Litchfield enquirer., 1868-02-27

or lease the land except at exorbitant prices, and H IS only as estates have been thrown into market py creditors and sold in small parcels that the ne groes have been able to purchase the little plats 1 which they now cultivate all over the Island.'>
 For the education of the negro very slight provision has been made by the gov ernment. The Encyclopedia Britan nica, says ln 1856. ..sThere has been no@sstate provision for education, independently of that for the ecclesiastical establishment for some years,' The report of t;o ilispec- tor of schools for 1864, quoted in the New Englander states that, 'srwo thirds of these teachers, have, never 1ecieved the slightest preparation for their work, and are totally incompetent to discharge the duties committed to them.
 Tho country is also burdened with an expensive church establishment, just about as useful to the black Baptist as a similar establishment is to the Irish Cath olic
 The result of the system has been. ac- cording to the Ne,o Englander, to divide the colored race into three classes:- 1st. Those working regularly on the estates, ,iy ing and depending on them for support "a. Those having no regular employment
 3d. Those who own and live upon their small farms. The first class is found only in those portions of the islands where regular estates are worked they live to great extent in barracks, men and women herding together. They are extremely ig- nofant and degraded, retaining the vices of slave r " oo ina x,irf7 o,,off 1 The esecond class have thrown off their depen- dence on the estates but are more lazy than either l of the other classes, working occasionally and stealing when too lazy to work. They are 1 curse to the land, and dangerous to both whit l and black. -t .-
 The third class are the most numerous-nearlv three-quarters of the whole black population. l Their farms are scattered all over the island ex 1 cepting among the large sugar estates * * up- on their elevation the island must depend for it's future wealth and prosperity. They have elevated themselves m spite of unfavorabe laws and infu- encea
 1 One cannot but be struck with the re- semblance between the state of Ireland and Jamaica. Each is alike cursed with the tyrannies of race over race, of church over church, of landed proprietor over la- borer, with their inevitable concomitants 1 VI pofC4ty1 ndULcN duu ttlSUiCSS. It IS Uu necessary 10 dwell on the brutal atrocity with which not only the insurgents but the whole colored race were treated by the Ja- malca planters in 1865. The instruction was neither so extensive nor so dangerous as the late Fenian movement in Ireland, yet it was repressed with severity such o Tro1on1 hoe fa!4 c;p ence with Oliver Cromwell We think no candid mind, on an exami- nation of the evidence, can fail to agree with the conclusions of the Ne,c E,sgzand- er:-"The act of emancipation was fatally defective towards the slaves in nomina]ly freeing them, but leaving them, without protection, to the care of their former mas ters. x < x
 ''The ruin of Jamaica has been caused not by the freeing of the slave, but by the ef- forts on the part of the planter to retain the freedmen in ignorance and servitude, to withhold the rights and privileges of freedom, and the neglect on the part of the government to protect and support the freedmen in their rights. The History of Jamaica plainly teaches hsat the shareholder is not sgfs custodian of fMe rights off;.eednsen. J
 The Encyclopedia Britaanicts favors the same view, and, curiously enough, sug- gasts the precise remedy which our Con sarvatives are now denouncing as tyranni- cal and unprecedented, and to which, after thirty years of Planter sovereignty, the British government has at last been com pelled to resort:-
 "It is generally agreed that it would have been better to have suspended the Constitution at the period of emarcipa- 1 tion and to have entrusted the introduction of the new arrangements rendered neces- sary by that important measure to pru- dent and able Governor; for as the late Mir. c. Butler said in 1887, It was not possi- ble for any similarly constituted colony to furnish persons competent to execute so great a task. '''-Vol. 12, page 676.