We sounded them thoroughly on their views of law and freedom.  We inquired whether they expected to be allowed to do as they pleased when they were free.  On this subject they spoke very rationally.  Said one, “We could never live widout de law; (we use, his very expressions) we must have some law when we free.  In other countries, where dey are free, don’t dey have law?  Wouldn’t dey shoot one another if they did not have law?” Thus they reasoned about freedom.  Their chief complaint against the apprenticeship was, that it did not allow them justice. “There was no law now.”  They had been told by the governor, that there was the same law for all the island; but they knew better, for there was more justice done them in some districts than in others.

Some of their expressions indicated very strongly the characteristic kindness of the negro.  They would say, we work now as well as we can for the sake of peace; any thing for peace.  Don’t want to be complained of to the magistrate; don’t like to be called hard names—­do any thing to keep peace.  Such expressions were repeatedly made.  We asked them what they thought of the domestics being emancipated in 1838, while they had to remain apprentices two years longer?  They said, “it bad enough—­but we know de law make it so, and for peace sake, we will be satisfy. But we murmur in we minds.”

We asked what they expected to do with the old and infirm, after freedom?  They said, “we will support dem—­as how dey brought us up when we was pickaninny, and now we come trong, must care for dem.”  In such a spirit did these apprentices discourse for two hours.  They won greatly upon our sympathy and respect.  The touching story of their wrongs, the artless unbosoming of their hopes, their forgiving spirit toward their masters, their distinct views of their own rights, their amiable bearing under provocation, their just notions of law, and of a state of freedom—­these things were well calculated to excite our admiration for them, and their companions in suffering.  Having prayed with the company, and commended them to the grace of God, and the salvation of Jesus Christ, we shook hands with them individually, and separated from them, never more to see them, until we meet at the bar of God.

While one of us was prosecuting the foregoing inquiries in St. Thomas in the East, the other was performing a horse-back tour among the mountains of St. Andrews and Port Royal.  We had been invited by Stephen Bourne, Esq., special magistrate for one of the rural districts in those parishes, to spend a week in his family, and accompany him in his official visits to the plantations embraced in his commission—­an invitation we were very glad to accept, as it laid open to us at the same time three important sources of information,—­the magistrate, the planter, and the apprentice.