Excerpt from Charge of the Lord Chief Justice of England to the Grand Jury at the Central Criminal Court

Such being the law, we have to inquire to which of the two classes to which I have referred Jamaica belongs. N ow, it is quite true that Jamaica was originally acquired by conquest. It was taken by an English force which landed upon the island in the year It had previously belonged to the Crown of Spain, and was inhabited by a Spanish population, with the negro slaves whom they had introduce d for the purpose of cultivating the land. But the colony, once a ¿ourishing one, had fallen into decay, iand the population had been reduced to a very limited number. Historians say there were not above Spaniards left in the whole island. It appears that on the occasion of the conquest by the lenglish the best portion of the Spanish population at once quitted the island. A few, however, remained, while the negroes withdrew to the mountains, which are in the centre of the island, and are lofty and inac rcessible, and were covered - as I believe they are, to a great extent, to this day - with forests, and there established themselves in a state of wild, savage inde pendence, and there, from that time to the present, they have remained, sometimes occasioning great difficulty and trouble to the English Government, but upon the late occasion affording valuable assistance as auxiliaries in suppressing this negro insurrection. They are the people known by the name of Maroons. They have jnothing in common with the other negroes except their colour and their African origin.

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