ABSTRACT
The legislature of Jamaica passed an act for the encouragement of settlers. " It empowered commissioners to appoint agents in Great Britain or elsewhere, and to contract with white families to come over, and with masters of ships for their passage, and to draw from the island treasury a sum not exceeding <^6000 currency per annum." It enacted, that such families should be lodged and subsisted, until they could be provided with lands or employment. That owners of land conveying in fee-simple to the head of every family twenty acres of good land, within a mile of some inhabited settlement, with four of the twenty planted with provisions, a dwelling-house of j€50 value, one Negro of & 35 value, and <^£ 20 in money, should be entitled to for each family; or any owner entering into a bond of ^500 to perform this within six months, and in the mean time furnishing the new comers with board and lodging, should be entitled to the <5^145, with ^ 8 per cent, per annum interest.
