it was not till
after the 1st of August, 1838, that Jamaica had either savings banks or
savings. These institutions for the industrious classes came only with
their manhood. But why came they at all, if Emancipated industry is, or
is likely to be, unsuccessful?--In Barbados we notice the same
forwardness in founding monied institutions. A Bank is there proposed,
with a capital of L200,000. More than this, the all absorbing subject in
all the West India papers at the present moment is that of the
_currency_. Why such anxiety to provide the means of paying for labor
which is to become valueless? Why such keenness for a good circulating
medium if they are to have nothing to sell? The complaints about the old
fashioned coinage we venture to assort have since the first of August
occupied five times as much space in the colonial papers, we might
probably say in each and every one of them, as those of the non-working
of the freemen. The inference is irresistible. _The white colonists take
it for granted that industry is to thrive_.

It may be proper to remark that the late refusal of the Jamaica
legislature to fulfil its appropriate functions has no connection with
the working of freedom, any further than it may have been a struggle to
get rid in some measure of the surveillance of the mother country in
order to coerce the labourer so far as possible by vagrant laws, &c. The
immediate pretext was the passing of a law by the imperial Parliament
for the regulation of prisons, which the House of Assembly declared a
violation of that principle of their charter which forbids the
mother-country to lay a tax on them without their consent, in as much as
it authorized a crown officer to impose a fine, in a certain case, of
L20. A large majority considered this an infringement of their
prerogatives, and among them were some members who have nobly stood up
for the slave in times of danger. The remarks of Mr. Osborn especially,
on this subject, (he is the full blooded, slave-born, African man to
whom we have already referred) are worthy of consideration in several
points of view. Although he had always been a staunch advocate of the
home government on the floor of the Assembly are now contended for the
rights of the Jamaica legislature with arguments which to us republicans
are certainly quite forcible. In a speech of some length, which appears
very creditable to him throughout, he said--

"Government could not be acting fair towards the