The Sun.
London, England, 1840-02-27 00:00:00

!:VENING EDITION

STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATES IN
JAMAICA.

TO TIE EDITOR OF TIE
The House of Assembly has just closed its Session
without haying passed a single Bill for the improvement
or protection of the negro. Their late success has inflated
them beyond measure, and in the words of thsirmena rable
protest, they "do not ;brink from a comparison withthe
Commons of Great Britain." With the exception of
• conciliatory spirit exhibited in the very necessary mea-
sure of increasing the salary of the Governor,e makingßh
a provision for placing professional men on the
and a Prisons' Bill, the last, however, being
an Act of super-legislation on the Imperial
Parliament, and all intended as so many sops to the Bri-
tish Government to permit them to have their own way in
everything else, they have driven on in their old reckless
course of passing coercive laws, not because there is any
occasion, or likely to be any, for such, but because they
never will be brought to believe and acknowledge the
negro to be a human being, acted on by the same wants,
desires, and impulses as
,themselves. They regard with
high scorn all propositions to lead their labouring popula-
tion, which, docile as it is, is easily done, and are deter-
mined to drive it, which is now au impossibility.
The great caution of the new Governor, Sir
Charles Metcalfe, which these gentlemen take to
be an approval of their views and schemes, encourages
them in the experimental course which they are pursuing.
Sir Charles keeps his opinion profoundly secret, and is no
doubt now digesting his plans at his country-seat during
the recess—when he opens himself it will probably be to
some purpose. The rope, however, is not yet tight enough
to draw him out. In the meantime, a system of anticipa-
tory
legislation has been successfully going on. We have
a vagrant law, without a vagrant on whom to carry it
into effect in the island. We
have an armed
police fJr the preservation of _w constables kept
orderca aand tran-
quillity among a population which a f
during the whole of last year in a statee
of subordination
and submission to the laws, unknown in any part of Eu-
rope. We have prohibitory game-law Pefect wilderness.
We have a new ejectment-law, and fishery-laws,
r
in a country two-thirds of
ectment-lwaly'ui, and acombination-of-ser-
eh is a
vants'-law, both pressing most coercively on the labouring
population, and which must, cum multis aiiis, be disallowed
at home. As L
have hinted above, the Governor has given
them rope, and by doing so, he has full opportunity, before
declaring himself, of observing their antics and vagaries.
It is certain that the future prosperity of the Island mainly
depends on him. The eyes of almost all our other high
functionaries are hankering after the flesh pots of Egypt.
They are paid by the House of Assembly, and they
reverence their paymasters ; indeed, if they respect their
salaries they dare not do otherwise. This wisdom in their
generation, too, turns out well with them ; witness his
Honour the Chief Justice Sir Joshua Rowe, the very Baal
of the planter's worship, who has just had his salary in-
creased from 4,0001. to .5 8001. per annum.
What wonder then that the spirit of planterism is again
rampant, and that its representatives should insist on being
entitled to full credence when they swear that they are the
most moral men, the most loyal subjects, the most humane
task-masters, the wisest and most disinterested Legisla-
tors on tleis side of heaven ? or that they should insist that
the power of adjudication in all matters at issue between
master and servant may be safely placed in the hands of
the former ? A notable scheme has been brought in by
an Attorney-at-law, a Member of Assembly, to effect this
desirable end, and to provide for himself and his profes-
sional brethren in the same Honourable House, by the
substitution of six lawyers, whether barristers or
attorneys, for the existing stipendiary magis-
tracy, in direct opposition to the principle acted on
in England, which wisely and considerately prohibits
attorneys from holding the office of Justice of
the Peace. If this should become law, alas poor negroes
We shall have litigations, appeals, and certioraris innume-
rable, and interminable. How convenient the transition
from the attorney's desk to the Judge's bench and back again.
ltque, reuitTte clam tot its.
The fact is, that the scheme is impracticable, and were it
not so, it would be unsafe and unjust. The labouring po-
pulation have no confidence in any but the stipendiary
Magistracy, to whom they look a 3 the visible sign and gua-
rantee to them of the protection of the British Govern-
ment ; to them do they carry all their grievances ; to them
alone do they look for redrew. Remove them, and sue-
picioe. apprehension, and bad feeling will immediately take
the place of the implicit confidence and reliance which they
repose at present in the protection of the English Govern.
anent. If the peace and tranquillity of this teland—if the
industry of the peasantry—if the prosperity of the land-
owners be objects of importance, the potter of adjudication
between master and servant must be jealously
withheld from the planting Magistrates. Were it natural to
suppose that men may with safety be constituted judges in
Naeir own case, that the plantar woula dispense unbiassed
justice, inflexibly and invarial.ly, even where to his own
prejudice, and where the law may be in direct opposition
to his own opinion, still ail this would not suffice ; the late
slave will not, for at least this generation, put any trust in
his late master. But we have no right to assume that the
Jamaica planter is free from the weaenesses and imperfec-
tions of our nature ; he has sho en that he possesses his full
proportion of them. Lupus pet/ern mutat, non naturam, is
an old and true adage ; and it. would be just as wise and
politic to, put your poultry-yard under the guardianship
of th; fox, or to constitute the wolf keeper of your sheep-
; fold, as to trust the labouring population of Jamaica to the
judicial mercies of a planting magistracy.
The professional magistrates proposed by Sic Joshua,
the Corypi-imus of the plantocracy, is eight—a number so
totally inadequate for the due performance of the multi-
farious duties entrusted to the present Stipendiary Meeis-
! tract' 53 to be no better than none at ail. The whole
echerne, in fact, is an almost undisguised attempt to throw
the whole power of adjudication between the late master
and the late slave entirely into the hands of the former
There are on an average two Courts of Petit Sessions held
every week by each Stipendiary Magistrate, in addition to
two o her duties, making 4,360 ;courts held by the forty-
! two paid Justices during the year, for the purposes of ad-
judicating on points at issue between employer and la-
hewer. If attorneys and barristers of Spanish Town
and Kingston are, as proeoscd, to succeed to these duties,
each will have to attend to 540 Petit Sessions of the
Peace, in the course of the year, or about two for every
line of the working days in the 365. What makes this
store preposterous is the fact that places appointed for
)folding these are often twenty, sometimes thirty, miles
(a good day's journey) distant from each other, in the
same district ; to say nothing of the Ministerial duties of
the Magistrates, the whole onus of which is thrown on the
Stipendiary Justices, and the impartial performance cf
which is still more important, as regards the protection of
the negro, than even the judicial functions, from the ex-
treme facility with which they may be abused, to the op-
pressiou of the ignorant, unlettered labourer of this coun-
try, who has no security whatever, in cases which daily
occur, where his late owner is the magistrate who issues
the warrant, and his late driver the constable who exe
cuter it. AN OBSERVER.