The dinner was enlivened by an interesting and well sustained conversation respecting the abolition of slavery, the present state of the colony, and its prospects for the future.  Lively discussions were maintained on points where there chanced to be a difference of opinion, and we admired the liberality of the views which were thus elicited.  We are certainly prepared to say, and that too without feeling that we draw any invidious distinctions, that in style of conversation, in ingenuity and ability of argument, this company would compare with any company of white gentlemen that we met in the island.  In that circle of colored gentlemen, were the keen sallies of wit, the admirable repartee, the satire now severe, now playful, upon the measures of the colonial government, the able exposure of aristocratic intolerance, of plantership chicanery, of plottings and counterplottings in high places—­the strictures on the intrigues of the special magistrates and managers, and withal, the just and indignant reprobation of the uniform oppressions which have disabled and crushed the colored people.

The views of these gentlemen with regard to the present state of the island, we found to differ in some respects from those of the planters and special magistrates.  They seemed to regard both those classes of men with suspicion.  The planters they represented as being still, at least the mass of them, under the influence of the strong habits of tyrannizing and cruelty which they formed during slavery.  The prohibitions and penalties of the law are not sufficient to prevent occasional and even frequent outbreakings of violence, so that the negroes even yet suffer much of the rigor of slavery.  In regard to the special magistrates, they allege that they are greatly controlled by the planters.  They associate with the planters, dine with the planters, lounge on the planters’ sofas, and marry the planters daughters.  Such intimacies as these, the gentlemen very plausibly argued, could not exist without strongly biasing the magistrate towards the planters, and rendering it almost impossible for them to administer equal justice to the poor apprentice, who, unfortunately, had no sumptuous dinners to give them, no luxurious sofas to offer them, nor dowered daughters to present in marriage.

The gentlemen testified to the industry and subordination of the apprentices.  They had improved the general cultivation of the island, and they were reaping for their masters greater crops than they did while slaves.  The whole company united in saying that many blessings had already resulted from the abolition of slavery—­imperfect as that abolition was.  Real estate had advanced in value at least one third.  The fear of insurrection had been removed; invasions of property, such as occurred during slavery, the firing of cane-fields, the demolition of houses, &c., were no longer apprehended.  Marriage was spreading among the apprentices, and the general morals of the whole community, high and low, white, colored, and black, were rapidly improving.