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NEGLECT OF THE ISLAND GARRISONS

817

arms, ammunition or money to subsist withal, not so much as a sword nor the ammunition loaf to a place where is no magazine", the French and Dutch being spectators of their naked condition. On the other hand there were ten companies of old French soldiers well paid and clothed in St Christopher.1 Stapleton's troops were unpaid; the resources which should have been available for him were diverted by the King, and he himself was the King's creditor for many years of arrears of pay, yet he never lost heart, presenting always a splendid type of quiet resolution, resource and devotion. As time went on, even Stapleton became worn out by the situation. "I am out of purse", he wrote, "for shrouds for the dead, and cure of the wounded, for minding their arms and giving them credit in merchants' store houses." When he had accomplished seventeen years of hard work he quitted his post on leave of absence, driven to England by the home sickness that heralded the approach of death.

Considering the behaviour of the English Government it is not astonishing to find the suspicions held by the colonists. Thus the governor, Sir Jonathan Atkins, wrote from Barbados: "When the French were cruising in these parts, a letter written me from England gave the people alarm that the island was to be sold to the French; and because I spoke French, I was put down as frenchified and the fittest man to deliver it up. It is easy to deceive these people, but very hard to rectify it".4

Statements made by these governors must, however, be sometimes taken with a grain of salt. This Sir Jonathan Atkins had to be recalled for misbehaviour, though so far as his disgrace was due to his championing the cause of the colonists against the Acts of Trade he may not have been undeserving of sympathy. His successor, Sir R. Dutton, after starting under apparently favourable auspices, proved himself absolutely dishonest and was summarily dismissed. In Bermuda disputes between the Chartered Company which was about to be abolished led to a kind of civil war. The cry of "No Popery" was raised by the Nonconformist ministers, the governor giving out that people would be forced to go to church by drum and fiddle. When the first rumour of the fall of the Company reached the island, the authority of its governor was at once disclaimed and he himself attacked by a mob headed by one of his own captains of militia. The captain drew his sword on him, the captain's companions tripped up his heels and the rest of the mob stamped on him leaving his leg in a very sad condition.6

Meanwhile in Jamaica a more orderly constitutional struggle ended in the triumph of the colonists, the attempt to apply Poynings's Act to the island proving a failure. The return of Sir Thomas Lynch as

1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1677-80, no. 582.

3 Ibid. 1681-5, no. 860.

b Ibid. 1681-5, nos. 1075, 1097.

CHBE I

2 Ibid. no. 1557.
Ibid. 1677-80, no. 1334.
Ibid. 1681-5, no. 1899.

52

again governor proved very successful, though a riot between the King's sailors and the townsfolk for a time threatened trouble. The governor's wise and conciliatory administration had changed the old suspicious feeling against the Crown into hearty and healthy loyalty. Sir Henry Morgan had by this time become wholly disreputable, and was constantly drunk, abusing the Government and cursing extravagantly. His dismissal was therefore a measure of necessity.1 Space forbids to pursue the history of the West Indies from the statements in the Calendars but again and again in their pages the same troubles repeat themselves: the dishonesty and inefficiency of governors, the quarrelsome temper of the people, and dread of negro risings and the cruelty shown in their suppression. Over Jamaica especially the storm clouds caused by privateering bulked ominous.

Considerable difference of opinion existed with regard to the character of the population. Bryan Edwards, the patriotic historian of the West Indies, speaks warmly on behalf of his compatriots, but an English traveller wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century: "Debility pervades all ranks.... Barbados compared with the rest of the West Indies may be esteemed a very healthy island....But from the meagre and sallow appearance of the native yeomanry and citizens, their sunken eyes, relaxed countenances, and languid motions, I felt always on beholding them that the climate was irreconcileable with the constitution of their race. I am afraid also from the mean and disingenuous behaviour of some of the inferior white inhabitants of the town that the climate and perhaps their association with the blacks, have not a little relaxed in them the strength and integrity of the British moral character". The extraordinary behaviour of many of the English governors may have been in great measure due to the influence of a tropical climate, coupled with a total neglect of the laws of health in the matter of food and drink, madeira along with brandy being the favourite beverage.

