estates’ hospitals with sufficient attendants on the sick apprentices, as well as for the supply of proper food, as they cannot depend on their own grounds, whilst unable to leave the hospitals.  The first clause of the abolition law has not been found strong enough to secure these necessary attentions to the sick.  Third, in regard to jobbers, more exposed to hardships than any other class.  A law is greatly required allowing them the distance they may have to walk to their work, at the rate of three miles an hour, and for compelling the parties hiring them to supply them with salt food and meal; their grounds are oftentimes so many miles distant, it is impossible for them to supply themselves.  Hence constant complaints and irregularities.  Fourth, that mothers of six children and upwards, pregnant women, and the aged of both sexes, would be greatly benefited by a law enforcing the kind treatment which they received in slavery, but which is now considered optional, or is altogether avoided on many properties.  Fifth, nothing would tend more to effect general contentment and repress the evils of comparative treatment, than the issue of fish as a right by law.  It was an indulgence in slavery seldom denied, but on many properties is now withheld, or given for extra labor instead of wages.  Sixth, his Excellency during the last sessions had the honor to address a message to the house for a stronger definition of working time.  The clause of the act in aid expressed that it was the intention of the legislature to regulate ‘uniformity’ of labor, but in practice there is still a great diversity of system.  The legal adviser of the crown considers the clause active and binding; the special magistrate cannot, therefore, adjudicate on disputes of labor under the eight hour system, and the consequences have been continual complaints and bickerings between the magistrates and managers, and discontent among the apprentices by comparison of the advantages which one system presents over the other.  Seventh, if your honorable house would adopt some equitable fixed principle for the value of apprentices desirous of purchasing their discharge, either by ascertained rates of weekly labor, or by fixed sums according to their trade or occupation, which should not be exceeded, and allowing the deduction of one third from the extreme value for the contingencies of maintenance, clothing, medical aid, risk of life, and health, it would greatly tend to set at rest one cause of constant disappointment.  In proportion as the term of apprenticeship draws to a close, THE DEMANDS FOR THE SALE OF SERVICES HAVE GREATLY INCREASED. It is in the hope that the honorable house will be disposed to enforce a more general system of equal treatment, that his Excellency now circumstantially represents what have been the most common causes of complaint among the apprentices, and why the island is subject to the reproach that the negroes, in some respects, are now in a worse condition than they were in slavery.”

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