night; and the funereal rites were in the forms of African superstition. But as religion advanced, this barbarous custom gradually disappeared; and a positive law in 1816 put an end to night funerals, that source of crime and of misery. Christianity, however, would have effected this before now, if no such law had been enacted. But had this change (beneficial as I have shewn it to be) been attempted by law twenty years sooner, with the superstitious veneration the negroes then attached to night funerals, they would have felt it as a deprivation of a solemn rite which they owed to the dead; and, I need scarcely add, they would have resisted its abolition accordingly. Can enthusiasm, which vainly thinks to mould the human mind as a potter does his clay, not read in such facts an useful lesson, to let education and religion take their course in eradicating superstition and conveying light into the darkness of paganism, without attempting to accomplish in a day what can only be the work of years? What the utmost stretch of power could scarcely have effected then, has now been, without a murmur, almost imperceptibly accomplished.

The funerals of slaves in Jamaica for years past have in no respect differed from those of white people. When a negro's death is occasioned by an acute disorder, it happens in the hospital, where he has been under the care of the medical attend

ant*; when it occurs from a decay of life, he is not removed from the comforts which his own house affords; but in either case he has the kind offices of those most nearly related to him by the ties of blood and affection. When he expires, notice is brought to the master or overseer, and generally communicated in the short but emphatic expression, such a one is gone.' Immediate directions are given to the carpenters on the plantation to make a coffin; and some little things are always given for the funeral, such as rum and sugar, and a little flour and butter to make cakes or rusks; often on such occasions, I have known masters, and even managers of estates, give from their own private stock half a dozen bottles of Madeira wine, and a dozen of brown stout, to shew their respect for a valuable and faithful servant.

The shroud and furniture for the coffin are provided by the family of the deceased; white if a single, and black if a married person, with corresponding mounting or plates; in short, in every respect the same as in the case of white persons. During the night, and it is never more than one, that the corpse is in the house, a few religious friends attend, psalms are sung, and prayers given by some of their own (negro) preachers. The following day the funeral takes place, and is always

* Every plantation has an hospital, and these buildings are so respectable in size and appearance, that they are often mistaken by strangers for the mansionhouses.

numerously attended by the relations of the deceased, by all the old and invalided of the plantation village, and by the women exempted from labour on account of pregnancy or attention to their families; nor, indeed, is permission to attend ever refused to a slave on a neighbouring plantation, if the deceased has been his intimate friend, relation, or countryman. At the hour appointed, a white person attends, accompanied frequently by others, to read the service appointed by the church of England, in committing dust to dust; and this most solemn and impressive ceremony is listened to by white and black, with an attention and humility evincing a sense, that our brother here departed,' has gone where we must all follow, and where human distinctions are at an end. While the grave is closing, bread and wine are handed round, which, from seeing it done at the funerals of white persons, the negroes perhaps consider a part of the ceremony; of course, it is little more than a matter of form, and a couple of bottles of Madeira is the usual quantity procured for the occasion by the ordinary class of slaves.

From a latent taint of African superstition, the negroes universally attach great importance to having what they call a good burial.' Hence those who are in only indifferent circumstances, are often careful to reserve means for the purpose; others, indifferent to the morrow, are still more so as to what shall follow, when the wants of life are at an end; yet a thoughtless improvi

dent creature of this description, not sorry for 'himself, as the negroes express it, is respected in death by his friends, who would consider it as an indelible disgrace to themselvs, if he was not buried as a Christian ought.'

Near towns, and on some plantations, a piece of ground is enclosed as a burial-place for the negroes; but the more common practice upon plantations with both whites and blacks, is to inter the dead in a small corner of their respective gardens set aside for the purpose; and as the negroes attach an importance to the burial of the dead, they extend the same feeling to the graves, over which they erect tombs built commonly of brick, and neatly white-washed. The white-washing is carefully repeated every Christmas morning, and formerly it was on these occasions customary to kill a white cock, and sprinkle his blood over the graves of the family; but this last part of the ceremony seems now to be little attended to, and is likely to be soon extinct. In public negro burial grounds on plantations they build into the tombs, at one end, a piece of hard and almost imperishable wood, placed upright and having the top cut into rough outlines of the human figure, which gives the spot a very striking and not unimposing effect.

Such are negro funerals, as I have seen them, and such, however much at variance with Mr. Stephen's account of the matter, I avouch to be the general practice.

the slaves are

'SECTION VI.-The West India slave is not only subject to Laws to which all the criminal laws by which the offences of free persons subject. are punished, but to an additional penal code of great extent and severity, made for the government of his condition alone.' p. 276.

It might, in like manner, be made the subject of complaint, that an English soldier is subject not only to all the criminal laws by which the offences of others are punished, but to an additional code (the mutiny act), made for the government of his condition alone. But if the slave is subject to a code of great extent and severity,' made for men of his condition, it can scarcely be any great aggravation of his state to be subject in common with free persons to the law of England, so far as it is in force in the colony to which he belongs, or rather, I am inclined to think, subject to it on points only which are not provided for by the slave code.

However excellent the law of England, it is manifest it can be but partially applicable in colonies where the bulk of the population are slaves; and hence the origin of the slave codes. But whatever laws the slave may be subject to, the truth is that, in practice, the power of correction possessed by the master, limited as the punishment is that he can inflict, renders an appeal to them but seldom necessary. That this power may in some instances be used to the injury of the slave, is true; but it is equally true, that it commonly stands between him and public prosc