ed them from bondage may fully secure to them
that civil and religious liberty, to which both their unparalleled
sufferings and their unexampled patience so richly entitle them.

We cannot conclude this letter, without expressing the high sense we
entertain of the noble and disinterested conduct pursued by his
excellency Sir Lionel Smith, the Governor of this colony. But for his
firmness, Jamaica would have presented all the horrors of a civil war.

Feeling assured that your lordship will give that attention to this
letter which the subject demands, and with earnest prayer that this
colony, now blest with liberty, may exhibit increasing prosperity, we
are, my lord, your most obedient servants, Signed by

THOMAS BURCHELL
WILLIAM KNIBB
THOMAS ABBOTT
WALTER DENDY
JOHN CLARK
B.B. DEXTER
SAMUEL OUGHTON
J. HUTCHINS

Baptist Missionaries, North Side Union.

[On the foregoing letter the _London Sun_ has the following
observations.]

"Every arrival from the West Indies but strengthens our conviction, that
there never will be happiness, security, or peace for the emancipated
negroes, so long as the administration of the laws, and the management
of the plantations, are continued in the hands of those white officials
whose occupation, previous to the passing of the emancipation act,
consisted in torturing and tormenting them with impunity. They cannot
endure to witness the elevation to the rank of free, intelligent, and
well-behaved fellow-citizens, of a class of beings whom they were
accustomed to treat a myriad of times worse than they did the "beasts
that perish." Having pronounced them incapable of civilization, and
strangers to all the better feelings of our nature, they deem it a sort
of duty to themselves to employ every artifice to neutralize or retard
every measure calculated to ameliorate the moral and social condition of
the negro race. Several of the colonial agents have powerful inducements
to the provocation of some insurrectionary outbreak, on the part of the
colored population. In the first place, such an _emute_ would fulfil
their predictions with regard to the passing the Emancipation Act, and
so establish their reputation as seers; and in the next, it would lead
to the sale of many of the plantations at one-sixth their real value,
and so transform them from agents to principles, as they would not fail
to be the purchasers. That such is their policy cannot, we think, be
doubted for a moment by those wh