An ACT to enable persons of Colour and Negroes of Free condition, to save deficiencies for their own Slaves, and for the Slaves of each other

WHEREAS it is deemed expedient that persons of colour and negroes of free condition should be permitted to employ persons of the same class and condition on their respective properties, and that such free persons so employed, as well as such free persons being proprietors, should be allowed to save deficiencies for their own body; and it is also expedient to repeal a certain clause of an Act herein-after mentioned, relating to free persons: We, therefore, Your Majesty’s dutiful and loyal subjects, the Assembly of this Your Majesty’s Island of Jamaica, do most humbly beseech Your Majesty that it may be enacted; be it therefore enacted and ordained by the Governor, Council, and Assembly of this Island, and it is hereby enacted and ordained by the authority of the same, [Clause 1] That the fourth clause of the twenty-seventh chapter of the fifty-third year of the reign of His present Majesty be and the same is hereby repealed.

[Clause 2] And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That notwithstanding any thing contained to the contrary in a certain Act of this Island, passed on the eleventh day of December in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and twelve, intituled, “An Act to oblige the several inhabitants of this Island to keep a number of white persons serving in the militia, in proportion to the number of slaves they shall possess, or to pay certain sums of money in case they shall be deficient,” it shall and may be lawful for every proprietor, being a person of colour or negro of free condition, or other person or persons of the same free condition, holding, possessing, or employing, in any parish within this Island, any slaves, or hiring any slaves by the year, to keep up, employ, and hire one or more person or persons of the same free class or condition, for the several numbers of slaves, and according to the scale and the several proportions set forth in the first clause of the said last above recited Act, which said free persons shall be males, actually doing duty in the militia, and shall live and reside on the plantation or plantations for which they shall respectively be given in, receiving wages or hire for their services on such plantations respectively, at not less than fifty pounds per annum.

[Clause 3] And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That in all cases wherein by the said Act white persons and their respective descendants are allowed to save deficiencies for their own slaves, or for the slaves of any other white persons, it shall be lawful in like manner for persons of colour and negroes of free condition to save deficiencies for themselves respectively, or for other persons of colour, or negroes of free condition, on whose properties they shall respectively be employed and hired as aforesaid.

[Clause 4] And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That in all other cases, not particularly mentioned in this Act, all duties, obligations, and penalties, all subjects of relief, and all forms of giving in, and of affidavits relating to white persons, shall in like manner, mutatis mutandis, be deemed and considered as applicable to persons of free condition as aforesaid, of which the commissioners of public accounts, the receiver general, all magistrates, clerks of vestries, and other persons, shall in like manner and under like penalties take due notice.

[Clause 5] And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That this act shall continue and be in force from the passing thereof until the thirty-first day of December in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and sixteen, and no longer.