and one gang they had great difficulty in moving; it was at last moved about 25 miles. About eight months after, their new owner died, and, he not having paid for them, they had to be moved again, when the difficulty was as great as before (p. 24, 25).

Mr. Taylor, in reply to another series of questions, stated that the law allows twenty-six week-days in the year, exclusive of Sundays and the usual (three) holidays, for his provision grounds; and by this allowance of time, together with his Sundays, the Negro in Jamaica maintains himself and his family. Multitudes of them consume their Sundays in their grounds and in going to market. Besides this they have half

an hour each day for breakfast, and two hours' interval in the middle of the day. During that last interval many work on their own account in their grounds or gardens, or in other matters; the half hour for breakfast is usually consumed in rest in the field, often in the shade of a tree. He cannot say how much labour in the year is sufficient to enable a slave to satisfy his wants and those of his family, nor how much land he requires for that purpose. But he knows that to a great extent they cultivate their grounds and go to market on Sunday; but he cannot affirm that working all Sunday is universal. If, however, a Negro were to devote his Sundays to repose he certainly could not maintain himself and his family; and, in fact, by the great majority of them, Sunday is generally consumed in their grounds or in marketing. If they strictly observed the Sunday, having only their twenty-six week-days, it would not be sufficient; and even near the Missionary stations he remembered that the ministers complained that on certain Sundays the slaves never could attend service, and they had no congregation of them. It was not the nature of the slaves' work, with the exception of cane-hole-digging, but the duration of it, of which they had to complain. As for cane-hole digging, it was so hard that he had heard overseers of plantations state as the chief objection to freedom that they never could get cane-holes dug by free men. And certainly they could not at the common rate of labour: it would require an immense inducement. The slaves will certainly do much more for themselves than when they work for their masters. Even when performing taskwork, they are different beings. A Negro will lift a load for himself which it would require a severe flogging to make him lift for his master. He had seen them travelling to market, groaning under a load of hard

wood timber which no overseer could make them carry. But the inducement was great: they were sure to get a high price for it, and they were labouring for themselves. He had often observed them, after working for their masters, and for their own maintenance, prolong their work to procure some little indulgences. Whenever they could contrive by task-work, or other arrangements, to obtain any extra time, their grounds were crowded with them, labouring for their own benefit. They cannot, therefore, be said to be an indolent race, or incapable of being actuated by the motives by which labour is generally prompted. His own experience assured him of the contrary. He admitted that the propensity of the Negro, as of all men in warm climates, was to indolence; but, whenever the hope of pecuniary advantage could be brought to bear on this indolence, it was powerfully counteracted. He was well acquainted with the inhabitants of Scotland, and he had never known an intelligent and well-instructed Scotchman who would work hard without an inducement; but, for the same motive of personal advantage, the Negro might most decidedly be induced to work to an immense extent. Having tried the experiment of voluntary labour for wages in his own garden, the man who most frequently applied for employment was the most idle and worthless man on the estate. The steady Negroes were far less willing to work in his garden, having large and well cultivated grounds of their own; while this fellow had neglected his ground and had therefore no temptation to go to it, and was glad therefore to be employed in the garden, or he would collect a little fruit, or procure some billets of wood, and carry them to Kingston market, converting them into cash. This man, more frequently than any other, came to work in the garden the whole day till four o'clock, and he then took his 2s. 11d. of hire and proceeded to Kingston to convert the money into comforts; while the other Negroes were unwilling to do so, it being more profitable to go to their own grounds-thus decidedly showing their judgment in discriminating as to the kind of labour that would reward them best and selecting that. In fact the Negroes are far from being the rude uncultivated barbarians they are sometimes represented to be. The estimate in this country of their character is a He himself had no notion of it till he was called to manage those estates; and he had been ten years in the island and was

great deal too low.

still in great ignorance of the agricultural labourers of Jamaica; and he then found that far too low an opinion had been formed (and this he declared to many in Jamaica) of their state of civilization. The Negroes who worked in his garden worked diligently, because he discharged them if they did not. The idle man, who was the chief labourer, was well watched by the gardener, and if slothful was sent away. The fear of this operated to produce application as the fear of the whip did in the field. Working in his garden was however less hard than digging cane holes (p. 25, 26, 27).

Mr. Taylor was here asked a very important question : How many hours a day, upon the average, is a slave engaged in the work of his master ?" He was unable to answer this question with any precision, having never acted in the lower grades of plantership, either as bookkeeper or overseer. But though Mr. Taylor cannot specify the exact

* As Mr. Taylor could not trust to his recollection to answer this question, it may be expedient at once to refer to the infallible authority, not of an obsolete statute, but the latest slave law on this subject, namely, the Act of 19th February, 1831, clause 22:—“ And be it further enacted that every field slave on any plantation or settlement shall, on work days, be allowed half an hour for breakfast, and two hours for dinner; and that no slave shall be compelled to any manner of field work upon the plantation before the hour of five in the morning, or after the hour of seven at night, except during the time of crop, under the penalty not exceeding fifty pounds, to be recovered against the overseer or other person having the charge of such slaves.”

