Rev A Brandram No. 42
Montego Bay, 20th July 1835
My Dear Friend,
You will see that I have crossed our Island since I last wrote you. About midway across I stopped at Knockalva, station of the Church Missionary Society where the Rev. Mr. Betts officiates who was formerly in Sierra Leone. Here I had the pleasure of speaking or preaching to a number of his people assembled in the evening of a working day in his schoolroom, when I laid before them my usual topics, namely those of a preacher of the Gospel of Christ, and an agent of the Bible Society. The formation of a Bible Association was the result, and a goodly number of subscribers put down their names, several being for large family Bibles, and all for whole Bibles larger or smaller. Early next morning an elderly man came post haste to pay his first monthly subscription of ― half a dollar. I had just one card, and one card only, and that card he had. We greatly need cards as I said to you in my last: and I hope you will readily hear the negroes' petition for these as laid before you in that letter. Mr. Betts thinks that much more might be done in this Association could we have a large meeting after a more formal notice than we were able to give during my transient visit in journeying along. Whether this can be verified will depend on my other arrangements.
I arrived in this place, Montego Bay, on the 9th instant. Your letters of the 30th March and 12th May I found here waiting my arrival. I was of course glad to see them, and with all interest read over what you had written. O how wonderful is the art of writing, and how little do we think of this Divine art for man's advantage; for all things are from God, and his hand should be recognised in all.
Your Annual Meeting is the subject of your letter of the 12th of May. ― The first cheering circumstance in regard to it, is, that it was not a single but a twofold meeting, thus displaying that London and British interest is not decreased, in regard to this sterling object of circulating the word of life, but that it is on the contrary increasing. Your funds too for the elapsed year speak volumes; and volumes in truth they will enable you to speak or issue out to the nations, even volumes of that volume, which is the volume of all. The lively interest taken at your meeting on behalf of us poor negroes, is and must be, very gratifying to us all in this quarter. We hope that though you gave your Gift to us once for all, you do not intend to do so with your prayers. Please let them be continuous, at least till our Bond-and-Free system is over: and see how many of us you can pray into True Freedom in that time. Your fund of £15,000 raised expressly and exclusively for us, and in so short a time too, is in truth a fine display of British feeling, and will much astonish many foreign nations regarding you. Now what would you say, if we Negroes should surprise you and these nations before long with an equal sum raised by us and remitted to England for the exclusive purpose of enabling you to circulate the Scriptures in heathen lands? Such a hope we have, more or less distant, but first let us remit to you an ample sum to purchase Bibles for ourselves. From what I have told you in my last, you will see a fair prospect of something good and extensive in this latter way. But, now for a novelty: What pledge will you enter into with us in regard to the remittances from this quarter? That is to say, what will you promise to do, by the time the Negroes of the West Indies send you £15,000 of free contributions? I should like to entangle you in something good and great by such a pledge: and pray, what shall it be? We Jamaicans are under the half of the whole number of British Negroes, and somewhere about £6500 therefore would be our share: but say £7000 for even numbers. What then, I repeat, will you the Bible Society, and all your supporters at home pledge yourselves to do, by the time we send you from Jamaica £7000 sterling of free subscriptions, available for general purposes, and over and above what is remitted for Books? There's a glove for you: take it up, and let us hereby decide the merits of White and Black intellect, and who feels most in the kingdom of God. Will you by that time promise and compromise yourselves to raise among all your contributors the sum of £200,000 free subscriptions? But, what do I say? You are 25 millions in the British Isles, and we not half a million in all in this our island of Jamaica. Well then, equals and equals, a fair match: will you compromise and pledge yourselves all over England, Scotland, and Ireland, to raise Fifty times as much as we for Bibles to the world? We give you all the advantage of your Princes, Nobles, and Nabobs, and let us Negroes unite with us our Planters, and other white, and all our inhabitants. For every One thousand pounds then from Jamaica will you raise Fifty thousand. Now for it: speak out. The contest is holy and great, and the odds that starting in numbers and conditions are in your favour. You cannot for shame refuse to enter on this friendly strife with us. Please then give me your answer, and soon. Nay I cannot leave this subject until I press it upon you anew, again, and afresh. For, should we raise £7000 say in a few years, and you not be behind in the contest, the entire income of your Society during these years would be about one million of pounds sterling: and where we to call the number of years Five, your annual income would thus be doubled, and this is no mean consideration surely. You see therefore that it is a subject worth pressing. Be so good then as to publish this, in your Monthly Extracts, and let us see what your Auxiliary Societies will say to it, and all your friends: and let us start on the First of April next. Now then for the Black and White race and let us see which Race prevails.
