he marriage relation.
We were informed both by the missionaries and the planters, that every
year and month they are becoming more constant, as husband and wife,
more faithful as parents, and more dutiful as children. One planter said
that out of a number who left his employ after 1834, nearly all had
companions on other estates, and left for the purpose of being with
them. He was also of the opinion that the greater proportion of changes
of residence among the emancipated which took place at that time, were
owing to the same cause.[A] In an address before the Friendly Society in
St. John's, the Archdeacon stated that during the previous year (1835)
several individuals had been expelled from that society for domestic
unfaithfulness; but he was happy to say that he had not heard of a
single instance of expulsion for this cause during the year then ended.
Much inconvenience is felt on account of the Moravian and Wesleyan
missionaries being prohibited from performing the marriage service, even
for their own people. Efforts are now making to obtain the repeal of the
law which makes marriages performed by sectarians (as all save the
established church are called) void.

[Footnote A: What a resurrection to domestic life was that, when long
severed families flocked from the four corners of the island to meet
their kindred members! And what a glorious resurrection will that be in
our own country, when the millions of emancipated beings scattered over
the west and south, shall seek the embraces of parental and fraternal
and conjugal love.]

That form of licentiousness which appears among the higher classes in
every slaveholding country, abounded in Antigua during the reign of
slavery. It has yielded its redundant fruits in a population of four
thousand colored people; double the number of whites. The planters, with
but few exceptions, were unmarried and licentious. Nor was this vice
confined to the unmarried. Men with large families, kept one or more
mistresses without any effort at concealment. We were told of an
"Honorable" gentleman, who had his English wife and two concubines, a
colored and a black one. The governor himself stated as an apology for
the prevalence of licentiousness among the slaves, that the example was
set them constantly by their masters, and it was not to be wondered at
if they copied after their superiors. But it is now plain that
concubinage among the whites is nearly at an end. An unguarded statement