a remuneration for their labour, and this has laid the foundation for a course of systematic oppression scarcely conceivable.  Notices to quit were served indiscriminately on every one, old and young, sick and healthy.  Medical attendance was refused, and even a dose of physic from the Estates’ hospitals.  Cattle were turned into the provision-grounds of the negroes, thus destroying their only means of support; and assaults of the most wanton and brutal description were committed on many of the peasantry.  On one estate the proprietor and his brother assaulted a young man in the most unprovoked manner.  One presented a pistol to his breast, and threatened to shoot him; while the other levelled a gun at his head for the same purpose.  They were bound over to take their trial at the Quarter Sessions; but what hope is there in such a tribunal as that, composed principally of men engaged in the same reckless course, and banded together by mutual interests?  On another estate (Content), the attorney ordered the cattle of a poor man (a member of my Chapel) to be taken up and impounded.  It was done, and the man was obliged to pay 6l. to redeem them; when, as soon as he carried them back, they were again taken and impounded.  The man has been to my house with his case of oppression, on my return from Kingston.  He states that he exhausted his last farthing to redeem the cattle the first time, and was also obliged to borrow of his friends; they have now been impounded five weeks, and unless he can raise the money to redeem them (upwards of 10l.), they will be sold to pay the expenses.  Thus is an honest and worthy man, in a few weeks, stripped of every thing which, by years of industry and care, he had accumulated for the comfort of his old age, or the benefit of his family.  Yesterday a negro came and informed me that the owner of a property had told him last year, that he must cultivate more ground, so as to be able to continue possession as a tenant; and now that he has done so, another person, saying that he had purchased the property, came a few days ago, and told him that in three weeks he would drive him from the place.  He then ordered a man whom he had with him to climb a bread-fruit tree, and pull the fruit, which he forcibly carried away to give to his hogs.  But I must forbear:  were I to state half the cases of oppression which have occurred in Hanover since August 1st; I should require a volume instead of a sheet.  I think, however, I have said enough to prove the bitter and rancorous spirit which at present animates the planters.  Enclosed I send a specimen of another artifice adopted to harass and distress the negroes.  They have adopted the notion (sanctioned by the opinion of the old Planters’ Jackall, Batty, and the Attorney General), that the people are liable to pay rent for houses and grounds during the three months’ possession to which the Abolition Act entitled them, and notices have been served on the people, demanding the most extravagant amounts for the miserable sheds