perplexity, the ignominy and the expensiveness of slavery, while it
denies him its power. Such is the apprenticeship system. A splendid
imposition!--which cheats the planter of his gains, cheats the British
nation of its money, and robs the world of what else might have been a
glorious example of immediate and entire emancipation.

THE APPRENTICESHIP IS NO PREPARATION FOR FREEDOM.--Indeed, as far as it
can be, it is an actual _disqualification_. The testimony on this
subject is ample. We rarely met a planter, who was disposed to maintain
that the apprenticeship was preparing the negroes for freedom. They
generally admitted that the people were no better prepared for freedom
now, than they were in 1834; and some of them did not hesitate to say
that the sole use to which they and their brother planters turned the
system, was to get _as much work out of the apprentices while it lasted,
as possible_. Clergymen and missionaries, declared that the
apprenticeship was no preparation for freedom. If it were a preparation
at all, it would most probably be so in a religious and educational
point of view. We should expect to find the masters, if laboring at all
to prepare their apprentices for freedom, doing so chiefly by
encouraging missionaries and teachers to come to their estates, and by
aiding in the erection of chapels and school-houses. But the
missionaries declare that they meet with little more direct
encouragement now, than they did during slavery.

The special magistrates also testify that the apprenticeship is no
preparation for freedom. On this subject they are very explicit.

The colored people bear the same testimony. Not a few, too, affirm, that
the tendency of the apprenticeship is to unfit the negroes for freedom,
and avow it as their firm persuasion, that the people will be less
prepared for liberty at the end of the apprenticeship, than they were at
its commencement. And it is not without reason that they thus speak.
They say, first, that the bickerings and disputes to which the system
gives rise between the master and the apprentice, and the arraigning of
each other before the special magistrate, are directly calculated to
alienate the parties. The effect of these contentions, kept up for six
years, will be to implant _deep mutual hostility_; and the parties will
be a hundred fold more irreconcilable than they were on the abolition of
slavery. Again, they argue that the apprenticeship system is calculated
to