We heard it said repeatedly that the apprentices were not willing to have their free children educated—­that they had pertinaciously declined every offer of the bushas to educate their children, and this, it was alleged, evinced a determination on the part of the negroes to perpetuate ignorance and barbarism among their posterity.  We heard from no less than four persons of distinction in St. Thomas in the East, the following curious fact.  It was stated each time for the double purpose of proving that the apprentices did not wish to have their children learn to work, and that they were opposed to their receiving education.  A company of the first-gentlemen of that parish, consisting of the rector of the parish, the custos, the special magistrate, an attorney, and member of the assembly, etc., had mustered in imposing array, and proceeded to one of the large estates in the Plantain Garden River Valley, and there having called the apprentices together, made the following proposals to them respecting their free children, the rector acting as spokesman.  The attorney would provide a teacher for the estate, and would give the children four hours’ instruction daily, if the parents would bind them to work four hours every day; the attorney further offered to pay for all medical attendance the children should require.  The apprentices, after due deliberation among themselves, unanimously declined this proposition.  It was repeatedly urged upon them, and the advantages it promised were held up to them; but they persisted in declining it wholly.  This was a great marvel to the planters; and they could not account for it in any other way than by supposing that the apprentices were opposed both to labor and education, and were determined that their free children should grow up in ignorance and indolence!  Now the true reason why the apprentices rejected this proposal was, because it came from the planters, in whom they have no confidence.  They suspected that some evil scheme was hid under the fair pretence of benevolence; the design of the planters, as they firmly believed, was to get their free children bound to them, so that they might continue to keep them in a species of apprenticeship.  This was stated to us, as the real ground of the rejection, by several missionaries, who gave the best evidence that it was so; viz. that at the same time that the apprentices declined the offer, they would send their free children six or eight miles to a school taught by a missionary.  We inquired particularly of some of the apprentices, to whom this offer was made, why they did not accept it.  They said that they could not trust their masters; the whole design of it was to get them to give up their children, and if they should give them up but for a single month, it would be the same as acknowledging that they (the parents) were not able to take care of them themselves.  The busha would then send word to the Governor that