certainly thrown away, on the old woman at least. “I do not wonder at it, for they had received nothing but bad treatment from those who ought to have been kind to them, as well as from strangers for nearly forty years since the death of their natural protector, who dying suddenly left them utterly unprovided for. They were left free, but that was all. One son, however, was not left free; and that young man was sold with the rest of the movable property of the estate when it was sold in Chancery. The aged and infirm negroes were then left on the estate; but a few years ago these poor creatures who had grown old on the property and had expended the strength of their young days on its cultivation, and who imagined that they would have been allowed to have laid their bones where their friends and relatives were buried, were carried away by the creditors and actually sold for three or four dollars a head.” “Who,” Madden asks, “in the face of such circumstances as these will tell me that slavery in these colonies was productive of no oppression in recent times, or was the occasion of no injustices?” He dilates on the undoubted fact that many a West Indian proprietor could not be got to look upon Jamaica as his home. He wanted to get as much money as he could out of the estate, and then to retire to his native land. So all improvements were grudged, “The Great House fell into decay, the roads were left without any adequate repair, the plantation was cultivated for its present advantages and without regard for its prospective ones; and the system of labour exacted from the negroes was productive of circumstances, which the proprietor considered in combination with the other discomforts of his situation, were unsuitable to the condition of a woman of refinement accustomed to the enjoyments of English society.” He speaks very highly of the coloured mistresses; although he deplores such connections, and says: “They cannot be defended, but I think the victims of the state of things which led to them are more deserving of pity than of reproach. I do not remember to have heard of the fidelity of anyone of these persons being called into question. In the periods of their prosperity they know their situation, and demean themselves accordingly. In their adversity, when death or pecuniary embarrassments deprive them of the protection they may have had for many years, their industry and frugality deserve the highest praise.” The 1st of August 1834, the day when the slaves passed from slavery to a position of apprenticeship, was looked forward to in Jamaica with dread on the part of the whites, and, says Madden, with extravagant hopes by the blacks. But it passed. The servile race made one little step upward, and not a single riot occurred in the island, “not a single man, woman or child was butchered to make a negro holiday.” As a matter of fact, the negroes went to church.