id they could have no confidence in the
honest intentions of their busha.

The views given above, touching the results of entire emancipation in
1840, are not unanimously entertained even among the planters, and they
are far from prevailing to any great extent among other classes of the
community. The missionaries, as a body, a portion of the special
magistrates, and most of the intelligent free colored people, anticipate
glorious consequences; they hail the approach of 1840, as a deliverance
from the oppressions of the apprenticeship, and its train of
disaffections, complaints and incessant disputes. They say they have
nothing to fear--nor has the island any thing to fear, but every thing
to hope, from entire emancipation. We subjoin a specimen of the
reasoning of the minority of the planters. They represent the idea that
the negroes will abandon the estates, and retire to the woods, as wild
and absurd in the extreme. They say the negroes have a great regard for
the comforts which they enjoy on the estates; they are strongly attached
to their houses and little furniture, and their provision grounds. These
are as much to them as the 'great house' and the estate are to their
master. Besides, they have very _strong local attachments_, and these
would bind them to the properties. These planters also argue, from _the
great willingness_ of the apprentices now to work for money, during
their own time, that they will not be likely to relinquish labor when
they are to get wages for the whole time. There was no doubt much truth
in the remark of a planter in St. Thomas in the East, that if _any_
estates were abandoned by the negroes after 1840, it would be those
which had harsh managers, and those which are so mountainous and
inaccessible, or barren, that they _ought_ to be abandoned. It was the
declaration of a _planter_, that entire emancipation would _regenerate_
the island of Jamaica.

* * * * *

We now submit to the candid examination of the American, especially the
Christian public, the results of our inquiries in Antigua, Barbadoes,
and Jamaica. The deficiency of the narrative in ability and interest, we
are sure is neither the fault of the subject nor of the materials. Could
we have thrown into vivid forms a few only of the numberless incidents
of rare beauty which thronged our path--could we have imparted to pages
that freshness and glow, which invested the institutions of freedom,
just