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they must shed no blood, for life was sweet, easy to be taken away, but very hard to give.' This deposition requires no comment. Though evidently given with malignant design, the statement does honour alike to Mr. Burchell's prudence and his humanity; for it is evident, from even this garbled hearsay report, that the letter he wrote, was intended to restrain the insurgents from bloodshed. At the same time, his absence from the country must protect him from the charge of having misled or excited the negroes. Of Mr. Burchell, we happen to have some personal knowledge, and can answer for his purity of motive and his discretion.

No other white person is mentioned in the official documents; but a paragraph has appeared in the Jamaica Courant, stating, that three of the Baptist Missionaries residing in the disturbed district, have been apprehended as instigators of insurrection and revolt; namely, Messrs. Knibb, Whitehorne, and Abbott. Mr. Knibb is a highly respectable Baptist Missionary stationed at Falmouth; and he may have fallen into the hands of the Hon. J. M'Donald, Custos of Trelawny. A very short letter has been received from him in this country, dated the 27th of December, in which he apologises for brevity, by stating, that he was wearied in trying to quell an insurrection in the parish.' As, however, the apprehension of Mr. Knibb and his brethren stands in need of confirmation, we shall not waste any words in the attempt to shew the utter incredibility of their being chargeable with encouraging insubordination and revolt; but shall simply transcribe a sentence from the letter of Mr. Dyer, the Secretary to the Baptist Missionary Society, addressed to the Editor of the Patriot, in reference to the paragraph from the Jamaica Courant, which has been going the round of the London newspapers. I have 'yet to learn what possible motive can be supposed to influence 'men all at once to falsify the whole current of their lives, and gratuitously to consign themselves to ruin and disgrace; for I presume that no one imagines that the Society by which they are supported, would for a moment allow political incendiaries to ' retain connexion with it.'

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That there are men in Jamaica, however, who would not grudge the cost of a manageable insurrection to get up a case against the Missionaries, and to have a pretext for bringing them under the operation of martial law,-that same martial law under which Mr. Smith of Demerara was condemned to death by his legislative murderers,―will not appear absolutely incredible to those who are acquainted with the provisions of the Act which passed the Jamaica House of Assembly as recently as 1826, and was prevented from becoming law, only by being disallowed by the Crown. Upon this subject, the last Number of the Anti-Slavery Reporter contains some instructive information. After an able

analysis of the New Slave Code,-the latest specimen of Jamaica justice, humanity, and civilization, the Writer continues.

'Before we close this article, there is one circumstance to which we think it incumbent upon us again to call the special attention of our readers. We have already informed them, that, from the present Act, that of 1831, the persecuting clauses against the Methodists and other Sectaries, and against slaves instructing their fellows, or contributing their money for religious objects, have been excluded. These clauses had stood in the former disallowed Act of 1826, and in the other disallowed Acts which succeeded it. In that of 1826, those clauses are numbered 85, 86, and 87; and they are singularly placed between two clauses, 84 and 89, one of which condemned to death the professors, and the other the practisers of the Obeah superstition. Exactly between these two clauses, the Jamaica legislature had contrived to thrust the three persecuting clauses which they so fondly cherished, and to which they have so tenaciously clung. The first of them (§. 85) denounces the practice of slaves attempting to teach or instruct other slaves, as of" pernicious consequence," and as even producing risk to life; and punishes the offence by whipping and imprisonment to hard labour in the workhouse. The second (§. 86) denounces all religious meetings of dissenters as dangerous to the public peace, and injurious to the health of the slaves, if held after dusk; and imposes on all teachers holding any such meetings between sunset and sunrise, a fine of from 201. to 50l. The third (§. 85) makes it highly penal for any dissenting minister or teacher to receive any money from slaves, in the way of contribution for religious or other purposes; it being alleged, in the preamble to the clause, " that large sums of money and other chattels had been extorted by designing men, professing to be teachers of religion, practising on the ignorance and superstition of the negroes, to their great loss and impoverishment."

