magistrates are required to be at home every
Saturday, (that being the day on which the apprentices are disengaged,)
to give friendly advice and instruction on points of law and personal
rights to all apprentices who may call.

PROVISIONS RESPECTING THE MASTER.

1. The master is allowed the gratuitous labor of the apprentice for
forty-five hours each week. The several islands were permitted by the
English government to make such a division of this time as local
circumstances might seem to require. In some islands, as for instance in
St. Christopher's and Tortola, it is spread over six days of the week in
proportions of seven and a half hours per day, thus leaving the
apprentice mere shreds of time in which he can accomplish nothing for
himself. In Barbadoes, the forty-five hours is confined within five
days, in portions of nine hours per day.

2. The allowances of food continue the same as during slavery, excepting
that now the master may give, instead of the allowance, a third of an
acre to each apprentice, but then he must also grant an additional day
every week for the cultivation of this land.

3. The master has no power whatever to punish. A planter observed, "if I
command my butler to stand for half an hour on the parlor floor, and it
can be proved that I designed it as a punishment, I may be fined for
it." The penalty for the first offence (punishing an apprentice) is a
fine of five pounds currency, or sixteen dollars, and imprisonment if
the punishment was cruel. For a second offence the apprentice is
set free.

Masters frequently do punish their apprentices _in despite of all
penalties_. A case in point occurred not long since, in Bridgetown. A
lady owned a handsome young mulatto woman, who had a beautiful head of
hair of which she was very proud. The servant did something displeasing
to her mistress, and the latter in a rage shaved off her hair close to
her head. The girl complained to the special magistrate, and procured an
immediate release from her mistress's service.

4. It is the duty of the master to make complaint to the special
magistrate. When the master chooses to take the punishment into his own
hand, the apprentice has a right to complain.

5. The master is obliged to sell the remainder of the apprentice's term,
whenever the apprentice signifies a wish to buy it. If the parties
cannot agree about the price, the special magistrate, in connection with
two local magistrates, appraises the latt