Mr. Frater said, among other things, “He knew that it might be said the bill (Lord Glenelg’s) did not go to the extent of freeing the negroes—­that we are about to do ourselves, but he would ask whether we were not driven into the difficulty by which we are now surrounded!  Had we not been brought into this alarming position, into this exigency, by the conduct of the British Government. Why do we not tell the English nation frankly and candidly, that they agreed to give the planter six years’ services of their apprentices, as a part of the compensation, and if they desired to do away with it, that we must be paid for it, otherwise we will NOT ANSWER FOR ANY CHANGE, FOR ANY EVILS WHICH ARE LIKELY TO ENSUE.  Why did the government force such an obnoxious bill upon us?  They had in substance done this, they refused to annul the apprenticeship themselves, it is true, but said, we will place them in a situation that will compel them to do it themselves.  He must say that the Government had acted cowardly and unjustly, they had in substance deprived them of the further two years’ services of their apprentices, agreeably to the compact entered into, upon a pretext that we had not kept faith with them, and now tell us they will give us no compensation.  He hoped the allusion to it in the address would be retained.”

We beg the patient attention of the reader to still more of these extracts.  The present state of things in Jamaica renders them very important.  It is indispensable to a correct judgment of the results of the experiment to understand in what temper it was entered upon by the parties.  Nothing can show this more clearly or authoritatively than the quotations we are making.  We find another little torrent of eloquence from the same Mr. Hamilton Brown above quoted.  He and several other gentlemen rose to reply to the statements of Richard Hill, a friend of freedom, and Secretary of the Special Magistracy.

Mr. Brown—­“Mr. Chairman, I am on my legs, Sir.  I say that we have to thank the Special Justices, and the private instructions which they have acted upon, for all the evils that have occurred in the country.  Had they taken the law for their guide, had they acted upon that, Sir, and not upon their private instructions, every thing would have gone on splendidly, and we should have done well.  But they had destroyed the negroes with their instructions, they had given them bad advice, and encouraged them in disobedience to their masters.  I say it, Sir, in the face of this committee—­I would say it on my death-bed tomorrow, that if the Stipendiary Magistrates had done their duty all would have gone on well, and I told his Excellency that he might then have slept on a bed of roses.”

Here was one of the abolishers of the apprenticeship who held that more flogging would have made it work more “splendidly.”  Mr. Hugh Fraser Leslie, who the February before had, in his place in the Assembly, denominated the anti-slavery delegates assembled in London, as “a set of crawling wretches;” “the scum and refuse of society.”  “The washings and scrapings of the manufacturing districts,” &c. &c. now delivered himself of the following:—­