How the coloured people bore all these accumulated indignities, which were heaped upon them for so many years, would astonish any sensitive mind; nor if they had joined the negroes in one common cause against their tyrants would it have produced much surprise. But they did bear it, and with magnanimity, until time and circumstance worked the cure, and delivered them from that thraldom of the mind more galling than any servitude of the body. It was not only the soreness of spirit which this state of affairs inflicted upon the coloured man, but as Prejudice was the offspring of Slavery, it was consequently the ground-work of that horrible system of licentiousness which rendered Antigua among the other West India Islands famous, or rather _infamous_, for so many years. The coloured women participated in the _prejudice_ of their masters, and as they became the mothers of female children, they reared them up in the same spirit, and inculcated into their minds that it was more honourable and praiseworthy to inhabit the harem of a white man, than to be the lawful wife of a man of colour. This conduct was, of course, the grave of all domestic peace, the destroyer of connubial love; and by its dire, its _demoniacal_ influences, caused the fairest island in the world to become, in a moral point of view, a dreary marsh, exhaling the poisonous miasma. Brighter days have, however, at length dawned; the unhallowed custom of concubinage has greatly decreased; and, indeed, except among some of the old white planters or merchants, who have retained the sins of their youth, and some of the low coloured people, such alliances are generally reprobated. The assertion, however, that prejudice is entirely done away with, is incorrect. It still exists, and that, perhaps, very strongly; but policy forbids, in great measure, its outward show. It is true, that white and coloured gentlemen walk, and talk, and dine together—drink sangaree at one another’s houses, sit in the same juror’s box, and are invited, _sans distinction_, at “Government House;” yet, at the same time, there is a lurking dislike to them on account of colour, which ever steps in as a barrier to social intercourse. It is said, that the white ladies are the strongest upholders of prejudice; but that their refusal to mix with this class of persons is not occasioned from any shade of colour, but on account of their general illegitimacy. This, however, is not the sole cause; for there are illegitimate white people, whom they are in the constant habit of meeting without any aversion; while, at the same time, many of the people of colour, particularly the younger ones, are the offspring of parents who have been legally united within the sacred walls of the temple of God, and whose intellectual attainments fit them for any society.