Mr. P. has enlarged his chapel within the last fifteen months, so that it admits several hundreds more than formerly.  But it is now too small.  The apprentices are much more anxious to receive religious instruction, and much more open to conviction, than when slaves.  He finds a great difference now on different plantations.  Where severity is used, as it still is on many estates, and the new system is moulded as nearly as possible on the old, the minds of the apprentices are apparently closed against all impressions,—­but where they are treated with kindness, they are warm in their affections, and solicitous to be taught.

In connection with his church, Mr. P. has charge of a large school.  The number present, when we visited it, was about two hundred.  There was, to say the least, as much manifestation of intellect and sprightliness as we ever saw in white pupils of the same age.  Most of the children were slaves previous to 1834, and their parents are still apprentices.  Several were pointed out to us who were not yet free, and attend only by permission, sometimes purchased, of their master.  The greater part live from three to five miles distant.  Mr. P. says he finds no lack of interest among the apprentices about education.  He can find scholars for as many schools as he can establish, if he keeps himself unconnected with the planters.  The apprentices are opposed to all schools established by, or in any way allied to, their masters.

Mr. P. says the planters are doing nothing to prepare the apprentices for freedom in 1840.  They do not regard the apprenticeship as intermediate time for preparation, but as part of the compensation.  Every day is counted, not as worth so much for education and moral instruction, but as worth so much for digging cane-holes, and clearing coffee fields.

Mr. P.’s church escaped destruction during the persecution of the Baptists.  The wives and connections of many of the colored soldiers had taken refuge in it, and had given out word that they would defend it even against their own husbands and brothers, who in turn informed their officers that if ordered to destroy it, they should refuse at all peril.

CHAPTER III.

RESULTS OF ABOLITION.

The actual working of the apprenticeship in Jamaica, was the specific object of our investigations in that island.  That it had not operated so happily as in Barbadoes, and in most of the other colonies, was admitted by all parties.  As to the degree of its failure, we were satisfied it was not so great as had been represented.  There has been nothing of an insurrectionary character since the abolition of slavery.  The affair on Thornton’s estate, of which an account is given in the preceding chapter, is the most serious disturbance which has occurred during the apprenticeship.  The fear of insurrection is as effectually dead in Jamaica, as