under the direction, we are sorry to
say, of our friend Thomas Thomson, Esq. They were chained two and two by
heavy chains fastened to iron bands around their necks. On another
occasion, we saw the same gang at work in the yard attached to the
Independent chapel.

We received a visit, at our lodgings, from the special justice of this
district, Major Baines. He was accompanied by Mr. Thomson, who came to
introduce him as his friend. We were not left to this recommendation
alone, suspicious as it was, to infer the character of this magistrate,
for we were advertised previously that he was a "planter's man"--unjust
and cruel to the apprentices. Major B. appeared to have been looking
through his friend Thomson's prophetic telescope. There was certainly a
wonderful coincidence of vision--the same abandonment of labor, the same
preying upon provision grounds; the same violence, bloodshed and great
loss of life among the negroes themselves! However, the special
magistrate appeared to see a little further than the local magistrate,
even to the _end_ of the carnage, and to the re-establishment of
industry, peace and prosperity. The evil, he was confident, would soon
cure itself.

One remark of the special magistrate was worthy a prophet. When asked if
he thought there would be any serious disaffection produced among the
praedials by the emancipation of the non-praedials in 1838, he said, he
thought there would not be, and assigned as the reason, that the
praedials knew all about the arrangement, and did not _expect to be
free_. That is, the field apprentices knew that the domestics were to be
liberated two years sooner than they, and, without inquiring into the
grounds, or justice of the arrangement, _they would promptly
acquiesce in it_!

What a fine compliment to the patience and forbearance of the mass of
the negroes. The majority see the minority emancipated two years before
them, and that, too, upon the ground of an odious distinction which
makes the domestic more worthy than they who "bear the heat and burthen
of the day," in the open field; and yet they submit patiently, because
they are told that it is the pleasure of government that it should
be so!

The _non-praedials_, too, have their noble traits, as well as the less
favored agriculturalists. The special magistrate said that he was then
engaged in classifying the apprentices of the different estates in his
district. The object of this classification was, to asce