examined in Stephen, i. 218-223. Let their communications be compared with the extraordinary report of Mr. Bridges; and the public will at once decide upon the character and effect of the 9,413 baptisms in the parish of Manchester, during the space of about three years!-They will also observe, how utterly inconsistent with the representations of the colonial clergy are the views of the Bishop of Jamaica, in respect to his new diocese. -Oh that the mantle of Reginald Heber might descend upon his surviving brethren in the insular episcopates!

XII.-page 116.

This is Mr. Stephen's account, from personal observation, in the Crisis of the Sugar Colonies,' 1802; for which he was accused, in the House of Commons, of falsehood, and enmity to the planters. Yet in 1804 Dr. Collins gave exactly the same report of Negro field-labour; and proposed a reform of the system. Mr. Stephen's statement has repelled every attack for five-and-twenty years. I hope the late Mr. Rose lived to ascertain and acknowledge its fidelity.

Let the reader here recollect Mr. Edwards's concession,With every prejudice in its favour, Jamaica must be pronounced to be an unfruitful and laborious country.' (i. 193.) Yet Mr. Stewart says, 'Jamaica is the most highly cultivated and most productive colony in the American archipelago.' (6.) At what a lavish expense, then, of human blood must this transformation have been effected! The common mode of holing the ground is frequently attended with great and excessive labour to the Negroes-who work at this business very unequally, according to their different degrees of bodily strength.' Edwards, ii. 207 and 210.- Holing is the most toilsome work on a plantation.' Stewart, 103.

The gangs,' says Mr. Cooper (16-18, 19), always work before the whip. The driver has it always in his hand; and drives the Negroes, men and women without distinction, as he would drive horses in a team.'—' The driver, with his long and heavy whip, inflicts, under the eye of the overseer, the number of lashes he may order; each lash, when the skin is tender, and not rendered callous by repeated punishments, making an incision on the parts exposed to the punishment; and thirty or forty such lashes leaving them in a lacerated and bleeding state. Even those that have become the most callous cannot long resist the force of this terrible instrument, when applied by a skilful hand, but become also raw and bloody; indeed, no strength of skin can withstand its reiterated application. The overseer has no written rules to guide his conduct; nor are the occasions

at all defined on which he may exercise the power of punishment Its exercise is regulated wholly and solely by his own discretion. The law professes to limit the number of lashes given at one time to thirty-nine; but neither this law, nor any other which professes to protect the slave, can be of much practical benefit to him. The evidence of a thousand slaves would avail nothing to his conviction.'-Mr. Cooper, mentions (21), among other instances of relentless barbarity, that a certain Negro was flogged as severely as he well could bear, and then made to work in the field. During the interval of dinner-time he was regularly placed in the stocks; and in them also was he confined the whole night. When the lacerations produced by the first flogging were sufficiently healed, he was flogged a second time. While the sores were yet unhealed, one of the book-keepers told Mr. C. that maggots had bred in the lacerated flesh. He mentioned this to the attorney, who did not manifest any surprise on hearing it!

The slaves on the estate,' says Mr. Meabry, were constantly attended by drivers with cart or cattle whips, which they were in the habit of using as carmen use their whips on horses; and occasionally one or more slaves were ordered out of the line of work, laid prostrate on the ground, and received a few lashes (from two or three to ten), for no other offence that he could perceive or ever heard of, but that of being indolent, or lagging at their work, or being late. He saw a few working with iron collars round their necks, connected with each other by a chain. These had been run-aways.-Mr. Meabry's evidence may be found in Negro Slavery, 1824; 4th edit. 66-68. He was book-keeper on Bushy Park estate, in the parish of St. Dorothy's, in 1822.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel hold plantations in Barbadoes under the devise of Colonel Codrington. On this very estate Mr. Coleridge (132) found, in 1825, a driver! An extraordinary apology for the retention, by a Christian corporation, of an estate worked under the whip, is offered by Edwards (ii. 36., who says:- They are induced, from the purest and best motives, to purchase occasionally a certain number of Negroes, in order to divide the work, and keep up the stock. They well know that moderate labour, unaccompanied with that wretched anxiety to which the poor of England are subject, is a state of comparative felicity, &c. &c.—I doubt whether, in 1793, a single member of the Society had the slightest knowledge of the practice on the Codrington property. It is a question of some importance, how far an association, instituted for the express purpose of diffusing Christianity, is justified in putting into its treasury the fruits of slave labour.-The Society, as might have been supposed, has always been under a cloud. Bishop Porteus made a vain effort, about fifty years ago, to stimulate this corporation to look into the concerns of their trust-estate, in

order to some plan for the general instruction of slaves; but all to no purpose! His attempt was discussed at a committeemeeting, and in four hours rejected. Thus,' says the Bishop, was a final period put at once to a most interesting and important subject; and the spiritual condition of near half a million of Negro slaves decided in four hours. That the particular plan offered to the Society might stand in need of improvement, and that a better might be substituted in its room, is very probable. I would have given my hearty vote for any wiser plan in preference to my own. It was not the mode; it was the measure I had at heart. That no other plan should be adopted or proposed, nor any one effectual measure taken for the conversion and salvation of near 300 slaves, who were the immediate property of a religious'-the Bishop's own italics-' society, did, I own, a little surprise me.'-Hodgson's Life of Porteus, 1813. 88.- -But the very last Report of this institution is very unsatisfactory. It contains no statement of what has been received from the toil of the Society's slaves, neither of any expenditure in their favour. We find indeed that Messrs. Daniel and Trattle (who are these?) have paid in 35421.; but from what sourcesis not recorded. In the Synopsis of the Society's missionaries, catechists, &c., the stations in Barbadoes are wholly omitted!-There is in the payments an item, Paid for a piece of plate voted to Mr. F. Clarke, 1017. 4s. 6d.'

