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their respective masters, with h every facility that is compatible with their condition, to enable them to comply with the essential duties of religion.

Many Gentlemen and Planters, sensible of the advantages derived by their Negroes from the religious and moral education be stowed on them, have occasionally be haved with great libérality to ecclesiastical teachers, and have spontaneously contributed towards making their situation more comfortable and independent. Your Ex'cellency is too well acquainted with the almost unsurmountable difficulties which the general corruption of human nature, left to itself, the climate, and various other local circumstances, daily almost oppose to the religious education and moral improvement of Negro Slaves. Notwithstanding, I have the satisfaction to assure you, that a great many of this class, who, after a proper degree of probation, are admitted as Members of the Church of Christ, derive the most solid advantages from this divine institution, and such as are calculated to give the philanthropist that pleasure and internal satisfaction that flow from viewing the happiness of the human species, even in the lowest of its gradations.

Demerara stands next in order :

The Garrison Chaplain is the only Clergyman of the Church of England; and performs divine service in a chapel built by voluntary subscription, and with the assistance of the Colonial, and Goverument, and King's Chests. The annual salary is (3,200 Dutch currency from the King's Chest, and) 2,200 Dutch, currency from the Colony Chest, to make good his house

rent.

Besides there is a Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and at this moment there is a new Dutch Church building, the funds for which have been raised in the

same manner as those for the English chapel.

This Gentleman receives the same salary as the English Clergyman.

There are, says Gov. Bentinck, besides two Dissenting Ministers here, who have two chapels, the one in town, the other in the country, on the estate of a Gentleman, who had it built a couple of years ago. These apply themselves more particularly to the instructing of the Negroes.

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There are no Clergy of the Church of England: the colony is divided into thirty-two parishes; of which, in 1812, ten only were served by regular incumbents.

M. Volkersen reports from St. Thomas's, that, the coloured people shew such a desire to become Christians, and such are the exertions used by Missionaries, that few, (if any) are left for conversion. The Catholic congregation comprizes about 4,000.

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The Jewish synagogue consists of 321 whites, having no Rabbi, but a Teacher, at 8 dollars per month. No free-coloured people, or slaves, are in corporated in their Congregation,

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condition, and states the causes by
which their progress and prosperity have
been affected. His Report combines en-
tertainment with information; and we
regret that our limits do not allow us
He says,
to enlarge our extracts.

Distinguishing the Free People as em

The Church establishment is Roman ployed in different vocations and trades, Catholic:

By the 18th Article of the Law of the 1st of November, 1809, concerning the General Police of the Island, the Colonial Government has had in view the increase of its Population of Slaves, by granting adequate bounties to the Proprietors on whose Estates the increase shall have been most considerable in the course of the preceding year. These bounties are paid in the three first mouths of every year, and in general the Planter finds it his interest to distribute this reward amongst such of his Female Slaves, as have been most attentive to the raising of their Children.

the extraordinary proportion of eighty free master carpenters to eight masous, will not escape remark; and the inference will follow, that the principal material of the country must be timber; it is so; and the native woods, covering many thousand acres, supply a variety of timber, scantling and plank, of the best and most durable description.

Granite and Stone are found in the Islaud, and good Bricks are made; but the carriage and working of these materials are more expensive, and they are only used for ovens, chimneys, boiling-houses, and other buildings where the use of fire might render wood unsafe. There are no less than forty Mulatto carpenters in the Scarbro' coloured company of militia, consist

It will appear, that in the space of 13 years, 25,227 Female Slaves, from the age of 14 to that of 60, have given the Numbering of sixty rank and file. of 22,849 Children living.

The injunction of the law for Masters to instruct their Slaves in the duties of Religion, is attended to in the almost universal practice of assembling them, morning and evening, before and after work, to prayers; the whole kneeling, and a certain Form of Prayer said by one of the most respectable Slaves, and repeated by the whole of the rest; the Master often, and the Overseer generally, attending to maintain order: There are also short Catechisms printed

for the use of Slaves.

The Free Mariners command small sloops, for drogherage of produce; the Sadlers trade too is supported by the plantations, as is the medical profession, and the commerce of the merchants, furnishing the supplies of fish, corn, lumber, slaves, nules, horses and cattle.

