6.  Many of the special magistrates require much looking after.  Their salaries are not sufficient to support them independently.  Some of them leave their homes on Monday morning, and make the whole circuit of their district before returning, living and lodging meanwhile, free of expense, with the planters.  If they are not inclined to listen to the complaints of the apprentices, they soon find that the apprentices are not inclined to make complaints to them, and that they consequently have much more leisure time, and get through their district much easier.  Of the sixty magistrates in Jamaica, but few can be said to discharge their duties faithfully.  The governor is often required to interfere.  A few weeks since he discharged two magistrates for putting iron collars on two women, in direct violation of the law, and then sending him false reports.

7.  The negro grounds are often at a great distance, five or six miles, and some of them fifteen miles, from the plantation.  Of course much time, which would otherwise be spent in cultivating them, is necessarily consumed in going to them and returning.  Yet for all that, and though in many cases the planters have withdrawn the watchmen who used to protect them, and have left them entirely exposed to thieves and cattle, they are generally well cultivated—­on the whole, better than during slavery.  When there is inattention to them, it is caused either by some planters hiring them during their own time, or because their master permits his cattle to trespass on them, and the people feel an insecurity.  When you find a kind planter, in whom the apprentices have confidence, there you will find beautiful gardens.  In not a few instances, where the overseer is particularly harsh and cruel, the negroes have thrown up their old grounds, and taken new ones on other plantations, where the overseer is better liked, or gone into the depths of the mountain forests, where no human foot has been before them, and there cleared up small plats.  This was also done to some extent during slavery.  Many of the people, against whom the planters are declaiming as lazy and worthless, have rich grounds of which those planters little dream.

8.  There is no feeling of insecurity, either of life or property.  One may travel through the whole island without the least fear of violence.  If there is any danger, it is from the emigrants, who have been guilty of several outrages.  So far from the planters fearing violence from the apprentices, when an assault or theft is committed, they refer it, almost as a matter of course, to some one else.  A few weeks ago one of the island mails was robbed.  As soon as it became known, it was at once said, “Some of those villanous emigrants did it,” and so indeed it proved.

People in the country, in the midst of the mountains, where the whites are few and isolated, sleep with their doors and windows open, without a thought of being molested.  In the towns there are no watchmen, and but a small police, and yet the streets are quiet and property safe.