I shall close this detail by citing the decisive evidence of Dr. Williamson (ii. 222-225). He writes: It cannot be denied that this limit' of punishment to the number of thirtynine lashes, is often out-done; and, by repeatedly punishing offenders, the parts become insensible to the lacerations which tear up the skin. When that barbarous consequence is arrived at, new sources of torture must be found out. Opinions have been given, that it would be well altogether to do away the possession of a large heavy whip from the driver's hands; and whether we consider the frightful sound which reaches our ears every minute in passing through estates by the crack of the lash; or the power with which drivers are provided to exercise punishment; it would be desirable that a weapon of such arbitrary or unjust authority were taken from them. When a Negro seems to be tardy at his work, the driver sounds the lash near him, or lets him feel it, as he thinks proper.-A Negro, subjected to frequent and severe punishment, has an appearance and manner by which he is easily known. If, in a warm day, we pass by a gang, when they are uncovered, it is a reproach to every White man to observe in them the recently lacerated sores; or the deep furrows, which, though healed up, leave the marks of cruel punishment.'

* For 1826.

XIII.-page 120.

Mr. Cooper writes (42-47.):- Mr. Bridges, in his Voice from Jamaica,' states, that he has within the last two years married one hundred and eighty-seven couples of Negro slaves in his own parish-the parish of Manchester, Jamaica. That he met this number of Negro slaves in the church, or some other place, and read the Marriage Service to them, as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer, I am not about to question. I will suppose that he was careful not to omit reading the following parts of that service: Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh. Similar sentiments are expressed in the prayers; and a number of references made to the probability of the parties becoming parents. They are solemnly exhorted to love, comfort, and honour each other, and to keep each other in sickness and health. After this, they pledge themselves to remain together till Death part them; and the woman promises to obey the man.

Now, I have to ask Mr. Bridges, what reply he would have made, had either of the hundred and eighty-seven couples whom he married, addressed him, at the close of the ceremony, to the following effect, "Sir, is our marriage binding in law? And are we to be as completely protected in our adherence to the marriage vow, as any other of his Majesty's subjects?" Would he answer in the affirmative? If so, then might they reply, "That no one, not even the person whom the law recognises as our master, can, in any way, or on any pretence, part us asunder." Two laws mutually destructive of each other, cannot, in the nature of things, co-exist. If the master retains the power of separating the pair, the marriage tie is, in point of fact, a mere form, and the parties who thought it binding are deceived. The master may not maliciously exercise his power, but the circumstance of its being in his hands, is utterly inconsistent with marriage. The answer to slaves, therefore, ought to be, "Yes, your marriage is binding as long as your master lives, unless he, or his creditors, shall think proper to separate you; or you are inclined to part of your own accord." But if the man has one master, and the woman another, which would be far from improbable, the difficulty would be much increased. If I lived in Jamaica, and had a slave who might marry to one belonging to Mr. Bridges, I should be glad to know whether such person would not be liable to be sold at any time for the payment of my debts, without any regard to Mr. Bridges's slave; were I not to meet, in due time, the demands of my creditors? Would the plea be admitted, were I to urge it, "That man, or that woman, whom

you wish to sell, cannot be removed unless you sell, at the same time, and to the same individual, another slave, belonging to my neighbour; to whom mine is married? 'Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder '-not even the persons to whom I owe money, and refuse to pay it." Again, if the woman should think proper to leave her husband, what redress could he procure? Could he demand her on finding out the place of her retreat? Or, rather, might she not put him at defiance, by simply stating that she wished to be off the bargain? On the other hand, he might serve her the same with perfect impunity; unless, indeed, the overseer chooses to call in the assistance of the driver. Suppose there be any children, and the husband refuses to contribute towards their support; what more can the mother do than get the father a good flogging, and perhaps not even that? The children are claimed by her master, who may have no controul over her husband.

But suppose they retain a proper affection for each other, and a due sense of the nature of the union into which it is supposed they have entered, what will be their feelings when they enter the gang to work, from sun-rise to sun-set, before the lash of the driver? The affectionate husband has there to witness the woman whom he loves, urged on to her task by the cart-whip. She may be thrown down on the ground, her person exposed, and her flesh lacerated before his eyes, and he dares not even attempt to defend her. After this, she may be sent to the stocks, and there confined just as long as the overseer thinks proper, and again flogged in the same cruel and indecent manner. Her crime may be simply that of not giving satisfaction to the driver in doing her work, or of not being in the field in time. Should she escape, for any length of time, the misery we have supposed, her feelings will probably be put on the rack by beholding her husband in the grasp of the tyrant. At any rate, the sound of the whip will be in both their ears all day, and many of their companions will suffer from its incisions. The work must be done, without any regard to this man being a husband, and that woman a wife. Marriage cannot be respected in the gang, and therefore the gang is a most improper place for married people. But it is not only in the character of husband and wife that the poor victims would be here tried, if they were really to marry; they might be parents, and thereby called to see their sons and daughters prostrated on the ground to be belaboured by the cart-whip, and in all other respects treated after the manner of West-Indian slaves. Surely, under such circumstances, marriage would prove a curse, and not a blessing. In Mr. Bridges's parish, slavery must wear a mild form; or I am sure it could never be reconciled with the pure, the enlightened, the exalted institution of marriage.

'But we have not done yet; we must follow the married pair