for the good of my country.  If you have served the people with notices to quit, with a view to compel them to work, or thinking to force them to work for a certain rate of wages, you have done wrong.  Coercive measures will never succeed.  In Vere, which I lately visited, the planters have agreed to give the people 1s. 8d. per day, and to let them have their houses and grounds for three months free of charge.  His Excellency, on seeing some symptoms of disapprobation manifested, said, Well, if you cannot afford to pay so much, pay what you can afford; but above all, use conciliatory measures, and I have not a doubt on my mind but that the people will go to their work.  Seeing so many planters present, he should be happy if they would come to an arrangement among themselves, before he addressed the people outside.

Mr. WELLWOOD HYSLOP remarked, that Vere and other rich sugar parishes might be able to pay high rates of wages, because the land yielded profitable crops, but in this district it was impossible to follow the example of those parishes.  He thought that two bits a day might do very well, but that was as much as could be afforded.

His EXCELLENCY said that in Manchester, where he believed he had more enemies than in any other parish, he had advised them to work by the piece, and it had been found to answer well.

Mr. HINTON EAST said that he would submit a measure which he thought would be approved of.  He proposed that the people should be paid 5s. for four days’ labor; that if they cleaned more than 130 trees per day, either themselves or by bringing out their wives and children, they should be paid extra wages in the same proportion.

Mr. ANDREW SIMPSON said that he could not afford to pay the rates named by his Excellency.  It was entirely out of the question; that a good deal depended upon the state the fields are in—­that his people, for instance, could, with much ease, if they chose, clean 170 trees by half-past three o’clock.

Mr. MASON, of St. George’s, said he was willing to pay his people 1s. 8d. per day, if they would but work; but the fact was that they refused to do so, on account of the stories that had been told them by Special Justice Fishbourne; willingly too would I have given them their houses and grounds for three months, free of charge, had they shown a desire to labor; but what was the lamentable fact? the people would not work, because Mr. Fishbourne had influenced them not to do so, and he (Mr. Mason) had been a loser of one thousand pounds in consequence.  He had been compelled in self-defence to issue summonses against two of his people.  He had purchased his property—­it was his all—­he had sacrificed twenty of the best years of his life as a planter, he had a wife and family to support, and what was the prospect before him and them?  He admitted having served notices on his people to quit their houses—­in truth he did not now care whether they were or were not located