We inquired particularly of some of the apprentices, to whom this offer was made, why they did not accept it.

They said that they could not trust their masters; the whole design of it was to get them to give up their children, and if they should give them up _but for a single month_, it would be the same as acknowledging that they (the parents) were not able to take care of them themselves.

The busha would then send word to the Governor that the people had given up their children, not being able to support them, and the Governor would have the children bound to the busha, "and _then_," said they, "_we might whistle for our children_!" In this manner the apprentices, the _parents_, reasoned.

They professed the greatest anxiety to have their children educated, but they said they could have no confidence in the honest intentions of their busha.
The views given above, touching the results of entire emancipation in 1840, are not unanimously entertained even among the planters, and they are far from prevailing to any great extent among other classes of the community.

The missionaries, as a body, a portion of the special magistrates, and most of the intelligent free colored people, anticipate glorious consequences; they hail the approach of 1840, as a deliverance from the oppressions of the apprenticeship, and its train of disaffections, complaints and incessant disputes.