They threw it down, as one may easily believe, resolved to seize the best substitute they could.

They would infallibly fall upon the plan of getting the greatest possible amount of work for the least possible amount of pay.

When we consider that even in the oldest, most civilized, and most Christianized free-labor communities, employers are wont to combine to keep down the rate of wages, while on the other hand the laborers throw up work to raise it, we shall not be surprised that there should be things of this sort in Jamaica, liberty being in the gristle.
The only help for such an evil is, that there is always a rate of wages which is advantageous to both parties, and things being left to themselves, it will at last be found.
To the planters and freed-men in settling the question what wages they should offer and receive, two standards or guides presented themselves,--1.

The rate of wages which had been given in Antigua since 1834.2.The compensation that had been demanded by the Jamaica planters themselves, and adjudged by the magistrates, in case of apprentices buying their own time.

Hundreds of planters had declared upon oath what the time of the apprentice was worth to them.