inued to denounce "the wild and guilty phantasy" that man
has property in man.

In Jamaica the colonial legislature, pressed hard by the Government at
home, passed an Act with the avowed purpose of mitigating the severity
of the punishments inflicted on slave laborers. The Act, however, was,
even on the face of it, absurdly inadequate for any humane purpose.
The home Government had demanded, among other reforms, the entire
discontinuance of the flogging of women. The colonial Act allowed the
flogging of women to go on just as it had done before. The Jamaica
planters were indignant at the course taken by the home authorities,
and raved as if they were on the verge of rebellion against the Crown,
and the well-meant interference of the Government at home seemed in
fact to have done more harm than good. In Demerara, which was the
Crown colony, some of the more intelligent among the negro slaves had
heard scraps of talk which led them to believe that the King of England
and his Government were about to confer freedom upon the colored race,
and these reports spread and magnified throughout certain plantations,
and the slaves on one estate refused to work. Their refusal was
regarded as an insurrection and was treated accordingly. The most
savage measures were employed to crush the so-called insurrection, just
as in more recent, and what ought to have been more enlightened, days
some local disturbances in Jamaica were magnified into a general rising
of the blacks against the whites, and the horrors perpetrated in the
name of repression startled the whole civilized world. In Demerara an
English dissenting missionary, the Rev. John Smith, who had been known
as a most kindly friend of the negroes, was formally charged with
having encouraged and assisted the slaves to rise in revolt against
their masters. He was flung into prison, was treated with barbarous
{194} rigors such as might have seemed in keeping with some story of
Siberia; he was put through the hurried process of a sham trial in
which the very forms of law were disregarded, and he was sentenced to
death. Even at Demerara and at such a time the court-martial which had
condemned the missionary as guilty of the offence with which he was
charged had accompanied its verdict with a recommendation to mercy on
account of the prisoner's previous good character. But before it could
be decided whether or not the recommendation was to have any effect,
the unfortunate man