nce of the great act
of abolition_!"

"4. I think the negroes might have been emancipated as safely in 1834,
as in 1840; and had the emancipation then taken place, they would be
found much further in advance in 1840, than they can be after the
expiration of the present period of apprenticeship, _through which all,
both apprentices and masters, are_ LABORING HEAVILY."

"5. That the negroes will work if moderately compensated, no candid man
can doubt. Their _endurance_ for the sake of a very little gain is quite
amazing, and they are most desirous to procure for themselves and
families as large a share as possible of the comforts and decencies of
life. They appear peculiarly to reverence and desire intellectual
attainments. They employ, occasionally, children who have been taught in
the schools to teach them in their leisure time to read."

"6. I think the partial modifications of slavery have been attended by
so much improvement in all that constitutes the welfare and
respectability of society, that I cannot doubt the increase of the
benefit were a total abolition accomplished of every restriction that
has arisen out of the former state of things."

During our stay in Kingston, we called on the American consul, to whom
we had a letter from the consul at Antigua. We found him an elderly
gentleman, and a true hearted Virginian, both in his generosity and his
prejudices in favor of slavery. The consul, Colonel Harrison, is a near
relation of General W.H. Harrison, of Ohio. Things, he said, were going
ruinously in Jamaica. The English government were mad for abolishing
slavery. The negroes of Jamaica were the most degraded and ignorant of
all negroes he had ever seen. He had travelled in all our Southern
States, and the American negroes, even those of South Carolina and
Georgia, were as much superior to the negroes of Jamaica, as Henry Clay
was superior to him. He said they were the most ungrateful, faithless
set he ever saw; no confidence could be placed in them, and kindness was
always requited by insult. He proceeded to relate a fact from which it
appeared that the ground on which his grave charges against the negro
character rested, was the ill-conduct of one negro woman whom he had
hired some time ago to assist his family. The town negroes, he said,
were too lazy to work; they loitered and lounged about on the sidewalks
all day, jabbering with one another, and keeping up an incessant noise;
and they would not suffer