erseer class that the vituperations
and slanders went forth that soon became stereotyped, concerning the
Negro's incorrigible laziness and want of ambition--those gentry
adjusting the scale of wages, not according to the importance and value
of the labour done, but according to the scornful estimate which they
had formed of the Negro personally. And when the wages were fixed
fairly, they almost invariably sought to indemnify themselves for their
enforced justice by the insulting license of their tongues, addressed
to males and females alike. The influence of such men on local
legislation, in which they [253] had a preponderating share, either as
actual proprietors or as the attorneys of absentees, was not in the
direction of refinement or liberality. Indeed, the kind of laws which
they enacted, especially during the apprenticeship (1834-8), is thus
summarized by one, and him an English officer, who was a visitor in
those agitated days of the Colonies:--

"It is demonstrated that the laws which were to come into operation
immediately on expiration of the apprenticeship are of the most
objectionable character, and fully established the fact not only of a
future intention to infringe the rights of the emancipated classes, but
of the actual commencement and extensive progress of a Colonial system
for that purpose. The object of the laws is to circumscribe the market
for free labour--to prohibit the possession or sale of ordinary
articles of produce on sale, the obvious intention of which is to
confine the emancipated classes to a course of agricultural
servitude--to give the employers a monopoly of labour, and to keep down
a free competition for wages--to create new and various modes of
apprenticeship for the purpose of prolonging predial service, together
with many evils of the [254] late system--to introduce unnecessary
restraint and coercion, the design of which is to create a perpetual
surveillance over the liberated negroes, and to establish a legislative
despotism. The several laws passed are based upon the most vicious
principles of legislation, and in their operation will be found
intolerably oppressive and entirely subversive of the just intentions
of the British Legislature."

These liberal-souled gentry were, in sooth, Mr. Froude's
"representatives" of Britain, whose traditions steadily followed in
their families, he has so well and sympathetically set forth.

We thus see that the irritation and rancour s