thirty thousand and upwards.
Not a complaint was ever heard of idleness or indolence; and, far from
any breach of the peace being induced by the sudden change in the
condition of the people, the Christmas of 1833 was the first, for the
last twenty years, that martial law was not proclaimed, in order to
preserve the public peace. Similar evidence from Jamaica and other
islands, proving the industrious and peaceable habits of the
apprentices, showed that there was nothing peculiar in the circumstances
of Antigua.

An important occurrence is now to be recorded as having exercised a
powerful influence upon the question of immediate emancipation. Joseph
Sturge, of Birmingham, a member of the Society of Friends, stricken with
a sense of the injustice perpetrated against the African race, repaired
to the West Indies, in order that he might examine, with his own eyes,
the real state of the question between the two classes. He was
accompanied by John Scoble and Thomas Harvey; and these able, excellent,
and zealous men returned in a few months with such ample evidence of the
effects produced by apprenticeship, and the fitness of the negroes for
liberty, that the attention of the community was soon awakened to the
subject, even more strenuously than it ever before had been; and the
walls of Parliament were soon made once more to ring with the sufferings
of the slave, only emancipated in name, and the injustice of withholding
from him any longer the freedom which was his indefeasible right, as
soon as he was shown capable of enjoying it beneficially for himself and
safely for the rest of the community.

In these transactions, both in Jamaica, where he is one of the largest
planters, and in Parliament, where he is one of the most respected
members, the Marquess of Sligo bore an eminent and an honourable part.
His praise has been justly sounded by all who have supported the cause
of negro freedom, and his conduct was by all admitted to be as much
marked by the disinterested virtue of a good citizen and amiable man, as
it was by the sagacity and ability of an enlightened statesman. Both as
governor of Jamaica, as the owner of slaves whom he voluntarily
liberated, and as a peer of Parliament, his patriotism, his humanity,
and his talents, shone conspicuously through this severe and glorious
struggle. While such was the conduct of those eminent philanthropists,
some difference of opinion prevailed among the other and older leaders
of