THE BAHAMA ISLANDS 503 



terms of service extending to the twenty-first year of age."" In such apprentice- 

 ship time and opportunities were to be given for proper education and religious 

 instruction. 844 



THE SPECIAL MAGISTRACY. 



The home government determined not to make the application of the 

 regulations in the new system dependent upon the Colony. There had already 

 been too much experience of the reluctance of the West Indian Englishman to 

 grant expressly acknowledged rights to the negro to trust him with the appli- 

 cation of the new regulations. There was nothing to warrant a continued 

 faith in the disposition of the late slaveholder to treat his apprentice with 

 impartiality under a new system of regulations which granted extended liber- 

 ties to the latter. A special magistracy was erected for the application of the 

 regulations of the new system. The magistrates were appointees of and were 

 commissioned by the Crown. There were twenty of these magistrates for the 

 whole of the West Indies, three of whom were at first allotted to the Bahamas. 348 

 The colonial legislatures were allowed to authorize the appointment of any 

 number of special justices, to be specially commissioned by the governors and 

 paid by the colonies. 840 The Bahamas employed fourteen of these justices dur- 

 ing the first year of the apprenticeship system. 847 



All these magistrates bore special commissions under which they were 

 authorized to deal solely with the masters and servants as freemen, in the new 



843 All such apprentices were freed by the cancellation of the indentures of all 

 Africans in the Colony after the release of the apprentices in 1838. See next 

 section. 



344 Imp. Stats., 3 and 4 William IV, 73 (13). 



345 Imp. Stats., 3 and 4 William IV, 73 (14-15), and Balfour to Stanley, 

 No. 108. 



348 Imp. Stats., loc. tit., sec. 14. 



347 4 William IV, 42. The legislature not being in session at a convenient time, 

 Lieutenant-Governor Balfour called a meeting of the Council and made an arrange- 

 ment by which seventeen persons were asked to act in the capacity of special 

 justices without further promise of remuneration than that the question of paying 

 them for their services would be laid before the legislature at its next session. It 

 was not desirable to be forced to the adoption of such an alternative, but owing to 

 the conditions existing in the Bahamas, it was not possible to serve the whole 

 Colony adequately with only three justices. To relieve the embarrassment it was 

 necessary to accept the lesser of the two evils and to set up an unsatisfactory 

 magistracy rather than to do without. Something had to be done to institute the 

 new system in all parts of the Colony, and to prevent lawlessness. Otherwise the 

 masters might have been driven to resort to a complete emancipation of their 

 apprentices. Balfour to Stanley, No. 108. 



