They are thrown entirely upon their parents, who are _unable_ to take proper care of them, from the almost constant demands which the master makes upon their time.

The condition of pregnant women, and nursing mothers, is _decidedly worse_ than it was during slavery.

The privileges which the planter felt it for his interest to grant these formerly, for _the sake of their children_, are now withheld.

The former are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, and the hardships of toil--the latter are cruelly dragged away from their infants, that the master may not lose the smallest portion of time,--and _both_ are liable at any moment to be incarcerated in the dungeon, or strung up on the treadwheel.

In consequence of the cruelties which are practised, the apprentices are in a _disaffected state_ throughout the island.
[Footnote A: All children under _six years_ of age at the time of abolition, were made entirely free.] In assigning the causes of the ill-working of the apprenticeship in Jamaica, we would say in the commencement, that nearly all of them are embodied in the intrinsic defects of the system itself.