Mr. Hinkston has been a planter for thirty-six years, and is highly esteemed throughout the island.  The estate which he manages, ranks among the first in the island.  It comprises six hundred acres of superior land, has a population of two hundred apprentices, and yields an average crop of one hundred and eighty hogsheads.  Together with his long experience and standing as a planter, Mr. H. has been for many years local magistrate for the parish in which he resides.  From these circumstances combined, we are induced to give his opinions on a variety of points.

1.  He remarked that the planters were getting along infinitely better under the new system than they ever did under the old.  Instead of regretting that the change had taken place, he is looking forward with pleasure to a better change in 1840, and he only regrets that it is not to come sooner.

2.  Mr. H. said it was generally conceded that the island was never under better cultivation than at the present time.  The crops for this year will exceed the average by several thousand hogsheads.  The canes were planted in good season, and well attended to afterwards.

3.  Real estate has risen very much since emancipation.  Mr. H. stated that he had lately purchased a small sugar estate, for which he was obliged to give several hundred pounds more than it would have cost him before 1834.

4.  There is not the least sense of insecurity now.  Before emancipation there was much fear of insurrection, but that fear passed away with slavery.

5.  The prospect for 1840 is good.  That people have no fear of ruin after emancipation, is proved by the building of sugar works on estates which never had any before, and which were obliged to cart their canes to neighbouring estates to have them ground and manufactured.  There are also numerous improvements making on the larger estates.  Mr. H. is preparing to make a new mill and boiling-house on Colliton, and other planters are doing the same.  Arrangements are making too in various directions to build new negro villages on a more commodious plan.

6.  Mr. H. says he finds his apprentices perfectly ready to work for wages during their own time.  Whenever he needs their labor on Saturday, he has only to ask them, and they are ready to go to the mill, or field at once.  There has not been an instance on Colliton estate in which the apprentices have refused to work, either during the hours required by law, or during their own time.  When he does not need their services on Saturday, they either hire themselves to other estates or work on their own grounds.

7.  Mr. H. was ready to say, both as a planter and a magistrate, that vice and crime generally had decreased, and were still on the decrease.  Petty thefts are the principal offences.  He has not had occasion to send a single apprentice to the court of sessions for the last six months.

8.  He has no difficulty in managing his people—­far less than he did when they were slaves.  It is very seldom that he finds it necessary to call in the aid of the special magistrate.  Conciliatory treatment is generally sufficient to maintain order and industry among the apprentices.