We called on several colored gentlemen of Kingston, from whom we received much valuable information.  The colored population are opposed to the apprenticeship, and all the influence which they have, both in the colony and with the home government, (which is not small,) is exerted against it.  They are a festering thorn in the sides of the planters, among whom they maintain a fearless espionage, exposing by pen and tongue their iniquitous proceedings.  It is to be regretted that their influence in this respect is so sadly weakened by their holding apprentices themselves.

We had repeated invitations to breakfast and dine with colored gentlemen, which we accepted as often as our engagements would permit.  On such occasions we generally met a company of gentlemen and ladies of superior social and intellectual accomplishments.  We must say, that it is a great self-denial to refrain from a description of some of the animated, and we must add splendid, parties of colored people which we attended.  The conversation on these occasions mostly turned on the political and civil disabilities under which the colored population formerly labored, and the various straggles by which they ultimately obtained their rights.  The following are a few items of their history.  The colored people of Jamaica, though very numerous, and to some extent wealthy and intelligent, were long kept by the white colonists in a state of abject political bondage.  Not only were offices withheld from them, and the right of suffrage denied, but they were not even allowed the privilege of an oath in court, in defense of their property or their persons.  They might be violently assaulted, their limbs broken, their wives and daughters might be outraged before their eyes by villains having white skins; yet they had no legal redress unless another white man chanced to see the deed.  It was not until 1824 that this oppressive enactment was repealed, and the protection of an oath extended to the colored people; nor was it then effected without a long struggle on their part.

Another law, equally worthy of a slaveholding legislature, prohibited any white man, however wealthy, bequeathing, or in any manner giving his colored son or daughter more than L2000 currency, or six thousand dollars.  The design of this law was to keep the colored people poor and dependent upon the whites.  Further to secure the same object, every effort, both legislative and private, was made to debar them from schools, and sink them in the lowest ignorance.  Their young men of talent were glad to get situations as clerks in the stores of white merchants.  Their young ladies of beauty and accomplishments were fortune-made if they got a place in the white man’s harem.  These were the highest stations to which the flower of their youth aspired.  The rest sank beneath the discouragements, and grovelled in vice and debasement.  If a colored person had any business with a white gentleman, and should call at his house, “he must take off his hat, and wait at the door, and be as polite as a dog.”