Mr. P. stated that the planters were universally opposed to his experiment.  They laughed at the idea of making negroes work without using the whip; and they all prophesied that it would prove an utter failure.  After some months’ successful trial, he asked some of his neighbor planters what they thought of it then, and he appealed to than to say whether he did not get his work done as thoroughly and seasonably as they did theirs.  They were compelled to admit it; but still they were opposed to his system, even more than ever.  They called it an innovation—­it was setting a bad example; and they honestly declared that they did not wish the slaves to have any time of their own.  Mr. P. said, he was first induced to try the system of task work from a consideration that the negroes were men as well as himself, and deserved to he dealt with as liberally as their relation would allow.  He soon found that what was intended as a favor to the slaves was really a benefit to the master.  Mr. P. was persuaded that entire freedom would be better for all parties than apprenticeship.  He had heard some fears expressed concerning the fate of the island after 1840; but he considered them very absurd.

Although this planter looked forward with sanguine hopes to 1840, yet he would freely say that he did not think the apprenticeship would be any preparation for entire freedom.  The single object with the great majority of the planters seemed to be to get as much out of the apprentices as they possibly could during the term.  No attention had been paid to preparing the apprentices for freedom.

We were introduced to a planter who was notorious during the reign of slavery for the strictness of his discipline, to use the Barbadian phrase, or, in plain English, for his rigorous treatment and his cruelty.

He is the proprietor of three sugar estates and one cotton plantation in Barbadoes, on all of which there are seven hundred apprentices.  He was a luxurious looking personage, bottle-cheeked and huge i’ the midst, and had grown fat on slaveholding indulgences.  He mingled with every sentence he uttered some profane expression, or solemn appeal to his “honor,” and seemed to be greatly delighted with hearing himself talk.  He displayed all those prejudices which might naturally be looked for in a mind educated and trained as his had been.  As to the conduct of the apprentices, he said they were peaceable and industrious, and mostly well disposed.  But after all, the negroes were a perverse race of people.  It was a singular fact, he said, that the severer the master, the better the apprentices.  When the master was mild and indulgent, they were sure to be lazy, insolent, and unfaithful. He knew this by experience; this was the case with his apprentices.  His house-servants especially were very bad.  But there was one complaint he had against them all, domestics and praedials—­they always hold