From the Governor of Jamaica TO THE NEGRO POPULATION THROUGHOUT THE ISLAND OF JAMAICA.

So, I am reading a letter supposedly written in 1834 by Governor of Jamaica, Sligo and addressed to the Negro Population of Jamaica. Just amazing to me that the then Governor would write to slaves when he never made any attempt to teach them to read. But I suppose the slave master, if he was feeling kind enough would read it to them. The quality of the Image is not very good, so I will attempt to write a transcript of what I am reading and I will attach the document so you can read it for yourselves just in case I made any mistake. The eyesight is not what it used to.

?????? - Means I cannot make out the word   

https://nationalarchives.gov.uk/caribbeanhistory/popups/slavery-negotiating-freedom/co137_192_46.htm

Dear Friends,

Our Good King, who was himself in Jamaica a long time ago, still thinks and talks a great deal about this island. He has sent me out here to take care of you, and to protect your rights but he has ordered me to see justice done to your owners and to punish those who do wrong. Take my advice for I am your friend – be sober, honest and work well when you become APPRENTICES. For should you behave ill and refuse to work because you are no longer slaves, you will ?????? render yourselves liable to punishment.

The People of England are your friends and fellow subjects – they have shown themselves such by passing a bill to make you all free. Your masters are your friend, they have proved their kind feeling towards you by passing in the house of assembly  the same bill. The way to prove that you are deserving of all this goodness, is by laboring diligently during your APPRENTICESHIP

You will, on the first of August next, no longer be slaves, but from that day you will be APPRENTICED to your former owners for a few years, in order to fit you all for freedom. It will therefore depend entirely upon your own conduct whether your APPRENTICESHIP be short or long, for should you runaway you will be brought back by the Maroons and Police and have to remain in APPRENTICESHIP longer than those who behave well.

You will only be required to work four days and a half in each week, the remaining day and half in each week will be your time, and you may enjoy it for your own benefit. Bear in mind that everyone is obliged to work –some work with their hands, others with their heads, but no one can live and be considered respectable without some employment. Your lot is to work with your hands, I pray you therefore, do your part faithfully, for if you neglect your duty you will be brought before the magistrate who the King have sent out to watch you and they must act fairly and do justice to all by punishing those who are badly disposed. Do not listen to the advice of bad people, for should any of you refuse to do what the law requires of you, you will bitterly repent it, when at the end of the appointed time, all you fellow labourers are released from APPRENTICESHIP, you find yourself condemned to hard labour in the workhouse for a lengthened period, as a punishment for you disobedience.

If you follow my advice, and conduct yourselves well, nothing can prevent you being your own masters, and to labour for yourselves, and your wives and your children, at the end of your four and six years, according o your respected class.

I have not time to go about to all the properties in the island and tell you this myself – I have therefore ordered this letter of advice to be printed, and ordered it read to you all, that you may not be deceived and bring yourself into trouble by bad advice or mistaken notions.

I trust you will all be obedient and diligent subjects to our good King, so that he may never have cause to be sorry for all the good he has done for you.

Your friend and well wisher

SLIGO

Governor of Jamaica
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I have never read a more rubbish letter. Typical British pretense at benevolence and friendship and I am sure some of the subjugated people fell for this rubbish after hundreds of years of being conditioned and subjugated. The use of the word employment, when it was four and a half days of forced slavery, to compensate the slave master for loss of human property. The constant expression of pretend caring and love on behalf of the King, trying to convince the enslaved human beings to accept their cursed lot in life, as slaves to colonial Britain. The declaration that the people of England were friends to the slaves was a nice delusional touch. 

This is like a rapist, who lock a woman in his dungeon, he use to rape her 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but now telling her because he is her friend and because he cares,  he will only rape her for four and a half days and she was free from being rape for one and a half day, providing she puts up with the rape for the four and a half days. British Benevolence in a nutshell.

The Maroons owes the people of Jamaica an apology because they bought their own freedom with the freedom of their fellow African brothers and sisters. They were allowed to live free so long as they hunt down, capture and return runaway slaves.

Another form of compensation to the slave masters, was the Apprenticeship System where slaves themselves were forced to work the fields for a further six years after the supposed abolition of slavery – 45 hours a week for no pay.

This on top of the fact that, The British government paid out £20m to compensate families that owned slaves for the loss of their "property" when slave-ownership was abolished in Britain's colonies in 1833. This figure represented a staggering 40 per cent of the Treasury's annual spending budget and, in today's terms, calculated as wage values, equates to around £16.5 BILLION, “but no compensation was paid to the former slaves”.

**On February 9, 2018, it had been revealed by Her Majesty Treasury that a £20-million loan, used to compensate slave owners at the abolition of slavery in 1833, was being paid back up to 2015.