I desire to see you fairly compensated for your labor; I desire also to you performing your work with cheerful industry: but I would warn you _not to be too hasty in entering into contracts_.

Think seriously before you act, and remember, as I have already old you, that you have now to act not only for yourselves, but for posterity." We give numerous documents from these gentlemen, as among the best if not the greatest part of our fellow citizens; we trust their testimony will be deemed the best that could be offered.
LETTER OF EIGHT BAPTIST MISSIONARIES.
_To the Right Hon.

Lord_ GLENELG, &c.
My Lord--We feel assured that no apology is necessary, in requesting your attention to the subject of this letter.

The official connection which you hold with the colony, together with the peculiar circumstances in which its newly-emancipated population are placed, render it an imperative duty we owe to ourselves to lay before you our sentiments.
Having labored in the island for many years, and having been in daily intercourse with the objects of our solicitude, we do feel devoutly thankful to ALMIGHTY GOD, that he has spared us to see the disenthralment of our beloved flocks; while it gives us increased pleasure to assure your lordship that they received the boon with holy joy, and that the hour which made them men beheld them in thousands humbly prostrate at the footstool of mercy, imploring the blessing of HEAVEN upon themselves and their country, while, during the night and joyful day, not a single case of intoxication was seen.
To us, as their pastors, they naturally looked for advice, both as to the labor they should perform and the wages they should receive.

The importance of this subject was deeply felt by us, and we were prepared to meet it with a full sense of the responsibility it involved, and happily succeeded in inducing them to accept of a sum lower than that which the representatives of the landowners had formerly asserted was fair and just.
We regret to state, that a deep combination was formed by many of these _middlemen_ to grind the peasantry to the dust, and to induce, if possible, the acceptance of remuneration which, by affording no inducement to the peasant cheerfully to labor, would have entailed pauperism on him and his family, and ruin on the absentee proprietor.