ABSTRACT
TIlE Act of Parliament for the emancipation of the slaves hadfixed two periods for terminating the apprenticeship. The predials, or field-labourers, who enjoyed the benefit of the half Friday and Saturday every week, were to serve till August 1840. The non-predials, or domestics, who could not be so much away fronl their household duties, were compensated by an abridgnlent of their time of service, and were to be released in August 1838. This distinction did not work ,veIl, and ,vas likely to produce still worse effects, when the one class should be freed from servitude and the other continue bound. The conviction ,vas gro\ving, that it would be for the interests of all parties, to terminate that anomalous intermediate state, at the earlier period. The abuses of the apprenticeship, which seemed to be enlployed in some parts of the country, less to prepare the people for their freedom than to take vengeance on them for it, had led to a po,verful agitation in England for bringing it to an imnlediate end. But the period could not be abridged without an Act of the Colonial Legislature; and there were differences of opinion on the subject in the country. In the belief that the House of Assembly would rather yield to petitions from within than to pre~sure from wit:P.out, I transmitted OIle fronl the session of our congregation, in favour of the early ternlination, which was read and allowed to lie on the table.
