indentured apprenticeship.

The first of August arrived--that day so confidently and joyously
anticipated by the poor slaves, and so sorely dreaded by their hard
taskmasters--and if ever there was a picture interesting to look
upon--if ever there was a passage in the history of a people
redounding to their eternal honor--if ever there was a complete
refutation of all the scandalous calumnies which had been heaped
upon them for ages, as if in justification of the wrongs which we
had done them--(Hear, hear)--that picture and that passage are to be
found in the uniform and unvarying history of that people throughout
the whole of the West India islands. Instead of the fires of
rebellion, lit by a feeling of lawless revenge and resistance to
oppression, the whole of those islands were, like an Arabian scene,
illuminated by the light of contentment, joy, peace, and good-will
towards all men. No civilized people, after gaining an unexpected
victory, could have shown more delicacy and forbearance than was
exhibited by the slaves at the great moral consummation which they
had attained. There was not a look or a gesture which could gall the
eyes of their masters. Not a sound escaped from negro lips which
could wound the ears of the most feverish planter in the islands.
All was joy, mutual congratulation, and hope.

This peaceful joy, this delicacy towards the feelings of others, was
all that was to be seen, heard, or felt, on that occasion,
throughout the West India islands.

It was held that the day of emancipation would be one of riot and
debauchery, and that even the lives of the planters would be
endangered. So far from this proving the case, the whole of the
negro population kept it as a most sacred festival, and in this
light I am convinced it will ever be viewed.

In one island, where the bounty of nature seems to provoke the
appetite to indulgence, and to scatter with a profuse hand all the
means of excitement, I state the fact when I say not one drunken
negro was found during the whole of the day. No less than 800,000
slaves were liberated in that one day, and their peaceful festivity
was disturbed only on one estate, in one parish, by an irregularity
which three or four persons sufficed to put down.

Well, my lords, baffled in their expectations that the first of
Augus