| OCR Text |
Show 23G Al'PENDJX, dealings, faithful and diligent in the performance of their duties, and the fulfilment of their contracts. " With respect to the labor perform,ed, I verily believe that more labor has been d01;c, but by fewer hands, than during the latter part of the apprenticeship. Properties are not only cleaner than they were at the corresponding period last year, but I believe pruning has been very generally effected. " With reference to property under my immediate superintcndancc, work has been completed which could not have been attempted. In addition to pruning and cleaning coffee, I have been able to build and rebuild stone walls, to clean pastures, and to reopen those that had gone into a state of ruinate. "In the payment of rent, I find the people honest and punctual. This is a matter which (as might have been expected) created some confusion and misunderstanding at first, but I believe now there arc few instances where it is made a money charge on fair and legal terms, that much difficulty is experienced in its collection. "Under these circumstances, I hesitate not to say that much, very much, has already been gained by the abandonment of the apprenticeship, and the substitution of unrestricted freedom, and that if we continue to progress in the same ratio, people will be compelled to rejoice in the change. " It may not be useless to observe under what disadvantages, whatever of success has attended the past year, has been obtaiued. Political disputes with the mother country have agitated the pro· prietary body, and calumnies the most groundless, and vitupera· tion the most violent, have been directed against tile laborers who, in the absence of effective laws or physical force to direct or restrain them, have conducted themselves in a quiet, peaceable, and honest manner." N.B. The favorable views expressed as above, by Dr. Davy, in the eighth month, ) 839, continued unchanged in the SJlring of 1840. APPENDIX C. RECONCILIATION Respectfully recommended to all parties in the Colony of Jamaica, in a Letter addressed to lite Planters. The prosperity of Jamaica is unquestionably an object of equally deep interest to persons, in other respects, of verv different views-persons who are ranged on opposite sides of• politics even at the present time, and who, during the agitation of the great question of the abolition of British colonial slavery, were often brought into severe conflict with each other. Those were days of peculiar excitement ; and it is possible that on both sides of the question, ruffled temper may sometimes have led to angry and extravagant expression, and even to exaggerated statement. But on a calm review of the system which is now happily exterminated, I presume we are all prepared to allow that, both in its origin and operation, it was opposed to the rule of right-that although often kindly conducted, it was liable to fearful occasional abnse-and that a deliverance from it is a blessing, in various important respects, to all the parties concerned. As matters now stand, it is surely desirable that slavery, with its whole vocabulary, and with all the angry feelings to which it gave rise, should, so far as relates to the British colonies, be buried in oblivion, and that Jamaica should hereafter be treated |
