It was repeatedly urged upon them, and the advantages it promised were held up to them; but they persisted in declining it wholly.

This was a great marvel to the planters; and they could not account for it in any other way than by supposing that the apprentices were opposed both to labor and education, and were determined that their free children should grow up in ignorance and indolence! Now the true reason why the apprentices rejected this proposal was, _because it came from the planters_, in whom they have no confidence.

They suspected that some evil scheme was hid under the fair pretence of benevolence; the design of the planters, as they firmly believed, was to get their _free children bound to them_, so that they might continue to keep them in a species of apprenticeship.

This was stated to us, as the real ground of the rejection, by several missionaries, who gave the best evidence that it was so; viz.

that at the same time that the apprentices declined the offer, they would send their free children _six or eight miles to a school taught by a missionary_.