Nor is the practical operation of the system upon the master much less exceptionable.  It takes out of his hand the power of coercing labor, and provides no other stimulus.  Thus it subjects him to the necessity either of resorting to empty threats, which must result only in incessant disputes, or of condescending to persuade and entreat, against which his habits at once rebel, or of complaining to a third party—­an alternative more revolting if possible, than the former, since it involves the acknowledgment of a higher power than his own.  It sets up over his actions a foreign judge, at whose bar he is alike amenable (in theory) with his apprentice, before whose tribunal he may be dragged at any moment by his apprentice, and from whose lips he may receive the humiliating sentence of punishment in the presence of his apprentice.  It introduces between him and his laborers, mutual repellancies and estrangement; it encourages the former to exercise an authority which he would not venture to assume under a system of perfect freedom; it emboldens the latter to display an insolence which he would not have dreamed of in a state of slavery, and thus begetting in the one, the imperiousness of the slaveholder without his power, and in the other, the independence of the freeman without his immunities, it perpetuates a scene of angry collision, jealousy and hatred.

It does not even serve for the master the unworthy purpose for which it was mainly devised, viz., that of an additional compensation.  The apprenticeship is estimated to be more expensive than a system of free labor would be.  It is but little less expensive than slavery, and freedom it is confidently expected will be considerably less.  So it would seem that this system burthens the master with much of the perplexity, the ignominy and the expensiveness of slavery, while it denies him its power.  Such is the apprenticeship system.  A splendid imposition!—­which cheats the planter of his gains, cheats the British nation of its money, and robs the world of what else might have been a glorious example of immediate and entire emancipation.

THE APPRENTICESHIP IS NO PREPARATION FOR FREEDOM.—­Indeed, as far as it can be, it is an actual disqualification.  The testimony on this subject is ample.  We rarely met a planter, who was disposed to maintain that the apprenticeship was preparing the negroes for freedom.  They generally admitted that the people were no better prepared for freedom now, than they were in 1834; and some of them did not hesitate to say that the sole use to which they and their brother planters turned the system, was to get as much work out of the apprentices while it lasted, as possible.  Clergymen and missionaries, declared that the apprenticeship was no preparation for freedom.  If it were a preparation at all, it would most probably be so in a religious and educational point of view.  We should expect to find the masters, if laboring at all to prepare their apprentices for freedom, doing so chiefly by encouraging missionaries and teachers to come to their estates, and by aiding in the erection of chapels and school-houses.  But the missionaries declare that they meet with little more direct encouragement now, than they did during slavery.