But should your views be opposed to the policy I recommend, I would entreat you to consider well _how impracticable it will become to carry on coercive labor_--always difficult, it would in future be in peril of constant comparisons with other colonies made free, and with those estates in this island made free by individual proprietors.
As Governor, under these circumstances, and I never shrink from any of my responsibilities, _I pronounce it physically impossible to maintain the apprenticeship with any hope of successful agriculture._ * * * * * "_Gentlemen of the Council, Mr.Speaker, and gentlemen of the Assembly._ Jamaica, is in your hands--she requires repose, by the removal of a law which has _equally tormented the laborer, and disappointed the planter_--a law by which man still constrains man in unnatural servitude.

This is her first exigency.

For her future welfare she appeals to your wisdom to legislate in the spirit of the times, with liberality and benevolence towards all classes." * * * * * When such a man as Sir Lionel Smith pronounced it no longer practicable to carry on coercive labor, he must have been a bold as well as a rash planter who would venture to hold on to the old system under Lord Glenelg's improvement Act.

Accordingly we find some of the staunchest advocates of slavery, men who had been fattening on the oppression of the apprentices up to that moment the first, and the most precipitate, is their proposals of abolition.

Mr.Hyslop, Mr.Gay and others were for acting at once on the Governor's speech without referring it to a committee.