The overseer, therefore, is by this, the only existing law on the subject, empowered to compel the labour of the slaves in the field, whether they be men, women, or children, on all work days, from five in the morning till seven in the evening, being fourteen solid hours, with intervals of two hours and a half, leaving the actual field labour to which the slaves, male and female, are compellable to submit, at the immoderate amount of ELEVEN HOURS AND A HALF on each work day throughout the year. But then crop time, which lasts from four to six months in the year, is exempted even from this limitation; and there is no extent of exaction short of absolute cruelty, and not bounded by the physical powers of the human animal, which this apparently slight and parenthetic provision may not vindicate. This enactment, too, is not an act of inconsideration on the part of the Jamaica legislature. It stands thus in every successive version of it from 1788 downwards. It stood in their disallowed act of 1826 in precisely the same words, and was thus commented upon by Mr. Huskisson in

but varying duration of the slave's labour for his master, upon one fact involved in it he speaks without any doubt or hesitation, and that is, that the women are employed the same number of hours with the men,

his Despatch of the 22nd September, 1827 :-"The provisions for the prevention of excessive labour contemplate the working of the slaves for eleven hours and a half daily out of crop, and place no limit on the continuance of the work during crop time. Considering the climate in which the labour is to be performed, and that after the work of the field there will yet remain many offices to be done not falling within the proper meaning of the term 'labour' (he should have said field labour), I should fear that the exertions of the slaves, if exacted up to the limits allowed by law, would be scarcely consistent with the health of the labourer." Mr. Huskisson might well say so, as the murderous tendency of the whole system of slave labour in Jamaica abundantly testifies, by the debility and death of its victims, by the arrest of the prolific powers of the female slaves, and by the frightful waste of the whole slave population.

Now, in the insolent reply of the Assembly to Mr. Huskisson's Despatch, drawn up by the very Mr. Barrett who is now a delegate from Jamaica to uphold this cruel code, as it is given in the papers printed by command in 1828, Mr. Barrett seems at some loss to parry or evade the above conclusive observations of the Secretary of State. His reply is a rare example of shuffling dexterity. It is as follows :— "Mr. Huskisson fears that the exertions of the slaves, if exacted up to the limits allowed by the disallowed law, would be scarcely consistent with a due regard to the health of the labourer. Negroes do not exert themselves at work like Europeans. They seldom fatigue themselves, and it is common for them to travel many miles or to dance the entire night after the longest day's labour. It is believed by the House of Assembly that labourers work much harder and longer in Great Britain, and are rewarded with a smaller share of the necessaries and comforts of existence."

The daring insolence, the unblushing falsehood, and the unfeeling levity of such a statement, on so grave a subject, and with a wasting population around them, is quite characteristic of the Jamaica Assembly. Yet Mr. Huskisson did not do justice to the cause he advocated. He was not aware of half the exactions to which, under the shelter of this artfully framed and most insidious enactment, the slave might be subjected. There is no limitation but to work in the field, none to grass collecting for the cattle after the work of the field is over, none to the onerous duties of the slaves, male and female, in their household menage; viz. all the cooking required, the firing and water wanted for household purposes and cleanliness for them and their families;—all are left to fall on the slaves after their work is over, and they have been broiling in a tropical sun for eleven hours and a half in the field and under the lash. Can we wonder at the dreadful waste of human life in Jamaica?

except women pregnant, or having children at the breast. Their labour, also, is almost entirely of the same description as that of the men. They cannot undertake the management of cattle, or the duty of watching all night out of crop; but they dig cane-holes with the men, and in gangs with them; and they are exposed to the same degree of labour. The question aptly follows, "Does the population of Jamaica increase or decrease?" The reply is-IT DECREASES; and this decrease, Mr. Taylor states, is considered in Jamaica to arise from sugar cultivation, especially the night work of crop, and the cane-hole digging. The free blacks and people of colour, on the other hand, increase. The maroons, he knew from the returns in the Jamaica Almanac, increased largely, and they derive their whole subsistence from their own exertions. The habits of the free people as to labour he was not able to describe particularly; few of them, from the jealousy and ill-will of managers and overseers, have hitherto been allowed to settle on or near estates. A free village near an estate indeed is viewed as a great evil. Being asked to account for the increase of the free, while the slaves decrease, Mr. Taylor said he accounted for it partly by cane-hole digging and night work, partly by abortions caused by flogging pregnant women, before the pregnancy is apparent. Many children are thus destroyed in the womb. Some of the medical men to whom he spoke admitted that this evil prevailed to a certain extent. He believed that there was a waste or rather prevention of life from this cause (it was admitted generally in conversation) as well as from the severity and duration of the labour imposed on the women in common with the men, such as cane-hole digging, and night work (pp. 27, 28).

Mr. Taylor being again questioned as to the slave's capacity, if manumitted, to maintain himself and his family in comfort, he replied that he would be neither incapable nor unwilling. Let him be moved by the fear of want, or excited by the hope of advantage, and he will exert himself as certainly and effectively as the labourers of Europe. It would at the same time be unfair, in his present enslaved state, to require that he should be placed in comparison with the free Scotchman; yet he believed that he would be always alive to the prospect of pecuniary advantage whenever it was palpably exhibited to him, and, with that before him, he would work if free. Emancipated slaves do not become vagrants, in any legitimate sense of the term. They are much