Page:On the motion of Sir George Strickland; for the abolition of the negro apprenticeship.djvu/40

32 that the cases of these workhouses are exceptions, the evidence of Sir Lionel Smith. And let no man say that governors are ignorant. He writes from a personal inspection, which, much to his honour, he caused to be instituted into the state of the workhouses, before the mission of Captain Pringle, and before he had received the evidence of Mr. Sturge. On the 12th of June, 1837, he writes, as gentlemen will find at the 310th page of the Papers, Part IV.

"Having lately returned from an inspection of the greater part of these buildings, I am enabled to report that, in most instances, I found them well regulated and under a careful supervision, from which the special magistrate is by no means excluded: and I have every reason to believe, from the disposition manifested by the local authorities, that I shall have no difficulty in obtaining such modifications of the existing rules, as may appear to me desirable."

And at a later period I think he announces his further progress in the examination, without varying from the tenor of this report.

But observe. Sir, this is a question of prison discipline, not of apprentice law. The prison discipline of the West Indies may be bad: but let gentlemen remember, that this is ordinarily one of the last departments which is affected by social ameliorations. As in England persons are unwisely beginning to call workhouses by the name of prisons, so in Jamaica the district prisons are habitually called by the name of workhouses. Now are gentle-