regard to the article of food, I will compare the Jamaica prison allowance with that allotted to the apprenticed negroes in other colonies.  In the Jamaica prison the allowance of rice is 14 pints a week to each person.  I have no return of the allowance to the indentured apprentice in Jamaica, but I believe it is little over this; but in Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, it is much under.  In Barbadoes, instead of receiving the Jamaica prison allowance of 14 pints a week, the apprenticed negro received but 10 pints:  while in the Leeward Islands he had but 8 pints.  In the crown colonies, before 1834, the slave received 21 pints of rice, now the apprentice gets but 10; so that in the material article, food, no improvement in the condition of the negro was observable.  Then, with regard to time, it is obviously of the utmost importance that the apprentice should have at least two holidays and a half a week—­the Sabbath for religious worship and instruction, the Saturday to attend the markets, and half of Friday to work in his own garden.  The act of emancipation specified 45 hours a week as the period the apprentice was to work for his master, but the master so contrived matters as in most instances to make the 45 hours the law allotted him run into the apprentice’s half of Friday, and even in some cases into the Saturday.  The planter invariably counted the time from the moment that the slave commenced his work; and as it often occurs that his residence was on the border of the estate, he may have to walk five or six miles to get to the place he has to work.  This was a point which he was sure their lordships would agree with him in thinking required alteration.

The next topic to which I shall advert relates to the administration of justice; and this large and important subject I cannot pass over without a word to remind your lordships how little safe it is, how little deserving the name of just, or any thing like just, that where you have two classes you should separate them into conflicting parties, until they became so exasperated in their resentment as scarcely to regard each other as brethren of the same species; and that you should place all the administration of justice in the hands of one dominant class, whose principles, whose passions whose interests, are all likely to be preferred by the judges when they presume to sit where you have placed them on the judgment seat.  The chief and puisne judges are raised to their situations from amongst the class which includes the white men and planters.  But, worse than that, the jurors are taken from the same privileged body:  jurors, who are to assess civil damages in actions for injuries done to the negroes—­jurors, who are to try bills of indictment against the whites for the maltreatment of the blacks—­jurors who are to convict or acquit on those bills—­jurors who are to try the slaves themselves—­nay, magistrates, jailors, turnkeys, the whole apparatus of justice, both administrative and executive,