We received a call from the Rev. Mr. Wooldridge, one of the Independent missionaries.  He thinks the conduct of the planters is tending to make the apprentices their bitter enemies.  He mentioned one effect of the apprenticeship which had not been pointed out to us before.  The system of appraisement, he said, was a premium upon all the bad qualities of the negroes and a tax upon all the good ones.  When a person is to be appraised, his virtues and his vices are always inquired into, and they materially influence the estimate of his value.  For example, the usual rate of appraisement is a dollar per week for the remainder of the term; but if the apprentice is particularly sober, honest, and industrious, more particularly if he be a pious man, he is valued at the rate of two or three dollars per week.  It was consequently for the interest of the master, when an apprentice applied for an appraisement, to portray his virtues, while on the other hand there was an inducement for the apprentice to conceal or actually to renounce his good qualities, and foster the worst vices.  Some instances of this kind had fallen under his personal observation.

We called on the Rev. Mr. Gardiner, and on the Rev. Mr. Tinson, two Baptist missionaries in Kingston.  On Sabbath we attended service at the church of which Mr. G. is the pastor.  It is a very large building, capable of seating two thousand persons.  The great mass of the congregation were apprentices.  At the time we were present, the chapel was well filled, and the broad surface of black faces was scarcely at all diversified with lighter colors.  It was gratifying to witness the neatness of dress, the sobriety of demeanor, the devotional aspect of countenance, the quiet and wakeful attention to the preacher which prevailed.  They were mostly rural negroes from the estates adjacent to Kingston.

The Baptists are the most numerous body of Christians in the island.  The number of their missionaries now in Jamaica is sixteen, the number of Chapels is thirty-one, and the number of members thirty-two thousand nine hundred and sixty.  The increase of members during the year 1836 was three thousand three hundred and forty-four.

At present the missionary field is mostly engrossed by the Baptists and Wesleyans.  The Moravians are the next most numerous body.  Besides these, there are the clergy of the English Church, with a Bishop, and a few Scotch clergymen.  The Baptist missionaries, as a body, have been most distinguished for their opposition to slavery.  Their boldness in the midst of suffering and persecutions, their denunciations of oppression, though they did for a time arouse the wrath of oppressors, and cause their chapels to be torn down and themselves to be hunted, imprisoned, and banished, did more probably than any other cause, to hasten the abolition of slavery.