Maj.  C. said that these complaints were a fair specimen of the cases that came up daily, save that there were many more frivolous and ridiculous.  By the trials which we witnessed we were painfully impressed with two things: 

1st.  That the magistrate, with all his regard for the rights and welfare of the apprentices, showed a great and inexcusable partiality for the masters.  The patience and consideration with which he heard the complaints of the latter, the levity with which he regarded the defence of the former, the summary manner in which he despatched the cases, and the character of some of his decisions, manifested no small degree of favoritism.

2d That the whole proceedings of the special magistrates’ courts are eminently calculated to perpetuate bad feeling between the masters and apprentices.  The court-room is a constant scene of angry dispute between these parties.  The master exhausts his store of abuse and violence upon the apprentice, and the apprentice, emboldened by the place, and provoked by the abuse, retorts in language which he would never think of using on the estate, and thus, whatever may be the decision of the magistrate, the parties return home with feelings more embittered than ever.

There were twenty-six persons imprisoned at the station-house, twenty-four were at hard labor, and two were in solitary confinement.  The keeper of the prison said, he had no difficulty in managing the prisoners.  The keeper is a colored man, and so also is the sergeant and most of the policemen.

We visited one other station-house, in a distant part of the island, situated in the district over which Captain Cuppage presides.  We witnessed several trials there which were similar in frivolity and meanness to those detailed above.  We were shocked with the mockery of justice, and the indifference to the interests of the negro apparent in the course of the magistrate.  It seemed that little more was necessary than for the manager or overseer to make his complaint and swear to it, and the apprentice was forthwith condemned to punishment.

We never saw a set of men in whose countenances fierce passions of every name were so strongly marked as in the overseers and managers who were assembled at the station-houses.  Trained up to use the whip and to tyrannize over the slaves, their grim and evil expression accorded with their hateful occupation.

Through the kindness of a friend in Bridgetown we were favored with an interview with Mr. Jones, the superintendent of the rural police—­the whole body of police excepting those stationed in the town.  Mr. J. has been connected with the police since its first establishment in 1834.  He assured us that there was nothing in the local peculiarities of the island, nor in the character of its population, which forbade immediate emancipation in August, 1834.  He had no doubt it would be perfectly safe and decidedly profitable to the colony.