The apprentices on Thornton, are what is termed a jobbing gang, that is, they are hired out by their master to any planter who may want their services.  Jobbing is universally regarded by the negroes as the worst kind of service, for many reasons—­principally because it often takes them many miles from their homes, and they are still required to supply themselves with food from their own provision grounds.  They are allowed to return home every Friday evening or Saturday, and stay till Monday morning.  The owner of the gang in question lately died—­to whom it is said they were greatly attached—­and they passed into the hands of a Mr. Jocken, the present overseer.  Jocken is a notoriously cruel man.  It was scarcely a twelvemonth ago, that he was fined one hundred pounds currency, and sentenced to imprisonment for three months in the Kingston jail, for tying one of his apprentices to a dead ox, because the animal died while in the care of the apprentice.  He also confined a woman in the same pen with a dead sheep, because she suffered the sheep to die.  Repeated acts of cruelty have caused Jocken to be regarded as a monster in the community.  From a knowledge of his character, the apprentices of Thornton had a strong prejudice against him.  One of the earliest acts after he went among them, was to break down their fences, and turn his cattle into their provision grounds.  He then ordered them to go to a distant estate to work.  This they refused to do, and when he attempted to compel them to go, they left the estate in a body, and went to the woods.  This is what is called a state of open rebellion, and for this they were to be hunted like beasts, and to suffer such a terrible punishment as would deter all other apprentices from taking a similar step.

This Jocken is the same wretch who wantonly handcuffed the apprentice, who went on to his estate by the direction of his master.

Mr. Willis showed us a letter which he had received that morning from a planter in his district, who had just been trying an experiment in job work, (i.e., paying his people so much for a certain amount of work.) He had made a proposition to one of the head men on the estate, that he would give him a doubloon an acre if he would get ten acres of cane land holed.  The man employed a large number of apprentices, and accomplished the job on three successive Saturdays.  They worked at the rate of nearly one hundred holes per day for each man, whereas the usual day’s work is only seventy-five holes.

Mr. W. bore testimony that the great body of the negroes in his district were very peaceable.  There were but a few incorrigible fellows, that did all the mischief.  When any disturbance took place on an estate, he could generally tell who the individual offenders were.  He did not think there would be any serious difficulty after 1840.  However, the result he thought would greatly depend on the conduct of the managers!