did
not wish to be annoyed with stipendiary magistrates."

Said Hon. N. Nugent--"We wished to let ourselves down in the easiest
manner possible; _therefore_ we chose immediate freedom in preference to
the apprenticeship."

"Emancipation was preferred to apprenticeship, because of the inevitable
and endless perplexities connected with the latter system."--_David
Cranstoun, Esq., colonial magistrate and planter_.

"It is not pretended that emancipation was produced by the influence of
religious considerations. It was a measure of mere convenience and
interest."--_A Moravian Missionary_.

The following testimony is extracted from a letter addressed to us by a
highly respectable merchant of St. John's--a gentleman of long
experience on the island, and now agent for several estates.
"Emancipation was an act of mere policy, adopted as _the safest and most
economic_ measure."

Our last item of testimony under this head is from a written statement
by the Hon. N. Nugent, speaker of the assembly, at the time of
emancipation. His remarks on this subject, although long, we are sure
will be read with interest. Alluding to the adoption of immediate
emancipation in preference to the apprenticeship, he observes:--

"The reasons and considerations which led to this step were various, of
course impressing the minds of different individuals in different
degrees. As slave emancipation could not be averted, and must inevitably
take place very shortly, it was better to meet the crisis at once, than
to have it hanging over our heads for six years, with all its harassing
doubts and anxieties; better to give an air of grace to that which would
be ultimately unavoidable; the slaves should rather have a motive of
gratitude and kind reciprocation, than to feel, on being declared free,
that their emancipation could neither be withheld nor retarded by their
owners. The projected apprenticeship, while it destroyed the means of an
instant coercion in a state of involuntary labor, equally withdrew or
neutralized all those urgent motives which constrain to industrious
exertion in the case of freemen. It abstracted from the master, in a
state of things then barely remunerative, one fourth of the time and
labor required in cultivation, and gave it to the servant, while it
compelled the master to supply the same allowances as before. With many
irksome restraints, conditions, and responsibilities imposed on the
master, it had no equivalent advantage