ill more numerous cases, including many in which the wages
have been apparently liberal, enormous extortion has been practiced upon
the laborer, in the form of rent demanded for his hovel and provision
patch--L20 per annum being demanded for a shanty not worth half that
money, and rent being frequently demanded from _every member_ of a
family more than should have been taken from the whole.
5. That the negroes are able to look out for their own interest, and
have very distinct ideas of their own about the value of money and the
worth of their labour, as well as the best methods of bringing their
employers to reasonable terms. On this point we might have made a still
stronger case by quoting from the Despatch and Standard, which assert
numerous instances in which the labourers have refused to work for wages
recommended to them by the Governor, Special Magistrates, or
Missionaries, though they offered to work for 3s. 4d., 5s., or a dollar
a day. They are shown to be rare bargain-makers and not easily trapped.
6. That the attorneys and managers have deliberately endeavoured to
raise a panic, whereby property might be depreciated to their own
advantage; showing clearly thereby, that they consider Jamaica property,
even with the laborers, irreclaimably free, a desirable investment.
7. That in spite of all their efforts, the great body of the laborers
continue industrious, doing more work in the same time than in slavery.
_The testimony to his very important point, of the Governor and House of
Assembly, is perfectly conclusive_, as we have already said. A house
that represents the very men who, in 1832, burnt the missionary chapels,
and defied the British Parliament with the threat, that in case it
proceeded to legislate Abolition, Jamaica would attach herself to the
United States, now HOPES for the agricultural prosperity of the island!
Indeed no one in Jamaica expresses a doubt on this subject, who does not
obviously do so _for the sake of buying land to better advantage_! Were
the colony a shade _worse_ off than before Emancipation, either in fact
or in the opinion of its landholders, or of any considerable portion of
persons acquainted with it, the inevitable consequence would be a
depreciation of _real estate_. But what is the fact? said Rev. John
Clark, a Jamaica Baptist Missionary, who has visited this country since
the first of August, in a letter published in the Journal of Commerce:--
"The Island of Jamaica is
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