ire also to you performing your work
with cheerful industry: but I would warn you _not to be too hasty in
entering into contracts_. Think seriously before you act, and remember,
as I have already old you, that you have now to act not only for
yourselves, but for posterity."

We give numerous documents from these gentlemen, as among the best if
not the greatest part of our fellow citizens; we trust their testimony
will be deemed the best that could be offered.

LETTER OF EIGHT BAPTIST MISSIONARIES.

_To the Right Hon. Lord_ GLENELG, &c.

My Lord--We feel assured that no apology is necessary, in requesting
your attention to the subject of this letter. The official connection
which you hold with the colony, together with the peculiar circumstances
in which its newly-emancipated population are placed, render it an
imperative duty we owe to ourselves to lay before you our sentiments.

Having labored in the island for many years, and having been in daily
intercourse with the objects of our solicitude, we do feel devoutly
thankful to ALMIGHTY GOD, that he has spared us to see the
disenthralment of our beloved flocks; while it gives us increased
pleasure to assure your lordship that they received the boon with holy
joy, and that the hour which made them men beheld them in thousands
humbly prostrate at the footstool of mercy, imploring the blessing of
HEAVEN upon themselves and their country, while, during the night and
joyful day, not a single case of intoxication was seen.

To us, as their pastors, they naturally looked for advice, both as to
the labor they should perform and the wages they should receive. The
importance of this subject was deeply felt by us, and we were prepared
to meet it with a full sense of the responsibility it involved, and
happily succeeded in inducing them to accept of a sum lower than that
which the representatives of the landowners had formerly asserted was
fair and just.

We regret to state, that a deep combination was formed by many of these
_middlemen_ to grind the peasantry to the dust, and to induce, if
possible, the acceptance of remuneration which, by affording no
inducement to the peasant cheerfully to labor, would have entailed
pauperism on him and his family, and ruin on the absentee proprietor. It
was to this circumstance, and not in the least to any unwillingness in
the free negro to work, or to demand more for his labor than it was
fairly worth, that for one or two weeks, in some