which I visited last year, I found that every thing was proceeding quietly and regularly.  I found too, the planters in high spirits, and some estates, which had been given up, restored; and the small patches and tenements of the free people, commencing last year, now in a very satisfactory state of cultivation.  It is possible, indeed, that these last mentioned, unless the population is proportionably increased, may affect the cultivation of the larger estates, but there they are, and flourishing, as I have described, whilst I was in the island.  A contiguous, though abandoned estate was purchased by Sir Henry Martin for about 9,500 l. currency, being 3,000 l. more than he had offered a few years previously.  To compare Barbados with any other island, either as to population, wealth, or state of agriculture, is unnecessary.  I have seen nothing like the commercial activity which I saw in the streets yesterday, except at St. Thomas; and I feel, therefore, on all these grounds, that the act may be passed safely and justly.  At the same time I am not unmindful or insensible to the state of public opinion in the mother country, nor to the many new and harassing annoyances to which the proprietors may be exposed during a protracted continuance of the apprenticeship.  I request that my full concurrence in the resolution of the council, may be accorded on the minutes of this day’s proceedings.’”

Such is the testimony of a witness in no wise warped by prejudice in favor of the anti-slavery party.

The debates which took place in the legislatures of both Barbados and Jamaica, are full of similar testimony, uttered by men every way qualified to bear witness, and under influences which relieve their testimony from every taint of suspicion.

In the legislature of Jamaica, on the question of a Committee to bring in a Bill, Mr. GOOD remarked, “He could say that the negroes from their general good conduct were deserving of the boon.  Then why not give in with a good heart? why exhibit any bad feelings about the matter?  There were many honorable gentlemen who had benefitted by the pressure from without, who owed their rank in society and their seats in that house to the industry of the negroes.  Why should they now show a bad heart in the matter?—­Nine tenths of the proprietors of this island had determined upon giving up the apprenticeship.  Hundreds of thousands were to be benefited—­were to take their stations as men of society, and he hoped the boon would not be retarded by a handful of men who owed their all to slavery.”

Mr. Dallas said,—­“The abolition of the remaining term of apprenticeship must take place; let them then join hand and heart in doing it well, and with such grace as we now could.  Let it have the appearance of a boon from ourselves, and not in downright submission to the coercive measures adopted by the British Parliament.”

After a committee had been appointed to prepare and bring in a Bill for the abolition of the apprenticeship, a member rose and proposed that the 28th of June should be its termination.  We give his speech as reported in the Jamaica papers, to show how fanatical even a slaveholder may become.