I say it, Sir, in the face of this committee--I would say it on my death-bed tomorrow, that if the Stipendiary Magistrates had _done their duty_ all would have gone on well, _and I told his Excellency that he might then have slept on a bed of roses_." Here was one of the abolishers of the apprenticeship who held that more flogging would have made it work more "splendidly." Mr.Hugh Fraser Leslie, who the February before had, in his place in the Assembly, denominated the anti-slavery delegates assembled in London, as "a set of crawling wretches;" "the scum and refuse of society." "The washings and scrapings of the manufacturing districts," &c.

&c.

now delivered himself of the following:-- "_He would ask any man in the house, nay, in the country, whether the house had any discretion left to them in the steps they were about to take_?
Could it be denied, that they were driven to the present alternative?
Could they any longer say they were an independent legislature?
It would be preposterous--absolutely absurd to entertain any such idea.

The apprenticeship had been _forced upon the country_ as a part and parcel of the planters' compensation--it had been working well, and would insensibly _have slided into a state of absolute freedom, had the masters been left alone to themselves.

It is now utterly impracticable to continue it_.