140

INCREASE OF RELIGION.

on the Sabbath. Whilst many have lately become savingly converted to God, have put on Christ by an open profession of his name, have formed reputable connexions in marriage, are ornaments to society, blessings to all around them, are confided in, esteemed, and beloved by the peasantry, and will unfailingly secure the prosperity of the properties of which they are either the proprietors or managers."

*

The extent to which the change with respect to religion has taken place in the towns can scarcely be conceived even by those who are most sanguine as to the progress of favourable events. The Sabbath-day is now recognised as the day of God. Hundreds of

* An overseer, or, as he is more properly called in some other islands, manager, is the principal person on an estate under the proprietor or his attorney. A book-keeper is subordinate to the overseer, and superintends the labours of the field, and the manufacture of its produce. The latter appellation is most inappropriate—a Jamaica book-keeper having no books to keep.

One of the greatest blessings that could be conferred on white servants on estates would be a library of good and useful books. There have been instances known in which two or three infidel publications have been all that some poor book-keepers and others have seen for years, and which, in a few leisure moments after the toils of the day, or in times of recovery from sickness, they have been almost compelled to read to beguile the tediousness of their solitary and oftentimes melancholy hours. After all, our white countrymen on estates and properties in the interior of the country have been, and are still, in a situation very far from enviable; and it is high time that something should be done for their improvement and comfort.

In some large manufactories, &c., in England, proprietors feel it to their interest to promote the morals of their dependants, and for this purpose connect libraries with their establishments, and in every other way endeavour to promote their social and domestic comfort. Surely West Indian proprietors are to be found who only need to be reminded of the mutual advantages to be derived from similar means in order to their speedy adoption.

INCREASE OF RELIGION.

141

the most respectable families are seen attending different places of religious worship who a short time since were scarcely ever within the walls of such an edifice. The Bible is no longer a proscribed or unknown book, nor are children brought up either to ridicule its hallowed doctrines or to despise its salutary restraints.

Bible societies, school societies, anti-slavery societies, and various institutions of a similar kind, have at length excited the sympathies and co-operation of the respectable female portion of the community; and gentlemen of the first standing in society are no longer ashamed to advocate the claims of such institutions by presiding at their anniversaries and contributing liberally and openly to their funds. The opinion that religion consisted only in an occasional attendance at the parish church is no longer general. It begins to be regarded as a daily and personal concern, and has become the subject of conversation in families where a little time ago its introduction would have excited ridicule or contempt.

Books of all descriptions, many of them the Tract Society's publications, have found their way into private libraries, are found on drawing-room tables,— and are extensively read. Above all, a family altar is erected in the houses of many leading men in the community, at which they themselves preside,—a practice which even ten years since would have subjected them in the public newspapers to contempt and scorn, and which, with the exception of a few isolated instances among laymen, was then totally unknown. The elevating and purifying influences of religion are

142

ENCOURAGING PROSPECTS.

extending themselves among our countrymen and their descendants, encouraging the hope that irreligion and profligacy, persecution and bigotry, the unfailing concomitants of slavery, will disappear with the system which nurtured them to such an awful maturity and

power.

PEOPLE OF COLOUR.

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CHAPTER X.

PEOPLE OF COLOUR AND FREE BLACKS.

Former Condition-Causes of difference of Complexion and Circumstances-Political State-Proscription from Society of White Inhabitants-Low State of Morals-Removal of Disabilities-Rapid Advancement in Civilization and the Social Scale-Present Condition.

WITH the exception of the Maroons, or "Hog-hunters," as the term imports, descendants of the slaves whom the Spaniards left behind them on the conquest of the island by the British, the inhabitants were divided into only two distinctive classes, white and black; the external peculiarities of which determined the condition of the parties as it respected slavery or freedom. In process of time, owing to manumissions granted to domestics as a reward for long and faithful services, together with those on whom that boon had been bestowed by the House of Assembly, chiefly for distinguished efforts in endeavouring to restore tranquillity to their oft distracted community, in addition to the favoured few who had been enabled to obtain their enfranchisement by purchase, there arose, from among the sons and daughters of Ethiopia, an increasing body of persons of free condition denominated free blacks and people of colour. The latter, descended from an intermixture of whites, blacks, and Indians, soon formed an intermediate race whom the Spaniards distinguished by

appellations varying according to their approach in consanguinity to their white or black progenitors. Five principal varieties are generally enumerated as descending from the original negro stock, the sambos, mulattoes, quadroons, mestees, and mestiphinoes. But to these refined distinctions, the Spaniards add the tercirons and the giveros, whom they are said to have proscribed and banished as beings of the worst inclinations and principles. The Dutch recognised gradations still more minute, and which they attempt to distinguish and designate by adding drops of pure water to a single drop of dusky liquor until it becomes nearly transparent. A sambo is the offspring of a black woman by a mulatto man. A mulatto is the child of a black woman by a white man. A quadroon is the offspring of a mulatto woman by a white man, and a mestee is that of a quadroon woman by a white man. The offspring of a female mestee by a white man being above the third in lineal descent from the negro ancestor was white in the estimation of the law, and enjoyed all the privileges and immunities of Her Majesty's white subjects, but all the rest, whether mulattoes, quadroons, or mestees, were considered by the law as mulattoes or persons of colour. A creole, whatever his condition or external peculiarities, is a native; thus it is customary to say, a creole white, a creole of colour, or a creole black.

The colonial legislature, gravely assuming that recently enfranchised blacks could acquire no sense of morality by the mere act of manumission (although it cannot be doubted but that, in reality, they were influenced by far less exceptionable motives); the politi