It seems, therefore, fair to inquire, what could have induced the legislators of Jamaica, even if they saw it right to frame and pass such iniquitous clauses as these at all, to choose deliberately to place them in the midst of the criminal part of the code, bristling as it does with all sorts of enormities, and especially to connect them by more immediate juxtaposition, and interfusion, with the capital crimes of the profession and the practice of OBEAH? It may have been, and probably was, their intention to intimate thereby their own opinion, that the Methodist and other dissenting missionaries had found only their proper place, in the scale of moral turpitude, among murderers and felons, and would deservedly also share (had they so dared to enact) the murderer's and felon's doom of death or transportation. Or they might have wished to intimate that the pernicious lessons these missionaries conveyed to the slaves, the Christianity professed and taught by these sectaries-were on a level with the dark superstitions of the Obeah and Myal men and women. Satanic as such a purpose would be, yet, how, by any possibility, without some such intent, could the particular position for the insertion of these persecuting clauses have been so very curiously and aptly selected, by the Jamaica lawgivers of 1826, as inevitably to produce the impression in question? We would not willingly

impute to them so flagitious a design; and yet, let any man cast his eye at the Act of 1826, and calmly consider the order in which the clauses from 84 to 90 follow each other, and then say whether it be possible to escape from the inference we have ventured to draw from it. And are these men to be still intrusted with the work of legislation? The guilt, however, is not theirs alone, but ours also, if we go on to tolerate such abominations;—if, among all our other sins, we continue obstinately to cling to such a system of crime, as has now been laid bare to the eye of the national conscience. When we recollect also the fabricated, and suborned, and garbled testimony by which the House of Assembly of that day, endeavoured to support their nefarious project of crushing or expelling Christian missionaries from the island of Jamaica, (see vol. iii. No. 50, p. 24, and No. 55, p. 162,) what can we conclude, but that the whole of the allegations contained in the preamble to the persecuting clauses of the Act of 1826, were deliberate falsifications of fact?'

We take from the same Number, the following extracts from a periodical Work published in Jamaica, under the title of The Christian Record.'

"It has often", say the Editors, "been a matter of surprise and deep regret to us, to observe the carelessness and criminal unconcern with which the proprietors of estates commit their slaves, body and soul, into the power of persons, as their representatives in this country, who are totally unfit for such a charge. They cannot imagine that they are not responsible for the religious instruction, as well as for the temporal well-being of their slaves; and that they will not be called on hereafter to give a strict account of the spiritual advantages which they have afforded them. With what consistency, then, can a religious proprietor, in common with all others, commit his estates to a man whom he knows to be grossly immoral, and therefore of necessity, irreligious? Every proprietor must be presumed to have some acquaintance with his attorney, and with so much of his character as the attorney takes no pains to conceal. At least, he cannot know or believe him to be a Christian man; and yet, he abandons the slave's spiritual, as well as temporal welfare wholly to his care! What does he expect will be the conduct of such a man? Does he imagine that he will teach the slaves to condemn and abhor himself? or that he will allow others the ministers of religion for instance,-to teach this to the slaves, if he can prevent it? So sinful are the lives of the majority of attorneys in this country, and so little trouble do they take to conceal their vices from public view, that the faithful minister of religion is compelled, by every obligation of duty, publicly to warn others from following their example; and when, as is the case every day, the slaves refer to the example of their managers in exculpation of themselves, it becomes his imperative duty to expose the sinfulness of these men, and, it necessarily follows, to hold them up as objects of disgust and pity-a feeling which we know is too frequently mingled with contempt. Now, will these men permit this to go on, if they can prevent it? Will they not endeavour to obstruct the acquisition of such know

ledge by the slave, and to counteract, by all means in their power, the influence and usefulness of the minister? Should any one be inclined to doubt upon this subject, we now, on our personal knowledge, declare the fact to him. We tell proprietors at home-Christian Proprietors -that their representatives do, by every means, and especially by secret and covert influence, endeavour to check the spread of true religion among their slaves, and to render nugatory the efforts of the minister to enforce the moral observance and the spiritual doctrines of the Gospel. This, we declare to be the conduct commonly pursued by the great majority of the white people on estates in Jamaica. And this their opposition arises, not only from the general hatred which an irreligious man always evinces to spiritual truth, but also from more immediate and obvious causes. Can it be supposed that an attorney, or overseer, who is living in adulterous intercourse with one of the slaves of the property on which he resides, (or with one whom he has hired or bought elsewhere, for the purpose!!) will render facilities to a clergyman to enforce the obligations of the Seventh Commandment on that property? Will he not rather "prevent the meddling hypocrite from interfering in his private concerns? "with his private property? Such is the conduct which would in general be expected from such men; and such is the course which we personally know to be frequently pursued."

