emergency similar to a "fire," and if in official
decisions he took equal latitude, alas for the poor apprentices!]

VI. The last case was a complaint against a man for not keeping up good
fires under the boilers. He stoutly denied the charge; said he built as
good fires as he could. He kept stuffing in the trash, and if it would
not burn he could not help it. He was sentenced to imprisonment.

Maj. C. said that these complaints were a fair specimen of the cases
that came up daily, save that there were many more frivolous and
ridiculous. By the trials which we witnessed we were painfully impressed
with two things:

1st. That the magistrate, with all his regard for the rights and welfare
of the apprentices, showed a great and inexcusable partiality for the
masters. The patience and consideration with which he heard the
complaints of the latter, the levity with which he regarded the defence
of the former, the summary manner in which he despatched the cases, and
the character of some of his decisions, manifested no small degree of
favoritism.

2d That the whole proceedings of the special magistrates' courts are
eminently calculated to perpetuate bad feeling between the masters and
apprentices. The court-room is a constant scene of angry dispute between
these parties. The master exhausts his store of abuse and violence upon
the apprentice, and the apprentice, emboldened by the place, and
provoked by the abuse, retorts in language which he would never think of
using on the estate, and thus, whatever may be the decision of the
magistrate, the parties return home with feelings more embittered
than ever.

There were twenty-six persons imprisoned at the station-house,
twenty-four were at hard labor, and two were in solitary confinement.
The keeper of the prison said, he had no difficulty in managing the
prisoners. The keeper is a colored man, and so also is the sergeant and
most of the policemen.

We visited one other station-house, in a distant part of the island,
situated in the district over which Captain Cuppage presides. We
witnessed several trials there which were similar in frivolity and
meanness to those detailed above. We were shocked with the mockery of
justice, and the indifference to the interests of the negro apparent in
the course of the magistrate. It seemed that little more was necessary
than for the manager or overseer to make his complaint and swear to it,
and the apprentice was forthwith condemned to pu