The Effects of Emancipation. 
King had already despatched orders to this effect, without their having 
been told a word: that these had been illegally and irregularly withheld 
by the Governor in conjunction with the Planters, and they were now 
mutually determined to obtain their rights by force.” 
84. In spite of the Colonel’s remonstrance that the statement was 
entirely false, that there was not a single word about complete civic 
freedom to be read in the royal decree, the insurgents persisted in their 
purpose and Colonel Leahy, being met by an insulting rejoinder on a 
last demand to lay down their arms, found himself forced to give the 
order to tire. After a murderous massacre the rebels were completely 
dispersed and, leaving behind a number of dead and wounded, put to 
flight. From the 20th to 30th August while Colonel Leahy and his troops 
were busy hunting for weapons on the different estates, and looking for 
the ringleaders, several of whom he captured, Mr. Hillhouse, followed 
by a considerable commando of Caribs and Warraus scoured the forests 
and seized the scattered fugitives. Many who 
were caught 
with 
weapons in their hands were generally shot or hanged on the spot, 
amongst them Paris, one of the arch-conspirators, while others, guilty 
of less active participation, received from 200 to 1,000 lashes. 
85. But the trial of one Mr. John Smith, a missionary of the London 
Missionary Society, in whose church or very close vicinity the plan for 
the insurrection had been concocted, aroused the greatest sensation. 
The accusation made against him was that he had not only inflamed 
sedition by his preaching, but that he had become cognisant of the 
entire plot without denouncing it. He was tried by court-martial, found 
guilty of high treason, and sentenced to death with the right of 
petitioning the King for mercy, but died in prison before the Pardon 
arrived from England. 
SG- The expenditure which this uprising cost the colony ran into 
200,000 dollars. It was the last attempt of the Negroes to obtain freedom 
by force, for the ever memorable 1st August, 1838, reduced the term of 
apprenticeship, originally fixed at four years, to two, it being felt that 
during the latter period the colonies would only have to suffer still more, 
and one willingly gave the slaves, ill-treated up to then, that which 
they more than once had striven to obtain in vain by rebellion. On 
that day a new Era rose for all the British colonies. Out of the 20 
millions voted by ' Parliament for giving effect to the Act a sum of 
£4,2G8,809 was distributed as compensation among the Guiana Planters, 
though the value of all the slaves in Guiana, reckoned by the purchase 
prices from 1822 to 1830, amounted to £9,489,559. 
8<. It was to be feared that the temporary effects of Emancipation 
could only be detrimental to the economic and manifest welfare of 
Guiana, and these fears were realised to an extent of which perhaps no 
one even had an inkling. All the labour supply lay in the hands of the 
African slaves and, owing to the conditions and prevailing climate was 
the only source to be tapped. The sudden and unprepared-for transi- 
tion from the condition of a slave who had no will of his own to that of 
a self-determining free citizen was one of the most powerful means of 
promoting the in-born and hereditary indolence of the negro. Work had 
hitherto only been a burden to this hitherto despised and ill-treated class 
who, forced by the rod of correction, had to submit to it: Emanci nation 
