ad
hired some time ago to assist his family. The town negroes, he said,
were too lazy to work; they loitered and lounged about on the sidewalks
all day, jabbering with one another, and keeping up an incessant noise;
and they would not suffer a white man to order them in the least. They
were rearing their children in perfect idleness and for his part he
could not tell what would become of the rising population of blacks.
Their parents were too proud to let them work, and they sent them to
school all the time. Every afternoon, he said, the streets are thronged
with the half-naked little black devils, just broke from the schools,
and all singing some noisy tune learned in the infant schools; the
_burthen of_ their songs seems to be, "_O that will be joyful_." These
words, said he, are ringing in your ears wherever you go. How
aggravating truly such words must be, bursting cheerily from the lips of
the little free songsters! "O that will be joyful, _joyful_,
JOYFUL"--and so they ring the changes day after day, ceaseless and
untiring. A new song this, well befitting the times and the prospects,
but provoking enough to oppressors. The consul denounced he special
magistrates; they were an insolent set of fellows, they would fine a
white man as quick as they would flog a _nigger_.[A] If a master called
his apprentice "you scoundrel," or, "you huzzy," the magistrate would
either fine him for it or reprove him sharply in the presence of the
apprentice. This, in the eyes of the veteran Virginian, was intolerable.
Outrageous, not to allow a _gentleman_ to call his servant what names he
chooses! We were very much edified by the Colonel's _expose_ of Jamaica
manners. We must say, however, that his opinions had much less weight
with us after we learned (as we did from the best authority) that he had
never been a half dozen miles into the country during a ten year's
residence in Kingston.

[Footnote A: We fear there is too little truth in this representation.]

We called on the Rev. Jonathan Edmonson, the superintendent of the
Wesleyan missions in Jamaica. Mr. E. has been for many years laboring as
a missionary in the West Indies, first in Barbadoes, then in St.
Vincent's, Grenada, Trinidad, and Demerara, and lastly in Jamaica. He
stated that the planters were doing comparatively nothing to prepare the
negroes for freedom. "_Their whole object was to get as much sugar out
of them as they possibly could_."

We received a call from th