I have been nearly carried away with this gold mine, and golden object, and with difficulty return to look at your "Great Wilderness of heads" as Mr. Yate would describe your Exeter Hall appearance to his New Zealanders. By the way if we Negroes should succeed as above to arouse your dormant powers, for powers you have ample enough, but they are as yet dormant notwithstanding all you have done, ― should we, I say, succeed in arousing your dormancy, you may next expect a challenge from New Zealand; and should we hear be so happy as to hasten on your slowness to a million, the New Zealanders may perhaps be honoured to double-fold your exertions. ― But, I am away once more. To re-return then to your Annual Meeting. The fine feeling of love, sympathy and benevolence, which were so displayed at your Noble Assemblage on behalf of our population in this Island and over the West India colonies, is very honourable to you, and will, on the other hand, be very useful to you, for such is the precious law of our Creator that all our kindly feelings for others, and our good deeds towards them return into our own bosoms. And O how sadly we stand in the way of our own interest when we are backward to do good to others, and to all around us, and everywhere. We here in this quarter have been long oppressed in body, in mind and in spirit, and you do well to sympathise with us. Our bodies however have at length and in part been unbound by the Abolition act; so in part have our minds been unloosed by the little education thus far obtained; and your precious Gift, together with your prayers, and our other spiritual means, will tend to emancipate our spirits, that we may pass from the state of bondsmen to that of sons. But, O My Dear Friend, and Britons all! you have not yet discharged your debt to the Negroes in the way of Education and Religious Instruction. Much I have read in the Report of your speeches at your Meeting of the Nobleness of England, and with all of which I agree: be noble then towards the Negroes in these two items mentioned ― Education and Spiritual Instruction; and in doing so you will call forth their nobleness in return, and that God may be glorified in all.
I thank you for the newspaper you have sent me, and which bears on this occasion so good a Record of you. I hope you have now made peace with all your opponents, and that they all at length are disposed to move on with you in your great work. Peace seemed triumphant at your great meeting, and long may this be the case in all your Grand Assemblages. Your notice of the third centenary since the Bible was printed in English, and not in England, and the contrasts you drew are exceedingly interesting to every Briton, and to every Christian everywhere. And O what responsibility is ours in occupying the position that God has placed us in. Let us not then, as Mr. Stowell admonished against, keep the pardon in our pockets, but let us speedily pay our debt to all nations. Your Report read, and the speeches made are all very interesting, and doubly so perhaps to one isolated in this far distant spot. Finally, the beautiful halo surrounding the whole of your appearance and proceedings leaves a pleasing and an imposing effect. O what must the heavenly assemblage be, when an earthly one is so sweet and so hallowed!
In your letter of the 30th of March you mention a pleasing circumstance of a coloured woman, who having received a Bible gratis, resolved to pay by instalments the full price of it, with the request that the sum might be paid in to the Negro fund. I shall not let this anecdote sleep, but shall awake with it our Negroes, and stir them up to emulation. A case in receiving your Gift Book a good deal resembles hers; and she paid up the 12 shillings, the full price of her rather costly Bible. I shall stir up our people to pay you back in a Gift, the full amount of your expenditure for us, that is, as before stated, our portion of £7000. I shall leave no stone unturned to get this, and thereby haste and the multiplication of your funds according to the pledge of you, till they reached the sum of one million and upwards. I shall stir up our Negroes too by the accounts given by Mr. Yate and Mr. Williams of the people in New Zealand, and the other islands in the Pacific Ocean, pressing on them to show as much an interest in attaining to a knowledge of the Scriptures as these people do.
