trainedly to
ascertain the news; and a visitor may not unfrequently see sitting
together at a table of newspapers, or conversing together in the
parlance of trade, persons as dissimilar in complexion as white and
black can make them. In the streets the same intercourse is seen.

The general trade of the island is gradually and quietly passing into
the hands of the colored people. Before emancipation, they seldom
reached a higher grade in mercantile life than a clerkship, or, if they
commenced business for themselves, they were shackled and confined in
their operations by the overgrown and monopolizing establishments which
slavery had built up. Though the civil and political rights of one class
of them were acknowledged three years previous, yet they found they
could not, even if they desired it, disconnect themselves from the
slaves. They could not transact business--form credits and agencies, and
receive the confidence of the commercial public--like free men. Strange
or not, their fate was inseparably linked with that of the bondman,
their interests were considered as involved with his. However honest
they might be, it was not safe to trust them; and any attempt to rise
above a clerkship, to become the employer instead of the employed, was
regarded as a kind of insurrection, and strongly disapproved and
opposed. Since emancipation, they have been unshackling them selves from
white domination in matters of trade; extending their connections, and
becoming every day more and more independent. They have formed credits
with commercial houses abroad, and now import directly for themselves,
at wholesale prices, what they were formerly obliged to receive from
white importers, or rather speculators, at such prices as they, in their
tender mercies, saw fit to impose.

Trade is now equalizing itself among all classes. A spirit of
competition is awakened, banks have been established, steam navigation
introduced, railroads projected, old highways repaired, and new ones
opened. The descendants of the slaves are rapidly supplying the places
which were formerly filled by whites from abroad.

We had the pleasure of being present one day at the sitting of the
police court of Kingston. Mr. Jordon, the editor of the Watchman, in his
turn as a member of the common council, was presiding justice, with an
alderman of the city, a black man, as his associate. At a table below
them sat the superintendent of police, a white man, and two white