[Footnote B:  We had a specimen of the stuff special magistrates are made of in sailing from Barbadoes to Jamaica.  The vessel was originally an English man-of-war brig, which had been converted into a steamer, and was employed by the English government, in conveying the island mails from Barbadoes to Jamaica—­to and fro.  She was still under the strict discipline of a man-of-war.  The senior officer on board was a lieutenant.  This man was one of the veriest savages on earth.  His passions were in a perpetual storm, at some times higher than at others, occasionally they blew a hurricane.  He quarrelled with his officers, and his orders to his men were always uttered in oaths.  Scarcely a day passed that he did not have some one of his sailors flogged.  One night, the cabin boy left the water-can sitting on the cabin floor, instead of putting it on the sideboard, where it usually stood.  For this offence the commander ordered him up on deck after midnight, and made the quarter-master flog him.  The instrument used in this case, (the regular flogging stick having been used up by previous service,) was the commander’s cane—­a heavy knotted club.  The boy held out one hand and received the blows.  He howled most piteously, and it was some seconds before he recovered sufficiently from the pain to extend the other. “Lay on,” stormed the commander.  Down went the cane a second time.  We thought it must have broken every bone in the boy’s hand.  This was repeated several times, the boy extending each hand alternately, and recoiling at every blow.  “Now lay on to his back,” sternly vociferated the commander—­“give it to him—­hard—­lay on harder.”  The old seaman, who had some mercy in his heart, seemed very loth to lay out his strength on the boy with such a club.  The commander became furious—­cursed and swore—­and again yelled, “Give it to him harder, more—­MORE—­MORE—­there, stop.” “you infernal villain”—­speaking to the quarter-master and using the most horrid oaths—­“You infernal villain, if you do not lay on harder the next time I command you, I’ll have you put in irons.”  The boy limped away, writhing in every joint, and crying piteously, when the commander called at him, “Silence there, you imp—­or I’ll give you a second edition.”  One of the first things the commander did after we left Barbadoes, was to have a man flogged, and the last order we heard him give as we left the steamer at Kingston, was to put two of the men in irons.]

It is not a little remarkable that the apprenticeship should be regarded by the planters themselves, as well as by other persons generally throughout the colony, as merely a modified form of slavery.  It is common to hear it called ‘slavery under a different form,’ ’another name for slavery,’—­’modified slavery,’ ‘but little better than slavery.’