By your resolution of the 23rd March last I see you have extended the time of a pertaining the Gift Book to the 1st of August next, and now close at hand. Your doing so is in perfect unison with your other kind feelings and acts on our behalf. All those among us friendly to your Society and to the Negroes wished it to be as you have thus done. Encouraged by the Bishop's note as given you in my letter of the 21st January last, and resolved also I see on the same day, and in the same spirit towards us, to send us forthwith 10,000 additional copies of your Gift Book. It would have been better however in regard to this had you waited till some indication of the want of this additional number had been hinted to you from this place. The accession of clerical cooperation so very gratifying did not however actually increase the number of readers. It is true you have not exceeded the number at first mentioned to you, but I suspect that number was overrated. It was given very soon after my arrival here, and when all my information was drawn from others. When however a smaller number came, nothing was I believe said to you about making up the number. We shall see how we get along, and shall perhaps notwithstanding what I have here said, devour all. But for this you must give me a relengthened term; and perhaps it would be both wise and kind to extend out liberty of giving for the period of one year more, till the 1st August 1836. ― Some months ago I stated that there was a great probability that many free Blacks and people of colour as well as white people seeing such a beautiful books (as they truly are) in the hands of the Apprentices, would naturally desire to procure books of the same kind in point of size and contents: and with this view I stated my opinion, that it would be well to send out a goodly number that would be for sale. In a letter I received some time after, I found you had acceded to my request. In your letter advising me of this, or in the Resolution itself, I forget which, you said the books so sent out would be without the "address" inside. I write from recollection not having your letter with me. I thought there probably was some oversight in this expression when I read it, as I could not suppose you possibly could put on the outside more than on the inside address saying "Presented" when the books were to be sold. When I wrote about these books I said, as far as I can recollect, that they should be done up like the others. But at the time I wrote this I did not know that there was to be any address on the books of at all, nor did I know this till I saw them in this Island. You have rather involved us a little in this matter, for though I have not seen the books, yet I learn from Kingston in which place they now are, that they actually say, "Presented by the British and Foreign Bible Society in commemoration of the 1st August 1834". But let me give you my authority in a letter from our good friend Mr. Tinson, for as I said I have not seen the books myself. He says,― "By the way it is rather awkward that the New Testaments and Psalters sent out for sale have the impression on the cover "Presented by the B.F.B.S. &c". Now if they had said, "In commemoration of the 1st August 1834", it might have been all very well, but when a person has paid a dollar for a book, he might not like that the book should tell everybody who took it up what is not true, that it was given, when he had paid the full price for it: and this may give some handle to Bruce's claim to, which perhaps you have seen." Now to whose superior head and couple of hands we owe this our awkward predicament I cannot tell, but I should think it cannot be yours. Probably some Bookseller may have favoured us with this scrape, as according to all accounts that class of men are not perfect. Bruce's tales to which Mr. Tinson refers are, besides others several, that we are selling the books you sent for a gift, and of course that we are pocketing the money ourselves. We must thank some of you certainly for this seemingly well founded imputation on our character and ways.
Now for a pleasanter subject, the Antigua Ladies, white, black and coloured, you have received £70 from them you say. I have already told, and shall again and again tell our Ladies here about this, and will try to make them also send you £70, and make them if possible repeat the sum as often as their number here exceeds the number in Antigua, which may be about Ten times.
You wish for accounts has particular as can be collected of the distribution of the Gift Book. I shall endeavour to procure them, and shall remit them to you as soon as I get them fully into my hands. The period up to which I shall take the account will be the First of August next, now, as you see, upon us.
It seems you did not understand the allusion to our osnaburg days being nearly over here. My reference was to the slave days, and partly the apprenticeship days too, in which osnaburgs were and are the clothing allowed by the Masters, and worn by the Negroes. With our better days will be put on other clothing, and the osnaburg dress the sign of bondage will be left off and disliked, and so also will be disliked even books clothed in osnaburgs. This was my allusion.
This paragraph private
((You say, "You do not mention having received the Introduction to the Old Testament which I sent you privately, 7000 copies, they ought to have reached you." I have heard nothing of them in any way; and I have been wondering how they were so long and getting ready. In the end of last month however I saw a good number of this book or tract at the Moravian Mission called New Cannil in my return from St. Elizabeth's to Savanna La Mar as mentioned in my last. Seeing these safely arrived, and some weeks or longer before I saw them, I was the more surprised that none had come my way. I hope you sent an invoice and a letter of advice with them, for nothing should be sent at any time without a letter accompanying. But perhaps you did send a letter, and in the manner of Tailor and Clothier in Liverpool once did in sending out to a friend of mine in South America a case of men's clothes for sale. He put the letter inside the case for security and cheapness as he said. The result was that the case lay at the Custom House, and lay long and long nobody knowing what it was. About a year after when all further waiting was out of the question, the case was opened, and out came the said letter, and declared for itself that it had been put there in its master's wisdom, to be safe and save postage. ― When these little books come, I am thinking of distributing them among our Bible Association subscribers, as I think this will fully meet the donors' wishes, for our subscribers are of all denominations, and those who thus subscribe, from the interest they taken the object will be the most likely persons to read and to profit by this little kindly present.))
