University of Virginia Library

MAY 1.

This morning I signed the manumission of Nicholas Cameron, the best of my mulatto carpenters. He had been so often on the very point of getting his liberty, and still the cup was dashed from his lips. that I had promised to set him free, whenever he could precure an able negro as his substitute ; although being a good workman, a single negro was by no means an adequate price in exchange. On my arrival this year I found that he had agreed to pay 150 l . for a female negro, and the woman was approved of by my trustee. But on inquiry it appeared that she had a child, from which she was unwilling to part ; and her owner refused to sell her child, except at a most unreasonable price. Here there was insurmountable objection, and Nicholas was told, to his great mortification, the he must look out for another substitute. The woman, on her part, was determined to belong to Cornwall estate and no other : so she told her owner, that if he attempted to sell her elsewhere she would make away with herself, and on his ordering her to prepare for a removal to a neighbouring proprietor's, she disappeared, and concealed herself so well, that for some time she was believed to have put her threats of suicide into execution. the idea of losing his 150 l . frightened her master so completely that he declared himself ready to let me have the child at a fair price, as well as the mother, if she should ever be found ; and her friends having conveyed this assurance to her, she thought proper to emerge from her hiding-place, and the bargain was arranged finally. The titles, however, were not yet made out, and as the time of my departure for Hordley was arrived, these were odered to be got ready against my return, when the negroes were to be delivered over to me, and Nicholas was to be set free. In the meanwhile the child was sent by her mistress ( a free mulatto ) to hide some stolen ducks upon a distant property, and on her return blabbed out the rrand : in consequence the mistress was committed to prison for the theft ; and no sooner was she released, than she revenged herself upon the poor girl by giving her thirty lashes with the cattle-whip, inflicted with all the severity of vindictive malice. This treatment of a child of such tender years reduced her to such a state, as made the

magistrates think it right to send her for protection to the work-house, until the conduct of the mistress should have been inquired into. In the meanwhile, as the result of the inquiry might be the setting the girl at liberty, the joint title for her and her mother could not be made out, and thus poor Nicholas's manumission was again at a stand-still. the magistrates at length decided, that although the chastisement had been severe yet (according to the medical report) it was not such as to authorise the sending the mistress to be tried at the assizes. She was accordingly dismissed from farther investigation, and the girl was once more considered as belonging to me, as soon as the title could be made out. But the fatality which had so often prevented Nicholas from obtaining his freedom, was not weary yet. On the very morning when he was to sign the title a person whose signature was indispensable, was thrown out of his chaise, the wheel of which passed over his head, and ho rendered incapable of transacting business for several weeks. Yesterday the titles were at length brought to me complete, and this morning put Nicholas in possession of the object, in the pursuit of which he has experienced such repeated disappointments.

The conduct of the poor child's mulatto mistress in this case was more unpardonable, and is the only one of numerous instances of a similar description, which have been mentioned to me. Indeed, I have every reason to believe that nothing can be uniformly more wretched than the lives of the slaves of free people of colour in Jamaica ; nor would any thing contribute more to the relief of the black population than the prohibiting by law any mulatto to become the owner of a slave for the future. Why should not rich people of colour be served by poor people of colour, hiring them as domestics? It seldom happens that mulattoes are in possession of plantations ; but when a white man dies, who happens to possess twenty negroes, he will divide them among his brown family, leaving, perhaps, five to each of his four children. These are too few to be employed in plantation work ; they have, therefore, to maintain their owner by some means or other, and which means are frequently not the most honest, the most frequent being the travelling about as higglers, and exchanging the trumpery contents of their packs

and boxes with plantation negroes for stolen rum and sugar. I confess I cannot see why, on such request being made, the law should not order the negroes to be sold, and the produce of the sale paid to the mulatto heirs, but absolutely prohibiting the mulattoes from becoming proprietors of the negroes themselves.

Every man of humanity must wish that slavery, even in its best and most mitigated form, had never found legal sanction, and must regret that its system is now so incorporated with the welfare of Great Britain as well as of Jamaica, as to make its extirpation an absolute impossibility, without the certainty of producing worse mischiefs than the one which we annihilate. But certainly there can be no sort of occasion for continuing on the colonies the existence of domestic slavery , which neither contributes to the security of the colonies themselves, nor to the opulence of the mother-country, the revenue of which derived from colonial duties would suffer no defalcation what ever, even if neither the whites nor blacks in the West Indies were suffered to employ slaves, except in plantation labour.