h colony; and in effecting this happy change, not one drop
of blood has been spilt, nor any property destroyed, except two sheds,
called _trash houses_, which were set on fire by some unknown hand.

In Antigua and Bermuda, emancipation was unqualified; that is, the
slaves at once received the stimulus of wages. In those Islands, there
has not been the slightest difficulty. In the other colonies, the slaves
were made apprentices, and obliged to work five years more, before they
received their freedom, and magistrates decided what proportion of
time should be employed for their own benefit. The planters had been
so violent in opposition to abolition, and had prophesied such terrible
disasters resulting from it, that they felt some anxiety to have their
prophecies fulfilled. The abolition act, by some oversight, did not
stipulate that while the apprentices worked without wages, they should
have all the privileges to which they had been accustomed as slaves. It
had been a universal practice for one slave to cook for all the rest,
so that their food was ready the moment they left the field; and aged
female slaves tended the little children, while their mothers were at
work. The planters changed this. Every slave was obliged to go to his
cabin, whether distant or near, and cook his own dinner; and the time
thus lost must be made up to the masters from the hours set apart for
the benefit of the apprentices. The aged slaves were likewise sent into
the field to work, while mothers were obliged to toil with infants
strapped at their backs.

Under these circumstances, the apprentices very naturally refused to
work. They said, "We are worse off than when we were slaves; for they
have taken away privileges to which we were accustomed in bondage,
without paying us the wages of freemen." Still under all these
provocations, they offered merely _passive_ resistance. The worst
enemies of the cause have not been able to discover that a single life
has been lost in the West Indies, or a single plantation destroyed in
consequence of emancipation! It is a lamentable proof of the corrupt
state of the American press, on the subject of slavery, that the
irritating conduct of the West Indian planters has been passed over
in total silence, while every effort has been made to represent the
_passive_ resistance of the apprentices as some great "raw-head and
bloody-bones story."

While the good work was in progress in England, it was for a long ti