THROUGH THE ISLAND OF JAMAICA, FROM THE WESTERN TO THE EASTERN END, IN THE YEAR 1823. BY CYNRIC R. WILLIAMS. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: "HOMAS HURST, EDWARD CHANCE & Co. 1827. PREFACE. NOTWITHSTANDING the many publications which have appeared on the subject of Slave Emancipation, and the interest that has arisen out of that subject among almost all classes of the English people, yet few persons, even of those who have taken the greatest share in the disquisitions which it has caused, seem to be at all informed of the general state of society in the West India Islands. By the general state of society, it is meant to include the habits and manners of all ranks, from the rich slave owner to his slave; and although the author did not set out with this intention, the following pages will enable the reader to form a pretty correct idea of these habits and manners. The public, or a por tion of it, will have an opportunity of learning that negro slaves are not worked and flogged alternately, at the option and caprice of their masters, as many good christians imagine, who have signed petitions for emancipating them; that they have their pastimes as well as toils, their pleasures as well as pains; and that they smile as often, and laugh as heartily, as the labouring people of this or any equally happy country. At the same time it is to be feared that the general reader will be displeased at the too frequent declamations against the Reformers of Transatlantic morals and politics, (the very subversion of slave policy is their avowed object); but he will recollect that the wealth of the rich, in the colonies, is slaves, secured to them in the first place by the laws of England; and that to tamper |