What a fine compliment to the patience and forbearance of the mass of the negroes.  The majority see the minority emancipated two years before them, and that, too, upon the ground of an odious distinction which makes the domestic more worthy than they who “bear the heat and burthen of the day,” in the open field; and yet they submit patiently, because they are told that it is the pleasure of government that it should be so!

The non-praedials, too, have their noble traits, as well as the less favored agriculturalists.  The special magistrate said that he was then engaged in classifying the apprentices of the different estates in his district.  The object of this classification was, to ascertain all those who were non-praedials, that they might be recorded as the subjects of emancipation in 1838.  To his astonishment he found numbers of this class who expressed a wish to remain apprentices until 1840.  On one estate, six out of eight took this course, on another, twelve out of fourteen, and in some instances, all the non-praedials determined to suffer it out with the rest of their brethren, refusing to accept freedom until with the whole body they could rise up and shout the jubilee of universal disinthrallment.  Here is a nobility worthy to compare with the patience of the praedials.  In connection with the conduct of the non-praedials, he mentioned the following instance of white brutality and negro magnanimity.  A planter, whose negroes he was classifying, brought forward a woman whom he claimed as a praedial.  The woman declared that she was a non-praedial, and on investigation it was clearly proved that she had always been a domestic; and consequently entitled to freedom in 1838.  After the planter’s claim was set aside, the woman said, “Now I will stay with massa, and be his ’prentice for de udder two year.”

Shortly before we left the Bay, our landlady, a colored woman, introduced one of her neighbors, whose conversation afforded us a rare treat.  She was a colored lady of good appearance and lady like manners.  Supposing from her color that she had been prompted by strong sympathy in our objects to seek an interview with us, we immediately introduced the subject of slavery, stating that as we had a vast number of slaves in our country, we had visited Jamaica to see how the freed people behaved, with the hope that our countrymen might be encouraged to adopt emancipation.  “Alack a day!” The tawny madam shook her head, and, with that peculiar creole whine, so expressive of contempt, said, “Can’t say any thing for you, sir—­they not doing no good now, sir—­the negroes an’t!”—­and on she went abusing the apprentices, and denouncing abolition.  No American white lady could speak more disparagingly of the niggers, than did this recreant descendant of the negro race.  They did no work, they stole, were insolent, insubordinate, and what not.

She concluded in the following elegiac strain, which did not fail to touch our sympathies.  “I can’t tell what will become of us after 1840.  Our negroes will be taken away from us—­we shall find no work to do ourselves—­we shall all have to beg, and who shall we beg from? All will be beggars, and we must starve!”