"In further illustration of the feeling of the planters towards the teachers of religion, we select from the writer we have already quoted, the following sentence. They (the benevolent and pious) greatly err, if they suppose the Colonists inimical to the object they have in view, however much they may occasionally have been irritated by the conduct of Anti-Slavery Missionaries.'-Now what does Mr. Barclay mean by Anti-Slavery Missionaries? Does the Anti-Slavery Society send Missionaries to Jamaica? No. Are the Missionaries in Jamaica sent here for the purpose of secretly promoting the supposed objects of the Anti-Slavery Society? No man of sense thinks this: no man who observes their conduct impartially will credit it. Then why are they called Anti-Slavery Missionaries?' Because they have taught true Christianity; and having been persecuted by the Planters for so doing, they have very naturally appealed for protection to their friends 'at home, and the Anti-Slavery Society have taken up their complaint. This feeling of irritation and hostility is not evinced to the 6 Sectarians' alone. It is true that the clergy of the Establishment did, for a long time, escape this serious accusation; and we must add, that we fear they escaped the charge, because they sacrificed duty to conciliation. But what is the fact now, since latterly a few of them have come forward to stem the torrent of false religion? Why they too have been assailed by the very same outcry! They too have been denounced as tools of the Anti-Slavery Society !!!' In short, Evangelical, Sectarian, Anti-Slavery, and seditious, are synonymous in Jamaica."

With regard to the late insurrection, nothing is more clear from the official documents, than that religion had nothing to do with it. The slaves (or, to use a term still more reproachful

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in Jamaica, the negroes) revolted under the mistaken idea that their freedom-order had actually arrived, and that the planters had no longer a right to detain them in bondage. How they came by this notion, we cannot pretend to say. The emancipation of the Crown slaves might, if known, have strengthened the impression. The result is, a determination on their part, which is no secret, not to work after New Year's Day, without being made 'free.' This appears to have been made known on almost all 'the estates.' But no overseer, attorney, or magistrate thinks it necessary to inform the Executive Government of this general determination. No complaint or alarm reaches the Governor's ear, although he had expressly begged to be informed, should any erroneous impressions of the design of his Majesty's Government exist among the slaves. The Governor is kept in the dark; and he is advised to withhold his Majesty's proclamation, which would have removed any such erroneous impression:-we were going to say, treacherously advised; for we cannot conceive that Earl Belmore would, of his own accord and judgement, have incurred the responsibility of keeping back so important a document. the mean time, New Year's Day approaches, and not a step is taken to undeceive the negroes, or to avert the anticipated strike. But, a short time before the insurrection, the planters put forth an ambiguous declaration,' half complaint, half menace, directed, as it should seem, against the British Government, or the advisers of the Crown. Might they not imagine that a little insurrection would frighten our Government, or move its compassion towards the much injured planters? The burning of a few trashhouses would not be a great matter; and martial law would soon restore order. So contemptible does the insurrection appear, that Mr. J. M'Donald talks of suppressing it at once, if he might be allowed to put himself at the head of the militia, even without the regular force. It is known (Dec. 26), that though the negroes were determined to strike work at Christmas, they had agreed that no slaughter was to be committed, unless any of their comrades were killed. Indeed, Mr. Custos M'Donald, in the letter in which he tells the Governor, that the situation of things, not to exaggerate, cannot be worse, says, 'No blood has been shed. No bloodshed was contemplated by these poor negroes, and the planters knew it; knew it when they invoked martial law, and burned with zeal to attack the rebel armies of 20, 40, and 200 men, most of them unarmed †. They could have no

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* See Despatches, No. 7.

+ See Col. Grignon's Letter, No. 23.

About seven o'clock the rebels advanced upon us in four columns. The first body moved upon the trash-houses... this division consisted of about 40 men. One body of the enemy, who attacked by the main road, could not have

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