The retail stores or shops avail greatly o the ready money for cottons, trinkets, crockery and tobacco, spent by the numerous lives from the plantations, coming to market, and laying out what they have there received. The silversmith too reThe food and raiment of the Slave is ceives ready money from the Negroes, as prescribed by law; and when it appears and their people deal with the stores and trinket-mender, or vender. The plauters not sufficiently attended to, it is perhaps more from inability than inclination of their shops mostly on credit, to pay by rum, Masters, and owing probably to the hard-passing by convention, at a certain fixed ness of the times; the custom has become nearly general, to allow the Slaves a portion of ground, and the Saturday for the cultivation of it, ju many cases among the poorer Proprietors for their whole subsistence; but amongst the more opulent, even with Saturday, the addi ion of a week y allowance of salt fish is given, and an allow ance of rum and molasses is also added.

TOBAGO.

Sir William Younge enters into considerable detail, in reference to this colony, of which he is chief. He notices the manners of the people, the advantages and disadvantages of their present

value per gallon, as a circulating medium; due and payable ju the season of crop. I think a full third of the retail trade is carried on by Mulatto hucksters (mostly women), who in numbers are travelling constantly their circles, or appropriate districts of the plantations; they are the only people who have any quantities of gold or silver money, little in the higher circles is to be

seen.

The most remarkable part of this Report, at first sight, is a decrease in the number of slaves; but this may be accounted for, partly by imperfect returns, partly (we suspect) by Negroes smuggled out to the Spaniards, and partly,

by "an endemic whooping cough and pulmonary affection, which, in 1807-8 spread throughout the island, was most fatal to Negro children, and carried off many adults. To that mortality may be added, diminution by departure from the island in domestic service, by runaways deserting, by capture of slaves at sea, when working in drogher or passage boats, by manumission, -- not unfrequent." These causes are assigned by Sir William himself.

The colonization of Tobago by the British commenced in 1765; the island thirtytwo miles in length, and thirteen its greatest breadth, was at this time covered by groves of large timber trees, rising out of thickets of impassable shrubbery; further, the surface was rugged and steep, exhibiting on ali sides mountainous and rocky ridges, with alternate ravines, and those covered with woods, required hard and severe labour to clear and settle.

The British adventurers in the SettleThis decrease, nevertheless, excites ment accordingly purchased only stout African men, from twenty to forty years of much interest; and it is but natural to age, as alone equal to the work; a further, enquire into the causes. Sir W. inthough inadequate proportion of female forms us that the proportion of the wo-Slaves, was in the following year added, men slaves is nearly equal to that of the and such was the description of Negro pomen: that the planters wish to see chil-pulation in Tobago, during a period of the dren increase on their estates: that the first ten years of laborious settlement, from land allowed to the negroes for cultiva-1765 to 1775, when the island, cleared and tion is "beyond what he has observed become productive, and therewith the lain other parts of the West Indies :" that our become more regular and easy to the out of crop time, each slave is allowed Slaves, and less distressed, they became more domesticated, the plauter now prethe whole of Thursday, with his family, ferring the purchase of women. to work on his provision grounds; also Sunday he spends as he pleases. His profits are his own, and are more strongly protected than those of the Planter. They are paid immediately at the market where the Negroes sell their poultry, pigs, corn, and fruit; and if any contention happens, the Clerk of the market does them immediate justice.

These Regulations have had the happiest effect; the Negroes return early from the market, satisfied with their dealings, and communicating their gains, diffuse a general content throughout the plantations, aud the manager having no more to complain of his people, the people no more complain of their manager; and further good consequence of this law is, that the Slaves being assured of the produce and due profits of their labour, are awakened to a new spirit of industry in their gardens and stock yard; after four years of experience of the good intended and provided for them by this excellent law, the Slaves on the plantations show a cheerfulness and readiness of service, which declare a contented and orderly people. Many of them considered as the lowest order of society, and looking to the class of common labourers in the freest country, are comparatively rich, every householder supplies his family with pigs, poultry, fruits, aud vegetables from the Negroes coming to market. The weekly average expenditure with them is of four joes, or 71. sterling.

From the present time we look back to this state of the population through thirtysix years; a period which must have worn out, though not destroyed, the whole of the Africans first imported; a remainder of these people yet exists, yearly and quickly for no long time to come, swelling the acpassing to the grave; and at present, and count of mortality beyond that of Births,

in estimate of natural increase.

