We had some conversation with Cheny Hamilton, Esq., one of the special magistrates for Port Royal.  He is a colored man, and has held his office about eighteen months.  There are three thousand apprentices in his district, which embraces sugar and coffee estates.  The complaints are few and of a very trivial nature.  They mostly originate with the planters.  Most of the cases brought before him are for petty theft and absence from work.

In his district, cultivation was never better.  The negroes are willing to work during their own time.  His father-in-law is clearing up some mountain land for a coffee plantation, by the labor of apprentices from neighboring estates.  The seasons since emancipation have been bad.  The blacks cultivate their own grounds on their half Fridays and Saturdays, unless they can obtain employment from others.

Nothing is doing by the planters for the education of the apprentices.  Their only object is to get as much work out of them as possible.

The blacks, so far as he has had opportunity to observe, are in every respect as quiet and industrious as they were before freedom.  He said if we would compare the character of the complaints brought by the overseers and apprentices against each other, we should see for ourselves which party was the most peaceable and law-abiding.

To these views we may here add those of another gentleman, with whom we had considerable conversation about the same time.  He is a proprietor and local magistrate, and was represented to us as a kind and humane man.  Mr. Bourne stated to us that he had not had six cases of complaint on his plantation for the last twelve months.  We give his most important statements in the following brief items: 

1.  He has had charge of estates in Jamaica since 1804.  At one time he had twelve hundred negroes under his control.  He now owns a coffee plantation, on which there are one hundred and ten apprentices, and is also attorney for several others, the owners of which reside out of the island.

2.  His plantation is well cultivated and clean, and his people are as industrious and civil as they ever were.  He employs them during their own time, and always finds them willing to work for him, unless their own grounds require their attendance.  Cultivation generally, through the island, is as good as it ever was.  Many of the planters, at the commencement of the apprenticeship, reduced the quantity of land cultivated; he did not do so, but on the contrary is extending his plantation.

3.  The crops this year are not so good as usual.  This is no fault of the apprentices, but is owing to the bad season.

4.  The conduct of the apprentices depends very much on the conduct of those who have charge of them.  If you find a plantation on which the overseer is kind, and does common justice to the laborer, you will find things going on well—­if otherwise, the reverse.  Those estates and plantations on which the proprietor himself resides, are most peaceable and prosperous.