[Illustration: A MAP OF PART OF BRITISH GUIANA.]
From the ample information recently furnished by the missionaries
to the Directors, we learn that these two colonies of the British
Crown contain together a population of Negro extraction amounting
to half a million individuals; viz.: BRITISH GUIANA, 100,000;
JAMAICA, 400,000. Besides these there are Indian Coolies, 28,800 in
number, of whom GUIANA has 25,000. That province also contains 7,000
Indians, while Jamaica has its thousands of heathen Maroons. The
ruling population of whites is 13,816 in Jamaica, and 2,000 in Guiana,
or about 16,000 in all. This native population of half a million,
just equal in number to the population of the single city of Calcutta
or Canton, spread over an occupied territory of twelve thousand
square miles, and situated only four thousand miles from England,
enjoys the services of three hundred professed ministers of the
Gospel; of whom a hundred and forty are supplied by Missionary
Societies not connected with the established churches and supported
by voluntary funds. The bulk of the population is nominally Christian,
and has been for some years as well instructed in Christianity as
an equal number of persons in the country parts of England. And
doubtless it has been thus christianized the more fully because of
the large supply of religious teachers furnished by the different
sections of the Church of Christ.
It is evident that the converts in Jamaica occupy a much higher
position of physical and social comfort than those in GUIANA, and
that the latter are not so well off as they were five-and-twenty years
ago. While wages have fallen and prices have increased, it is evident
that the moral influence of the 25,000 Coolies from India, with all
their heathen vices, on the 100,000 Creoles has been exceedingly
injurious. In neither colony has there been that thorough spiritual
growth, that self-control, that self-reliance among the christian
converts generally, which their best friends hoped for and thought
they were able to find. This cannot be deemed unnatural, when it is
considered that only thirty years have passed since the Act of
Emancipation, and that ages of training will be needed before the
moral taint of slavery is purified away.
[Illustration: RIDGEMOUNT, JAMAICA.]
The Directors therefore feel that it would be in every way a mistake
to throw these young and imperfect churches at once upon their own
resources. They have also not seriously entertained the suggestion
made to commend them to the care of some other evangelical
denomination seeking the same end as ourselves. Nevertheless the
Board cannot think it right or wise to continue the present system
unchanged. If unable completely to run alone, our churches are too
large, the members too numerous, and their resources too great to
justify any continuance of that complete dependence upon the Society
which has prevailed with them hitherto. The Board desire to see the
churches strong in themselves, managing completely their own affairs,
providing the ministry by which they shall be instructed, and engaged
heartily in missionary efforts for the conversion of their heathen
neighbours. This is the end which, they trust, will henceforth be
distinctly kept in view, and which should be sought by every means
which practical experience finds suitable to promote it.
They have resolved, therefore, to adopt the following
measures:--First, they limit the staff of English missionaries to
the number of men (thirteen) now left in the field. They desire that
steady efforts shall be made to place all the churches under the
pastoral charge of suitable Native ministers. They desire that all
the local and incidental expenses of the mission shall be entirely
defrayed by the Native Churches. Lastly, they will limit their grants
from England to the allowance of the English missionaries.