listen with disapprobation to the tone in which the Baptist ministers and their adherents arrogate to themselves exclusively the title of friends and leaders of the black population.  Many persons of this class have already embarked in public life; some, as members of Assembly, have taken part in those transactions which are the object of the bitterest denunciations of the Anti-Church party.  A few are Churchmen, others Wesleyans.  The prospect of a Baptist oligarchy ruling in undivided sway disquiets them.  They have their doubts as to whether, in the present stage of our civilisation, the peasantry of this Island would evince much discrimination in their selection of a religion if left in that matter entirely to themselves.  In the chequered array of colours which our religious world even now presents, comprising every shade, from Roman Catholicism and Judaism, to Myalism, and providing spiritual gratification for every eye, they still think it, on the whole, desirable that predominance should be given to some one over the rest.  Many have experienced the bounty of the legislature, which has been most liberal in affording aid to all sects who have applied for it.  They are not, therefore, as yet ready for the overthrow of the Church Establishment.  But I will not take upon myself to affirm that, as a body, they are prepared to incur political martyrdom in its defence.

But apart from the difficulties—­social, moral, and religious—­at which we have glanced, there was enough in the political aspect of affairs to fill the Governor of Jamaica with anxiety.  The franchise being within the reach of every one who chose to stretch out a hand and grasp it, might at any time be claimed by vast numbers of persons who had recently been slaves, and were still generally illiterate.  And the Assembly for which this constituency had to provide members exercised great authority within its own sphere.  It discharged a large portion of the functions which usually devolve upon an Executive Government; it initiated all legislative measures, besides voting the supplies from year to year.  What hope was there that a body so constituted would wield such powers with discretion?

[Sidenote:  Harmonising influence of British institutions.]

Lord Elgin’s answer to this question shows that he already cherished that faith in the harmonising influence of British institutions on a mixed population, which afterwards, at a critical period of Canadian history, was the mainspring of his policy.

A sojourner in this sea of the Antilles, who is watching with heartfelt anxiety the progress of the great experiment of Negro emancipation (an experiment which must result in failure unless religion and civilisation minister to the mind that freedom which the enactments of law have secured for the body), might well be tempted to view the prospect to which I have now introduced you with some feelings of misgiving, were he not reassured