Page:On the motion of Sir George Strickland; for the abolition of the negro apprenticeship.djvu/43

35 when you were most properly providing an independent jurisdiction for the adjudication of questions between planter and apprentice, you did not also make provision, that the stipendiary magistrate should have an effectual control, in all respects, over the prisons to which he was to sentence offenders: yet this fault is not with the planters; and I entreat the House to consider what would be the effect of rejecting the bill, and carrying the resolution? The bill of the government does stop the abuse: if it be now a legal offence it may be stopped without any bill; but if not, the resolution makes no provision whatever against it, and there is nothing to prevent its introduction into every prison in Jamaica!

Sir, I pass to the other case on which the supporters of the resolution have staked its issue, that of British Guiana. Against the other colonies allegations are not made. I think myself, therefore, justified in omitting to consider them. The honourable seconder of the motion (Mr. Pease) chose to introduce British Guiana. Truly can I say to him, "I thank thee for that word." He talked of the blue books, and stated he had read them. He must have dreamed it. I do complain of gentlemen who make reference to parliamentary documents, to which they have evidently paid no real attention. He utterly overlooked the plainest and broadest statements of those books; and gave us instead a mass of private and wholly unauthenticated allegations,