But great as was the danger from absenteeism it proved impossible to remedy it. These absentees who lived in London were men of great wealth, social position and political power. They held meetings at which they secretly settled the affairs of the islands. Adam Smith affirmed that "our tobacco colonies send us home no such wealthy planters as we see frequently arrive from our sugar islands”.3 McKinnen was surprised at the absence of resident planters. In one of the northern and richest districts it was said that of eighty proprietors not three were to be found at this time on the spot, the wealth of the soil being transported and consumed in remote countries.1

Miss Schaw, who wrote with enthusiasm about Antigua, was quick to recognise this evil. Children sent at an early age to England

1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1677-80, no. 1317.

McKinnen, A tour through the British West Indies in the years 1802, 1803, 1804. 3 Wealth of Nations, bk 1, chap. xi, pt 1.

McKinnen, p. 108.

CONDITION OF THE SLAVES

819

formed their sentiments there, and they left it just when they were at an age to enjoy it most and returned to their friends and country as banished exiles, nor could any future connection cure them of the longing they had to return to Britain. Antigua, however, suffered less from this evil than did the other islands, St Christopher being almost abandoned to overseers and managers.1 Miss Schaw gives a charming description of the relations between masters and men at their best. Colonel Martin, "the loved and revered father of Antigua", lived on his estates "which are cultivated to the height by a large troop of healthy negroes, who cheerfully perform the labour imposed on them by a kind and beneficent master, not a harsh and unreasonable tyrant. Well fed, well supported, they appear the subjects of a good prince, not the slaves of a planter. The effect of this kindness is a daily increase of riches by the slaves born to him on his own plantation. He told me he had not bought in a slave for upwards of twenty years". Still, though Miss Schaw's account of the West Indian English is generally favourable, she has to admit the bad results of the intercourse between the whites and the native women; and the crack of the whip reminded one that relations between the races were not always as idyllic as those on Colonel Martin's estate. Miss Schaw laid the flattering unction to her soul that the negroes did not feel seriously their physical punishment.

In striking contrast is the gloomy picture presented by Lady Nugent, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica. Although Lady Nugent did not come to Jamaica before 1801 there had been no change in the condition of the island since the last half of the previous century. It is true that she thought that the ill-treatment of the slaves had been greatly exaggerated and that generally speaking the slaves were extremely well used. Still the law of the land seemed shockingly severe. Three magistrates might condemn a slave to death. Where two slaves, one an old offender, the other a boy of sixteen, had robbed a man of his watch, etc., the old man who arranged the theft and received the stolen goods was condemned to hard labour, and the boy to be hanged. The governor made every exertion to save the life of the boy, but it seemed that it could not be done without exercising his prerogative very far and giving offence and alarm to the white population. Necessity for the slave trade was in large measure due to the example of licentiousness set by the whites who, in all classes, married or single, lived immoral lives with their female slaves. It was melancholy to see the disregard of both religion and morality throughout the whole island. Everyone seemed solicitous to make money, and no one seemed to regard the mode of acquiring it. It was extraordinary to witness the immediate effect that the

1 Andrews, E. W. and C. M., Journal of a Lady of Quality, p. 92. 2 Ibid. pp. 103-4. Lady Nugent's Journal, 1801-15 (ed. Cundall, F.), p. 72.

• Ibid. pp. 117, 118.

climate and habit of living had upon the minds and manners of Europeans, particularly upon the lower orders. In the upper ranks they became indolent and inactive, regardless of everything but eating, drinking and indulging themselves, and were almost entirely under the dominion of their mulatto favourites. In the lower orders they were the same, with the addition of conceit and tyranny, considering the negroes as creatures formed merely to administer to their ease, and to be subject to their caprice. The white servants did not regard them as human beings or in the possession of souls.1 Lady Nugent was "not astonished at the general ill-health of the men; for they really eat like cormorants and drink like porpoises". The wealth of the richest proprietors was enormous; one, Mr Taylor, the richest man in the island, piqued himself upon making his nephew the richest commoner in England. A Mr Mitchell boasted of paying £30,000 per annum for duties to Government.

