purchase or bequest; permitting free Negroes or Mulattoes to navigate their own vessels; allowing them to save deficiencies for their own property, or for that of other free Negroes and Mulattoes; and partially admitting their testimony for or against White persons in courts of justice. The disabilities, however, under which they still labour are sufficiently numerous. They will be best appreciated by attending to the facts stated in the following series of resolutions adopted at a meeting of Delegates from the free People of Colour of Jamaica, which assembled at Kingston on the 12th May 1823, Mr. A. D. Simpson in the chair, as the basis of a petition to be presented to the Colonial Legislature; namely "That the People of Colour, in seeking by constitutional means to attain to the exercise of the privileges of citizens, demonstrate, in the value they attach to those rights as British subjects, the devotion which has heretofore animated, and which always will animate them, in supporting the honour and interests of the British Empire*. "That the local Legislature has imposed restraints and disabilities upon the Coloured Population (the pressure of which has only, within a few years, been in any degree ameliorated or relaxed); the operation of which disabilities, notwithstanding the recognition of the Mother Country, has totally divested them in the colonies of the character of free denizens of England.' "That in claiming a closer approximation to the immunities of the White inhabitants, they call to recollection the character they have maintained under those restraints; and they look to the devotion they have always manifested to the inte "I am happy," says Bryan Edwards, speaking of the People of Colour of Jamaica, "to assert that their fidelity and loyalty have hitherto remained unimpeached and unsuspected."-History, Vol. II. p. 24 5th edition. rests of the island, as the fairest pledge of an undoubted fitness to be now relieved from their political disabilities*. "That the laws by which they feel themselves aggrieved and oppressed are:-1. The laws limiting their efforts in life; the deficiency law, which excludes them from an equal participation with the White inhabitants in the productive labour of the soil, and the enactments which debar them from employment in the public offices of the island. 2. Those which exclude them from exercising the ordinary rights of British subjects the right of admission on juries, and the right of suffrage of freeholders. 3. The law which requires from them testimonials of baptism and freedom before they be deemed fit evidence in a cause. Lastly, They complain of the non-provision, in many parishes of the island, for the instruction of the uneducated poor of Colour +. "That in seeking to obtain the repeal of the laws which thus oppress them, they owe it in justice to themselves to declare, that they are actuated by no tumultuous or The free Blacks and People of Colour are more numerous than the Whites; and yet it appears from returns made by several parishes in Jamaica, and printed by the House of Commons on the 12th convictions of Whites and free Negroes July 1815, that the proportion of criminal and Mulattoes, was, as twenty-three of the former to seven of the latter. This is a strong fact; and yet, says Bryan Edwards, in their deportment towards the Whites, they are humble, submissive, and unassuming. The reality and oppressive nature of these restrictions are candidly admitted by them in their own eyes, and in the eyes Bryan Edwards. They "tend to degrade of the community;" "to make them at once wretched and useless." "They have no motives of sufficient energy to engage them either in the service of their country or in profitable labour for their own advantage. Their improvement in knowledge is animated by no encouragement; their attachment is received without approbation; and their diligence exerted without reward." Vol. II. p. 23. declamatory motives, but are impelled to the measure by a patient review of the hardships of their condition. The operation of the legacy limitation law (repealed in the year 1813) successfully rendered the People of Colour a poor community. Compelled to look to individual exertion alone, they seek those common opportunities of exerting themselves, in obtaining a subsistence, which are to be found in a free access to the advantages of agriculture *. Circumscribed in their present opportunities, they feel the influence of the existing system in depressing their exertions and demoralizing their habits. That, aware how much their general body must be morally bettered by having opened to them employment, derived from a recommendation of intellectual acquirements, they urge the repeal of those statutes which exclude them from being employed in the public offices of the island t. "That, as a confident reliance in the administration of justice can only be found in an admission to participate in the judgment reposed in juries, they seek for this privilege. As the right of judgment can only be delegated to those of settled habits, and of fixed residence and interest in the soil, no suspicion of undue influence can arise from this concession; the operation of this immunity, by holding up the benefits of education, and of provident habits, must greatly increase the morality of a people. "That a similar result must take place from a concession of the elective franchise. By rendering the * They are debarred even from employment as overseers, book-keepers, &c. on the plantations of White men; because, however respectable and well educated, and though serving in the militia, they are not even now permitted to save what are called deficiencies for such plantations. "They are excluded," says Mr Stewart, in his "Past and Present State of Jamaica," "from all