“The special magistracy department is filled with the most worthless men, both domestic and imported.  It was a necessary qualification of the former to possess no property; hence the most worthless vagabonds on the island were appointed.  The latter were worn out officers and dissipated rakes, whom the English government sent off here in order to get rid of them.”  As a specimen of the latter kind, this gentleman mentioned one (special Justice Light) who died lately from excessive dissipation.  He was constantly drunk, and the only way in which to get him to do any business was to take him on to an estate in the evening so that he might sleep off his intoxication, and then the business was brought before him early the next morning, before he had time to get to his cups.

It is well known that many of the special magistrates are totally unprincipled men, monsters of cruelty, lust, and despotism.  As a result of natural character in many cases, and of dependence upon planters in many more, the great mass of the special justices are a disgrace to their office, and to the government which commissioned them.  Out of sixty, the number of special justices in Jamaica, there are not more than fifteen, or twenty at farthest, who are not the merest tools of the attorneys and overseers.  Their servility was graphically hit off by the apprentice.  “If busha say flog em, he flog em; if busha say send them to the treadmill, he send em.”  If an apprentice laughs or sings, and the busha represents it to the magistrate as insolence, he feels it his duty to make an example of the offender!

The following fact will illustrate the injustice of the magistrates.  It was stated in writing by a missionary.  We conceal all names, in compliance with the request of the writer.  “An apprentice belonging to ——­ in the ——­ was sent to the treadmill by special justice G. He was ordered to go out and count the sheep, as he was able to count higher than some of the field people, although a house servant from his youth—­I may say childhood.  Instead of bringing in the tally cut upon a piece of board, as usual, he wrote the number eighty upon a piece of paper.  When the overseer saw it, he would scarcely believe that any of his people could write, and ordered a piece of coal to be brought and made him write it over again; the next day he turned him into the field, but unable to perform the task (to hoe and weed one hundred coffee roots daily) with those who had been accustomed to field work all their lives, he was tried for neglect of duty, and sentenced to fourteen days on the treadmill!”

We quote the following heart-rending account from the Telegraph, (Spanishtown,) April 28, 1837.  It is from a Baptist missionary.