman himself. The adults now receive no education whatever. As to the capacity of the slaves for receiving instruction, they were much like other human beings; some were apt, and others very stupid, and some remarkably acute. He could not say they were equally apt with the Scottish peasantry; but their circumstances were disadvantageous in a peculiar degree, and in spite of these he had seen, in a multitude of instances, a wonderful aptness for instruction. There appeared in them no natural incapacity whatever for instruction. He had been struck with the retentiveness and minuteness of their memories, and especially in the children.

With respect to the provident or improvident use of money, he thought them pretty much like the peasantry of other countries, but considerably less given to intoxication than the peasantry of Scotland, and infinitely less than the soldiery who go out to the colonies, the mortality among whom is attributed to their fondness for spirits. There were on the estates some Negroes who would not touch spirits, while others were incorrigible drunkards. Any money he paid the Negroes at any time for wages was generally expended in the purchase of food (page 9, 10).

Part iii.; Laws of Jamaica, Act of 1788, section 17):-" And whereas it hath been usual and customary with the planters in this island to allow their slaves one day in every fortnight to cultivate their own provision grounds (exclusive of Sundays), except during the time of crop, but the same not being compulsory, be it further enacted, that the slaves belonging to or employed in every plantation or settlement, shall, over and above the usual holidays, be allowed one day in every fortnight (exclusive of Sundays) except during the time of crop, under the penalty of £10." This grant of time, crop lasting from four to six months, could not have been more than from thirteen to seventeen days. The dreadful mortality from hunger at that period, as shown by a memorial of the Jamaica Assembly printed in the same Privy Council Report, sufficiently proves how necessary it was to make even this scanty allowance of time compulsory. Fifteen thousand slaves are stated by the Assembly to have perished from hunger, and the diseases consequent on hunger, in a very short time, simply because the little time allowed the slave obliged him to limit his growth of provisions to plantains, which the first hurricane was sure to sweep from the face of the earth.

Mr. Taylor had known many free blacks and people of colour: they form a numerous body. There are among them many, especially mulattoes and quadroons, the children of white book-keepers and overseers, who have been emancipated; but the great mass of them have been born free, being the children of emancipated slaves. The great increase of their number arises from births in a state of freedom. In the neighbourhood of Papine, some of these free people who had been emancipated, unable to find adequate employment as mechanics in the town of Kingston, had fixed themselves at a place called Cavaliers, belonging to Mr. Wildman, which was parcelled out to them in small patches of one, two, or three acres, for which, with a house upon it, they undertook to pay thirty shillings an acre. The run of land called Cavaliers was let by Mr. Wildman to one tenant, and by him sub-let in smaller portions, Mr. Wildman finding it difficult and troublesome to collect the rents. The tenant-in-chief cultivated a part of the land by means of free Negroes, to whom he paid wages, and the rest he sub-let. The number thus located might be from 200 to 300, men, women, and children. The cultivation consisted generally of provisions, as corn and yams, with some coffee. He had never seen any sugar cultivation there, though there were sugar estates in the district, and sugar would grow any where. Of the settlers he knew nothing personally. Some he believed were orderly, and some disorderly; and it was the haunt of many bad characters and runaways. The settlement he believed was in a bad state, both morally and religiously, for they had no religious instruction, and no education. A school was latterly established among them by the Church Missionary Society, which was readily supported by some of the settlers; but others scoffed at it, and would have nothing to do with it. It might be the duty of the incumbent of the parish to afford them instruction, but he lived sixteen miles off. Mr. Taylor had further known free blacks employ themselves in working on wharfs, and at cranes, and as domestics. He had one servant himself as a slave for ten years, who continued with him after he had manumitted him. Others were employed as mechanics on estates, and others as sailors in coasting vessels, and as stewards of ships. He had met with a great number of them who were very industrious, and who gladly availed themselves of any opportunity of being employed in any way. On the other hand he had met

with free blacks who would not work at all, just as in other communities. He had only known one case of an emancipated slave working on a sugar estate in making sugar. Mr. Wildman discovered that one of his slaves had been born in England; and, conceiving that he could have no right to hold him in slavery, he very honourably, in spite of the protestations of his colonial friends, when he first went out to Jamaica, determined on making him amends for the services unjustly exacted from him for thirty years. He gave him, though he was addicted to drinking, a right of residence on his estate, hired him as a carpenter, and appointed 2s. 6d. a day to be paid him, whether he worked or not. When Mr. Taylor entered on the management of the estate he thought it wrong, as it respected the man himself, to let him go on in this manner. He therefore let him understand that when he got drunk his pay should be stopped for that day. The consequence was he gradually left off drinking, and he worked and made up money. Sometimes he would have a drunken fit, and at other times, for weeks and months together, would remain steadily at labour. Under this system he worked very well as a carpenter, and even took his turn of duty in the boiling house.

He had never known an instance of a free black taking the hoe, and working in the field with the gang, or in the boiling house; but he had known slaves to work for wages in their extra time on sugar estates. Soon after he took charge of Papine, a long line of fence was to be made between that and the Duke of Buckingham's estate, formed by a trench of four feet deep, with a mound thrown up. It is usual to do such labour by task work, at so many feet a day. The labourers complained that they could not perform it in the usual hours of labour. The overseer on the other hand affirmed that they were imposing upon Mr. T., and it was solely owing to sloth that they did not easily get through their task. The overseer wished of course to get as much work as he could, and they had naturally an indisposition to do more than they could help. They were told to resume their work the following morning, and, if they performed it within the time, they should be paid for every minute's or hour's additional work they might perform. They began the task at five in the morning, and had finished it by half-past one, and the very slaves who had before complained, received pay for four hours' extra labour. At present all the negroes in the field perform their labour under the fear

or impulse of the lash. Physical coercion is employed on every estate in the island to obtain labour from slaves. By banishing the use of the whip, Mr. Taylor found that discipline was necessarily relaxed. This coercion is necessary with slaves in all kinds of labour. The carpenter or cooper knows that if he does not go to his shop and do his work he will be flogged. In short it was necessary, in order to induce the Negroes to work, either to pay them or to flog them. It was possible, however, to conduct the business of an estate without much flogging. Still it was the terror of the lash which produced the labour. On the estate next to Papine (Hope Estate, belonging to the Duke of Buckingham), the driver certainly carried the whip into the field, but for many months it has not been used, the negroes going on, nevertheless, most diligently with their work. But this disuse of the whip had been produced by the previous use of it. The overseer, when he first took charge of that estate, found the Negroes disposed to resist him, and the whip for a time was " most freely and strongly used," and this, Mr. Taylor thinks, not from any motive of cruelty, but from a belief that "it was the only way to establish his authority." He used the whip most freely, and this free use it was that produced the subsequent disuse* (pages 11 and 12).

With the exception of labouring in the workhouse chain, and cleaning the streets of towns, field labour is viewed by slaves as the most degrading occupation. It is considered, for example, a degrading punishment to send a household servant to the field. Many humane persons prefer doing so to flogging them. The labour of cultivating sugar is not more degrading than other field labour, but it is much more severe. "Cane-hole digging is fearfully severe," especially in certain soils. There are other field occupations that are light. Comparing the West Indian slave with the Scotch labourer, he thought cane-hole digging more exhausting than digging potatoes, or reaping corn, or following the plough. If the Scotchman had been digging, and the Negro had been cleaning young canes, the Scotchman would have done the hardest work; but if the Scotchman had been reaping or mowing, and the Negro had been digging cane-holes, then the Negro would have done

*The stimulus was still the brutal one of either the infliction or the fear of the lash.