offices, civil, milia tary, and ecclesiastical." (p. 322.) They cannot even be constables. CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 264. People of Colour partakers in the appointment of individuals to the framing of laws, which bind the lives and properties of themselves and their posterity; by identifying the entire people with the legislatorial powers of a state, and the acts and ordinances of a government, there must be created a firmer reliance, and a more united effort, in the whole body of the governed. "That the law requiring, before admission to testimony in courts, the documents of baptism, and those of the right to exercise the immunities of the free, tend only to unnecessary degradation, and to bar the avenues of justice, by suppressing evidence in courts of law, on the part of those who withhold those documents, through an honest shame of unmerited debasement. 66 That, aware how much a community must gain in habits of order, and in moral and religious feeling, by a general diffusion of knowledge, they press upon the attention of the legislature the uneducated state of the poor in many parishes of the island. "That, in calling the attention of the legislature to the disabilities under which the People of Colour labour, they deem it expedient to advert to the policy which, without a commensurate object, has excluded the Coloured natives of the other British West-India possessions from being received as equally entitled to the benefits of the enactments passed in favour of those born in the island of Jamaica;-the concessions of late made by the legislature here to the Coloured People, having totally overlooked their interests in society." Will it be believed that the framers of these resolutions, passed about the very time when Mr. Bridges must have been writing his book, were the delegates of upwards of 30,000 individuals, living around him in quiet submission even to such iniquitous laws; sustained by their own labour; contributing largely to the expenses of the state, though excluded from its favourable regards; 5 H forming a main part of the colonial militia, the uniform of which they themselves pay for; and whom he nevertheless stigmatizes as slothful and vicious? In as far as they are really obnoxious to this charge, the blame evidently belongs not to them, but to those oppressive laws which have been adverted to, and, in a still greater degree, to the absolute neglect of their moral and religious instruction, of which the colonial government has been guilty; and, above all, to the profligate, debasing, and demoralizing habits which the Whites have introduced, and still universally cherish, among their women, to whom we must, in all cases, chiefly look for the formation of manners. What says Bryan Edwards on this point? "Of their women, such as are young and have tolerable persons, are universally maintained by White men of all ranks and conditions as kept mistresses. The fact is too notorious to be concealed or controverted;" and he considers the practice as "a violation of all decency and decorum, and an insult and an injury to society." The degradation to which the Men of Colour are reduced by the colonial institutions, he and Mr. Stewart assign as a reason why these women, uneducated, insensible of the beauty and sanctity of marriage, "ignorant of Christian and moral obligations, threatened by poverty, urged by passion, and encouraged by example," prefer a licentious intercourse with the privileged and dominant White, to marriage with one of their own proscribed caste, with whom, however rich and welleducated," the lowest White son," Bryan Edwards tells us, "will disdain to associate," and with whom they even hold it "an abomination to eat bread." (vol. ii. p. 23.) per But what, after all has been said that can fairly be said in disparagement of this aggrieved class, is the fact with respect to them? Mr. Stewart tells us, that "in 1788, it was computed that there were 10,000 free People of Colour in the island," but that now, in 1821, "there are upwards of three times that number." He even thinks the number may be set down at 35,000. The number of manumissions in that time may probably have been considerable; but yet, after making all due allowance for these, the increase is prodigious *, and is the more remarkable when contrasted with the dreadful waste of slave life which has taken place in the same period. And yet Mr. Bridges would fain persuade us that plenty and comfort and industry are the exclusive attributes of slavery; while want and misery and indolence and apathy and vice are the unfailing concomitants of freedom in this singular island. Here we have indeed a most extraordinary reversal of all the known laws of human nature! Two facts which we are about to state, will serve to place the truth and fairness of Mr. Bridges's representations with respect to the People of Colour in their proper light. On the 20th May 1812, the clerk of the peace, at Kingston, Thomas L. Ennis, made a return to Parliament of the population of that town, (Papers, printed 12th July 1815.)— His estimate of the White inhabitants is 8000, and of the free Black and Coloured 8000. The number has since, we believe, very consi derably increased. But, assuming it to be correct, we have here 8000 Persons of Colour collected within the town of Kingston, the dry and parched soil of which certainly yields no productions of any kind which can be made available to the sustenance of man. How then do these 8000 persons live? Do they too live "without labour or means?" Who has erected for them the handsome dwellings which multitudes of them inhabit? Who supplies their daily food? "The free Negro and assured Mr. Stewart, that " he usually * A respectable clergyman of Jamaica had occasion to baptize about fifteen Brown children for one White child." p. 333. 