CHAPTER I.

Having now giving a sketch of our sojourn in Antigua, sufficiently distinct, we trust, to acquaint the reader with the general outline of things, and to apprise him of the standing and competency of those from whom we obtained our information, we proceed to a more minute account of the results of our investigations. The testimony we are about to present shall be embodied in as condensed a form, as its variety and importance will allow. We arrange it according to the most natural and obvious order–in two general divisions, placing that testimony which relates to the past and present condition of the colony in one division, and that which bears directly upon the question of slavery in America in another.

RELIGION.

There are three denominations of Christians in Antigua: the Established Church, the Moravians, and Wesleyans. The Moravians number fifteen thousand–almost exclusively negroes. The Wesleyans embrace three thousand members, and about as many more attendants. Of the three thousand members, says a Wesleyan missionary, “not fifty are whites–a larger number are colored; but the greater part black.” “The attendance of the negro population at the churches and chapels” (of the established order), says the Rector of St. John's, “amounts to four thousand six hundred and thirty-six.” The whole number of blacks receiving religious instruction from these Christian bodies, making allowance for the proportion of white and colored included in the three thousand Wesleyans, is about twenty-two thousand–leaving a population of eight thousand negroes in Antigua who are unsupplied with religious instruction.