Governor Prevost refers Earl Camden to a letter from the Rev. John Audain, Rector of St. George’s, as explaining “why the clauses 3 and 4 _are not carried into effect_.” Mr. Audain’s letter, however, throws little light on the subject. He can furnish no returns of marriages, because (he says) “a very few even of the free coloured people marry, and _not one Slave_ since I have been here. Why they do not, I readily conceive, particularly the Slaves. Their owners _do not exhort them to it_, and they shew no dispositions themselves to alter that mode of cohabitation which they have been accustomed to.” P. 40. It appears then, that the 3rd and 4th clauses of this boasted act are as nugatory as the 7th: “they are not,” says Governor PREVOST, “carried into effect[15].” And yet if the reader will turn back to page 20, he will find that these clauses are introduced by a preamble of peculiar solemnity. They are enacted with the professed view of “_improving the morals and advancing the temporal and eternal happiness of the Slaves_.” What is this but impious mockery? Have they been executed? No. Has a single penalty been enforced for their non-execution? No. Surely, after this discovery, it is impossible that such mere mummery of legislation should continue to impose on the good sense of the people of Great Britain. They will see that the difference between Barbadoes, and the other islands, is in fact merely nominal: and that the same lamentable deficiency of legal protection, the same system of unqualified oppression, characterizes Negro bondage throughout the whole extent of our West Indian possessions. Before the pamphlet closes, it will be proper to devote a few pages to the consideration of a long Report of the Assembly of Jamaica which forms a part of these papers. The picture given in that Report of the situation of the West Indian islands is in the highest degree discouraging; but it is represented by the reporters as less gloomy than the truth. “A faithful detail,” it is said, p. 26, “would have the appearance of a frightful caricature; and unless speedy and efficacious measures are adopted for giving permanent relief, by a radical change of measures, we must suppose that the West Indian islands are doomed to perish as useless appendages to the British empire.” Credit is represented to be at an end; the planters, generally, to be labouring under the pressure of accumulating debt; and the greatest distress to pervade all classes of the community. Admitting the fidelity of this representation, a question will still arise respecting the causes which have produced so unfavourable a state of things. The Report affirms, that it has chiefly been produced by the enormous duties imposed on West Indian produce; by the competition of East Indian sugars; and by the attempts made to abolish the Slave trade.