1823.] Rev. G.W. Bridges on the Effects of Manumission. Coloured population of these colonies depend ALONE," says this veracious writer, " upon the spontaneous productions of a grateful soil." Now these 8000 Coloured inhabitants of Kingston, forming a third or a fourth of the whole Coloured population of the island, have no "grateful soil" to which they It will be for can have recourse. Mr. Bridges, in his next pamphlet, to explain to us how they subsist; and not only how they subsist, but how they procure the gay clothing, and defray the expense of the balls and entertainments, in which they are said to indulge; and still more, how they contrive to pay their taxes, for Mr. Ennis seems to have con sulted his tax-rolls for their numbers. Now, it is admitted by Bryan Mr. Bridges does not confine his 767 paid by the Colonial Legislature, And yet these free Negroes, thus infected with the worst vices of slavery, destitute of all moral culture, left" without resource to all the want and misery which close a life of unrestrained indolence, apathy, and vice," have been rapidly increasing their numbers; while the happy slaves, to whom "want is unknown, (p. 39); who experience, according to Mr. Bridges, none of "the fatigue of the English labourers," (who, notwithstanding all their misery, increase also), doing only a fourth part of their grinding and oppressive protask, (pp. 11, 12); who are tected, and their necessities administered to in age or incapacity,' (p. 40); whose life is actually a life. not of contentment merely, but of enjoyment; these thrice-happy slaves have been diminishing with a rapidity which leaves the West-Indian institutions without a parallel in their deathful tendency. The wretched Maroons, abandoned to themselves, have been multiplying their numbers; while the slaves, though blessed with such means and And yet these very men, removed to Sierra Leone, have been induced to abandon their superstitions and to embrace Christianity, to renounce their habits of polygamy and licentiousness, and to become peaceable and useful members of civil society. 5 H 2 capacities of felicity, though protected, watched over, fed, and indulged, with almost more than parental care, have been wasting away at a rate which would finally lead to the extinction of their race. Their numbers in the West Indies, in three years, from 1817 to 1820, have diminished by upwards of 18,000!!! Let the public judge, from these facts, of the truth and fairness of the statements of this clerical advocate for slavery. It would be injustice to the clergy generally, not to afford such explanation as we can of the phenomenon of a minister of the Gospel appearing as the advocate of such a cause. It ought to be known, therefore, that Mr. Bridges is himself a proprietor of slaves. In the Royal Gazette of Jamaica, of the 8th to the 15th June, 1822, an advertisement gives notice, that Edward, a Creole slave, belonging to the Rev. G. Bridges, of Manchester, was then confined as a run-away in St. Elizabeth's workhouse, in which he appears to have lain for about two months. The statement of this fact seems necessary, in order to afford a clue to the extraordinary sentiments which his pamphlet exhibits. That a man should be so habituated to the sight of slavery, especially if he is himself a master of slaves, as to lose all sense of its repulsive properties, and even to become a genuine admirer of the institution, we can conceive: but that he, being himself a native Englishman, should place this state above that, of personal freedom; nay, above that kind of personal freedom, (fenced and guarded and elevated by civil and political rights, and brightened by the cheering light of Christianity,) which exists in Great Britain, is indeed marvellous. The Black and Coloured free, in his tortuous estimation, stand far below the slave; but even the wretched Black and Coloured free rise high above the British peasant. The sweat of his care-worn brow hardly gains a scanty subsistence for his craving children;" and even the debasement and poverty and degradation of the free Negro and Mulatto, these victims of "want and misery, of indolence, apathy, and vice," who "merit our commiseration, and should elicit our sympathy," resemble, only "in their worst features," the hapless lot of "the English husbandman." This is the very climax of effrontery. But our limits are exhausted; and we must take our leave of Mr. Bridges for the present, intending, on some future occasion, to resume our exposure of some more of his fallacious statements and gross misrepresentations. Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. In reply to the inquiry of your correspondent R. H., respecting the employments proper for young children on the day of sacred rest, I shall be obliged by the insertion of the following suggestions. There can be no question as to the great importance of making the Sabbath a day of instruction, without weariness, to children; and there is undoubtedly some difficulty in selecting a sufficient variety of employments suited to the day, and at the same time interesting to their young minds. In addition to reading the Scriptures, repeating catechisms and hymns (all of which may be rendered pleasing by a variety of questions, arising out of the subjects they contain), children may, from very early years, be trained to attend public worship, and to consider being allowed to do so a pleasure. More than the formation of an invaluable habit would be insured by this early addiction, if parents would familiarly explain to their children the subjects of the sermons they hear, and endeavour to impress them on their memories and their hearts. The discourses delivered by ministers from the pulpit might thus be rendered useful to an |