ford them a taste of the
sweets of liberty, and render them dissatisfied with their condition.
Then the manner in which this time is divided is calculated to irritate.
After being a slave nine hours, the apprentice is made a freeman for the
remainder of the day; early the next morning the halter is again put on,
and he treads the wheel another day. Thus the week wears away until
Saturday; which is an entire day of freedom. The negro goes out and
works for his master, or any one else, as he pleases, and at night he
receives his quarter of a dollar. This is something like freedom, and he
begins to have the feelings of a freeman--a lighter heart and more
active limbs. He puts his money carefully away at night, and lays
himself down to rest his toil-worn body. He awakes on Sabbath morning,
and _is still free_. He puts on his best clothes, goes to church,
worships a free God, contemplates a free heaven, sees his free children
about him, and his wedded wife; and ere the night again returns, the
consciousness that he is a slave is quite lost in the thoughts of
liberty which fill his breast, and the associations of freedom which
cluster around him. He sleeps again. _Monday morning he is startled from
his dreams by the old "shell-blow" of slavery_, and he arises to endure
another week of toil, alternated by the same tantalizing mockeries of
freedom. Is not this applying the _hot iron to the nerve_?

5. But, lastly, the apprenticeship system, as if it would apply the
match to this magazine of combustibles, holds out the reward of liberty
to every apprentice who shall by any means provoke his master to punish
him a second time.

[NOTE.--In a former part of this work--the report of Antigua--we
mentioned having received information respecting a number of the
apprenticeship islands, viz., Dominica, St. Christopher's, Nevis,
Montserrat, Anguilla, and Tortola, from the Wesleyan Missionaries whom
we providentially met with at the annual district meeting in Antigua. We
designed to give the statements of these men at some length in this
connection, but we find that it would swell our report to too great a
size. It only remains to say, therefore, in a word, that the same things
are generally true of those colonies which have been detailed in the
account of Barbadoes. There is the same peaceableness, subordination,
industry, and patient suffering on the part of the apprentices, the same
inefficiency of the apprenticeship as a preparation f