Towards the close of your letter of the 12th of May your write as follows:― "You will be glad to know that we are in treaty with the gentleman about accepting an agency for us in the West Indies." I am glad indeed that you have resolved on an act which indicates so much attention to this quarter of the world, and I am sure your agent's visit in your name will be very acceptable to many who feel a great interest in your cause in these Islands, and who are persuaded that your work cannot be effectively attended to but by a person whose exclusive business it is. I shall be glad to know as early as you can inform me who this gentleman is and when he is likely to set out, as well as to know the route he takes. My advice would be that he go direct in the first place to Demerara, visiting also Essequibo and Berbice. Your work there to do it properly will require from three to six months. From thence I think he should visit Cayenne and Surinam, returning to Demerara. From these continental colonies he should next go to Barbados, as there is a regular conveyance by Government vessels between Demerara and Barbados twice every month. After finishing your work in the last mentioned place, he should go on and on as follows:― Tobago, Trinidad, Grenada, St. Vincent's, St. Lucy, Martinique, Dominica, Guadaloupe, Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts, Statia, Saba, St. Barts, St. Martin's, Anguilla, Tortola, St. Thomas, St. John's, Santa Cruz, Crab Island, and Porto Rico. If you intend to make two divisions of the West Indies, and two agencies, then your Windward agent should return from Porto Rico (by way of the capital) to St. Thomas, and from that proceed to Barbados, and thence to Demerara; and being there commence his carrer (?) anew. But should you wish to have only one agent for these colonies then your agent now referred to should after returning from Porto Rico to St. Thomas, proceed from that to Hayti, and thence to Jamaica.― In my last letter you will see that I have touched on the subject of my own agency, and requested to know from the committee what is their wish concerning this field and myself; and in my private letter to you of 24 of April I have more fully unfolded my views and my wishes on the whole matter. I shall therefore continue my operations here as already traced to you in outline until I see the result of your deliberations, ever praying that the Lord our God may direct you to what is best for you to do for the glory of his kingdom in this quarter.
Our prospects here in this town and parish, I am happy to say, are encouraging. The Rector is our friend, and that is a great point. But, our various operations here when brought to a close, or in other words, when fairly set in train, will be duly related to you in another letter.
Before I conclude, I wish to say a few words about a subject touched upon, and rather closely perhaps, in an early part of this letter; I mean this proposal made to you folks on that side, to try your strength with us people here, in order to see who and which can do good fastest; and also and mainly, that by this emulation and stimulus, both of us may do more good than we might do without such a contest, and thereby aced and on the kingdom of God.― I say, I am afraid I may have touched upon it too closely, and that you will think me extravagant. But nobody should bear little out of the way ideas better than yourselves, for you are the most extravagant people in the world. For instance, a handful of you there, some 30 years ago, with not a good handful of money among you all, met, talked and planned and arranged,― and do what?― why supply the Scriptures in all languages, to all the world! Now was there ever a more out of the way idea than this, feasibility considered. Neither are you yet cured of your folly, for although you have made a trial now for 30 years and one, and have now been able to give directly and indirectly and altogether some 14 millions, you still talk of your idea as much as ever, and more, of supplying with the Scriptures the whole one thousand millions of our species! Now I do not think that my idea on the whole is more extravagant than this; and to tell you the truth, I think we Negroes would catch you and probably pass you before you attained to one fiftieth of your object, or before you publish altogether 20 millions of copies of the Holy Scriptures. But, to be guarded, what I would say about the whole proposal, is this: think upon the subject for a couple of months, or double that time, and suspend its publication in the Monthly Extracts till I write you again respecting it, and bid you start. In the meantime, I shall be getting more and more knowledge of our capabilities here, and of our wishes to enter upon this trial and course. Could you and we both run well in this race, great and good would indeed be the result.― Please advise Mr. Stowell of this project, and ask him what he thinks about it.
Believe me, Affectionately Yours,
James Thomson.
I give you here an appendix to this letter, something that will probably interest you, on its own account, and on account of the quarter from which it comes. It is a Planter's hymn for the First of August of 1834. It was written by an Overseer in this parish:
1. God of our Fathers! Freedom's God!
Thou break'st the captive's chains!
Body and soul thou dost unload:
Oh: had I seraph's strains
2. To sing the glorious beam which suns
Bright from thy holy place
Enlightening Afric's dusky sons
To run thy freedom's race
3. O hallowed day! They whom the road
Hath chastened and long and sore
Shall know our God is freedom's God
They shall be slaves no more!
4. Blest God! Who in the rulers' hearts
Hath worked to do thy will;
Forbid the people, on their parts
Be slaves to Satan still.
5. No! Thou shalt breathe upon their souls
And they shall learn from thee
That they alone by law controls
Are really― Truly free.
6. Then shouts to him to freedom's God
Oh could the world all join:
Then Angels from their blest abode
Might blend their song with mine.
7. And the wide spreading the universe
One hallelujah cry―
The end of man's first direst curse―
Abhorred slavery.
8. Our bonds would then be bonds of love―
Our minds with grace endowed―
Our mingled song with saints above―
Our God is freedom's God.