The Act of Parliament for the emancipation of the slaves had fixed two periods for terminating the apprenticeship. The predials, or field-labourers, who enjoyed the benefit of the half Friday and Saturday every week, were to serve till August 1840. The non-predials, or domestics, who could not be so much away from their household duties, were compensated by an abridgment of their time of service, and were to be released in August 1838. This distinction did not work well, and was likely to produce still worse effects, when the one class should be freed from servitude and the other continue bound. The conviction was growing, that it would be for the interests of all parties, to terminate that anomalous intermediate state, at the earlier period. The abuses of the apprenticeship, which seemed to be employed in some parts of the country, less to prepare the people for their freedom than to take vengeance on them for it, had led to a powerful agitation in England for bringing it to an immediate end. But the period could not be abridged without an Act of the Colonial Legislature; and there were differences of opinion on the subject in the country. In the belief that the House of Assembly would rather yield to petitions from within than to pressure from without, I transmitted one from the session of our congregation, in favour of the early termination, which was read and allowed to lie on the table.