Mr. HYSLOP explained—­He admitted the charge, but said that the sum was never intended to be exacted.

Sir LIONEL said he was aware of what was going on; he had heard of it.  “It was a policy which ought no longer to be pursued.”

We have given the foregoing documents, full and ungarbled, that our readers might fairly judge for themselves.  We have not picked here a sentence and there a sentence, but let the Governor, the Assembly, the Missionaries, and the press tell their whole story.  Let them be read, compared, and weighed.

We might indefinitely prolong our extracts from the West India papers to show, not only in regard to the important island of Jamaica, but Barbados and several other colonies, that the former masters are alone guilty of the non-working of the emancipated, so far as they refuse to work.  But we think we have already produced proof enough to establish the following points:—­

1.  That there was a strong predisposition on the part of the Jamaica planters to defraud their labourers of their wages.  They hoped that by yielding, before they were driven quite to the last extremity, by the tide of public sentiment in England, they should escape from all philanthropic interference and surveillance, and be able to bring the faces of their unyoked peasantry to the grindstone of inadequate wages.

2.  That the emancipated were not only peaceful in their new freedom, but ready to grant an amnesty of all post abuses, and enter cheerfully into the employ of their former masters for reasonable wages.  That in cases where disagreement has arisen as to the rate of daily or weekly wages, the labourers have been ready to engage in task work, to be paid by the piece, and have laboured so efficiently and profitably—­proving a strong disposition for industry and the acquisition of property.

3.  That in the face of this good disposition of the laborers, the planters have, in many cases, refused to give adequate wages.

4.  That in still more numerous cases, including many in which the wages have been apparently liberal, enormous extortion has been practiced upon the laborer, in the form of rent demanded for his hovel and provision patch—­L20 per annum being demanded for a shanty not worth half that money, and rent being frequently demanded from every member of a family more than should have been taken from the whole.

5.  That the negroes are able to look out for their own interest, and have very distinct ideas of their own about the value of money and the worth of their labour, as well as the best methods of bringing their employers to reasonable terms.  On this point we might have made a still stronger case by quoting from the Despatch and Standard, which assert numerous instances in which the labourers have refused to work for wages recommended to them by the Governor, Special Magistrates, or Missionaries, though they offered to work for 3s. 4d., 5s., or a dollar a day.  They are shown to be rare bargain-makers and not easily trapped.