An interesting account of Barbados is given by Dr G. Pinckard, who went out with the expedition to the West Indies in 1805. Although it had had to yield to other settlements in point of produce and increase of population, still its trade and resources continued to be important, its population great, and the picturesque scenery of its surface was perhaps unrivalled. Its temperature was more equable and its air healthier than those of the other islands. Every part came under the influence of the trade-wind which made it the most healthy of the islands, being treated by the other colonies as a health resort. Situated to windward of the other islands it received the uninterrupted breeze brought to it in all its purity immediately from a wide extent of ocean unimpregnated by the poisonous exhalations of stagnant waters or polluted soil. Little oppression was felt from the heat, and in the harbour and placed in the shade the thermometer was seldom higher than 84 and at no time exceeded 86 degrees. Yet in spite of all these advantages Barbados had its own peculiar trouble in the shape of a disease, a form of elephantiasis. Dr Pinckard especially noted that Barbados contained a numerous class of inhabitants between the great planters and the people of colour; of these many were descended from the original settlers and through several generations had been born and had constantly lived upon the island. They regarded it as their native and only abode, and did not, like their richer neighbours, look to England as another and a better home.5 The inhabitants. prided themselves upon the island's antiquity and assumed a consequence and almost a claim to hereditary rank and privilege from priority of establishment. This sense of distinction was strongly manifested by the common expression "neither Charib nor Creole but true Barbadian". This boast was shared even by the slaves, who

1 Lady Nugent's Journal, pp. 131-2.

3 Ibid. p. 88.

5 Ibid. п, 75 seqq.

a Ibid. p. 108.

Notes on the West Indies, by Pinckard, G., M.D., II, 79–80.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN BARBADOS

821

proudly arrogated a superiority above the negroes of the other islands.

The poor whites lived in cottages remote from the great class of merchants and planters, obtaining a scanty livelihood by cultivating a small patch of earth and breeding up poultry or what they termed stock for the markets. By misfortune or misconduct they were reduced to a state far removed from independence, often indeed but little superior to the condition of free negroes. Yet even these believed that in the scale of creation there could be no other country, kingdom or empire equal to their transcendent island, their own. Barbados; whence the adage: "What would poor old England do, were Barbados to forsake her?" Dr Pinckard also emphasised that the people of Barbados were much too addicted to the pleasures of the table. "In eating they might put to the blush even the turtle countenances of our London fat citizens."2 He further noted the inefficiency of slave labour. A gang of negroes employed in making a road to the governor's house afforded a striking example of the indolence due to climate and slavery. A mulatto overseer attended them who had every appearance of being as much a stranger to industry as the negroes, who seemed not to be apprehensive of the driver or his whip except when he made it fall across them in stripes. "In proportion to the work done by English labourers and the price usually paid for it the labour of these slaves could not be calculated at so much as twopence per day, for almost any two men in England would, with the greatest ease, do as much work in a given time as was performed by a dozen of these indolent meagre-looking beings." Dr Pinckard saw, on one occasion, four women, almost naked, working in a canefield; a stout robust-looking man, apparently white, was following them holding a whip at their backs. Asked why he did not join in the task, the reply was, that it was not his business, that he had only to keep the women at work and make them feel the weight of the whip if they grew idle or relaxed from their labour.

Equally revolting was the Barbadian law under which, if an infant was born in slavery, a mother, should she obtain her own freedom, could not claim her child, but had to leave it, still the disposable property of her mistress, equally liable to be sold as any other piece of furniture in the house. "Thus", our author concludes, "are the natural ties of our species torn asunder, and the dearest attachments and purest affections of the heart cruelly broken down! Babes are separated from their parents and mothers robbed of their children by this unnatural appropriation of human substance!"4

A noteworthy event was a visit to Codrington College. The college was richly endowed with the generous intention of establishing a great and useful school for the education of the youth of Barbados,

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