children while their mothers were at work in the field; but because the Abolition Act did not expressly provide that these privileges should be continued, the masters saw fit to take them away. Each apprentice was obliged to quit his or her work, and go, sometimes a great distance, to the cabin to cook his meals, instead of having it served up in the field; and the time taken up in this operation was to be made up out of the apprentices’ own time. No water was allowed to be brought to quench their thirst; the aged and infirm, instead of being left, as formerly, to superintend the children under the shade, were ordered out into the burning fields; and mothers were obliged to toil at the hoe with their infants strapped at their backs. In addition to all these annoyances, the planters obtained a new proclamation from the governor, by which they were authorized to require extra labor of the apprentices in times of emergency, or _whenever they should deem it necessary_, in the cultivation, gathering, or manufacture of the crop, provided they repaid them an equal time at _a convenient season of the year_. This was very much like taking from a New England laborer the month of July, and paying it back to him in January. The negroes had behaved extremely well when emancipation was first proclaimed, and universally showed a disposition to be orderly, submissive, and thankful; but this system of privation and injustice soon created discontent. They knew that they were to receive no wages, however industrious they might be; and they were well aware that their masters no longer had a right to flog them. A bad stimulus to labor had been removed, without supplying a good one in its place. In three of the colonies, the apprentices refused to work on the terms required by their masters. In Jamaica, a very small military force was sent into one parish, and only on one occasion; but no violence was offered on either side; for the apprentices confined themselves to _passive resistance_—merely refusing to work on the required terms. In St. Christophers, difficulties of a similar kind occurred; but no outrage of any kind was committed. In one fortnight all the trouble was at an end; and out of twenty thousand apprentices, only thirty were found to be absent from their work; and some of these were supposed to be dead in the woods. In Demarara, the principal difficulty occurred. The laborers assembled together, and marched round with a flag staff; but the _worst_ thing they did was to beat a constable with their fists. _It is a solemn fact that a few fisty cuffs with a constable are the only violence to persons or property, that has been attempted by the eight hundred thousand slaves emancipated in the British Colonies!_