The Africans imported since 1775, with those born Creole of the Island, constitute he population, on which the computation of increase or decrease should distinctively rest.

These reasons are, doubtless, worthy of consideration; but they concern newly settled islands, in general, not Tobago only. Sir William adds others, which he considers as the greatest bar to prolific ution; these, doubtless, are influential in every Negro population; for the manners brought from Africa, we may presume, are much the same universally.

In Africa, as in the East, the husband is despot of his household, and his favourite wife is but his first Slave; be commands her occupations and work; he controuls her conduct, aud he may punish her; and in certain cases, even to death.

The African man, passing to the West Indies, and there himself a Slave, could not be permitted the command he required, as

the condition of receiving a wife, inmate of his house, or hut, her time and service could not be his; nor could he check infidelity, or be assured of his offspring. He revoited at a settled connection, so little conformable to the custom of his nation, and his own rights over his women, as remembered perhaps at his father's; hence, the Slaves first coming to Tobago, rarely settled in families, and indulged in promiscuous intercourse, little favourable to population.

therewith clearly commenced; I augur a happy continuance.

That the White People are generally kind and good to their Slaves, is in proof, from their cheerful appearance, and from their retributive care of aud regard to their masters, who sleep in the Planter's mansion withont bolt or bar, within the circle of their Negro village. Gentlemen or la dies from dinner, or supper parties, ride home at all hours of the night, across a

The habits of the women, then compa-wild country, through thickets, or by soratively few, were farther an impediment to increase, many living unattached, procured abortions, not to interrupt their wild and wanton course, or neglected the child when born, which no father owned or would assist, and it died in infancy; other and better mothers, would suckle their children for two, three, or even four years, and such mothers could not be very prolific.

Under these circumstances, the Population could not advance, or even be sustained, without imports from Africa. A correction of these prejudices and customs was indispensable to a natural increase, and this has to a very great degree, I think, been of late years happily effected, by the Planters' humane attentions to the instruc

tion, encouragement, rewards, and a care of Mothers and Children in their Estates; and for which, the Mothers at last, are become grateful, and conform to the advice and directions they receive from their Master, or from the Physician at the hospital of the Plantation.

A settled union of man and woman is anxiously encouraged and fostered in each Estate, and on intimation given by the parties, they are allowed time and materials to build or enlarge and furnish their

litary passes, without the least apprehensions of any Negroes they meet; there has not been a single instance of robbery or violence by a Negro committed on a White Person travelling the public or private roads in the nearly five years of my government; and be it remembered, that every Negro has a cutlass in his hut.

The Creole Slave is as attached to his place of birth and home, as strong as Gold. smith's peasantry, wandering from the deserted village. The Abolition of the Slave Trade has raised the value of the Slaves from 657, and 70l. to one hundred guineas for an ordinary able Field Negro.

The Religious Institution of the island does not appear to be very flourishing: the old Africans are strongly retentive of their ancient practices : the rising generation is more hopeful. Several Negro children are brought every Sunday for baptism: the Creoles are the most docile, and the most open to instruction in the Christian religion, The condition of the Slave is generally improved since the abolition: yet Sir W. thinks that regulation has little or no effect on the mind of the Slave him tioned as a subject of felicitation at the self. Slaves fetch a great price; their Planter's table,, and extra food and cloth hire is valuable; and some of their ing are sent to the Mother, who is allowed owners make the most of it. Since the an extra ration of weekly two quarts of abolition, the decrease of the Europeans corn meal whilst suckling her child, for has proportionally been greater than one year, which is then continued to the that of the Negroes: the Governor adds, Child, but not to the Mother, if she con-what we think an alarming piece of in. tinues sucking beyond the term prescribed; telligence," the population of the latter the care of the child will be estimated by is recovering; that of the Whites must further decrease."

but.

Whenever a Child is born, it is men

even the most inimical to the West India character, by the value of the Child, a Negro Woman valued at one hundred guineas, will sell with an healthy Child at her breast, for one hundred and thirty guineas.

Within the last four years it is observable that the Negroes have improved and become more domesticated, and a favourable change in the course of population has

are

BERBICE

Concludes the list in the Colony

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