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[Illustration: MOUNTAIN CRATER, DOMINICA.]
THE ENGLISH
IN
THE WEST INDIES
OR
THE BOW OF ULYSSES
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY G. PEARSON
AFTER DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR
[Illustration]
NEW EDITION
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1888
_All rights reserved_
Fuersten praegen so oft auf kaum versilbertes Kupfer
Ihr bedeutendes Bild: lange betruegt sich das Volk
Schwaermer praegen den Stempel des Geist's auf Luegen und Unsinn:
Wem der Probirstein fehlt, haelt sie fuer redliches Gold.
GOETHE.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
My purpose in writing this book is so fully explained in the book itself
that a Preface is unnecessary. I visited the West India Islands in order
to increase my acquaintance with the condition of the British Colonies.
I have related what I saw and what I heard, with the general impressions
which I was led to form.
In a few instances, when opinions were conveyed to me which were
important in themselves, but which it might be undesirable to assign to
the persons from whom I heard them, I have altered initials and
disguised localities and circumstances.
The illustrations are from sketches of my own, which, except so far as
they are tolerably like the scenes which they represent, are without
value. They have been made producible by the skill and care of the
engraver, Mr. Pearson, to whom my warmest thanks are due.
J.A.F.
ONSLOW GARDENS: _November 15, 1887_.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Colonial policy--Union or separation--Self-government--Varieties of
condition--The Pacific colonies--The West Indies--Proposals
for a West Indian federation--Nature of the population--American
union and British plantations--Original conquest of
the West Indies 1
CHAPTER II.
In the train for Southampton--Morning papers--The new 'Locksley
Hall'--Past and present--The 'Moselle'--Heavy weather--The
Petrel--The Azores 10
CHAPTER III.
The tropics--Passengers on board--Account of the Darien
canal--Planters' complaints--West Indian history--The Spanish
conquest--Drake and Hawkins--The buccaneers--The pirates--French
and English--Rodney--Battle of April 12--Peace with honour--Doers
and talkers 20
CHAPTER IV.
First sight of Barbadoes--Origin of the name--Pere Labat--Bridgetown
two hundred years ago--Slavery and Christianity--Economic
crisis--Sugar bounties--Aspect of the streets--Government
House and its occupants--Duties of a governor of Barbadoes 32
CHAPTER V.
West Indian politeness--Negro morals and felicity--Island of St.
Vincent--Grenada--The harbour--Disappearance of the whites--An
island of black freeholders--Tobago--Dramatic art--A
promising incident 41
CHAPTER VI.
Charles Kingsley at Trinidad--'Lay of the Last Buccaneer'--A
French _forban_--Adventure at Aves--Mass on board a pirate ship--Port
of Spain--A house in the tropics--A political meeting--Government
House--The Botanical Gardens--Kingsley's rooms--Sugar
estates and coolies 51
CHAPTER VII.
A coolie village--Negro freeholds--Waterworks--Snakes--Slavery--
Evidence of Lord Rodney--Future of the negroes--Necessity of
English rule--The Blue Basin--Black boy and crayfish 66
CHAPTER VIII.
Home Rule in Trinidad--Political aspirations--Nature of the
problem--Crown administration--Colonial governors--A Russian
apologue--Dinner at Government House--'The Three Fishers'--Charles
Warner--Alternative futures of the colony 75
CHAPTER IX.
Barbadoes again--Social condition of the island--Political
constitution--Effects of the sugar bounties--Dangers of general
bankruptcy--The Hall of Assembly--Sir Charles Pearson--Society
in Bridgetown--A morning drive--Church of St. John's--Sir
Graham Briggs--An old planter's palace--The Chief Justice of
Barbadoes 88
CHAPTER X.
Leeward and Windward Islands--The Caribs of Dominica--Visit of
Pere Labat--St. Lucia--The Pitons--The harbour at Castries--Intended
coaling station--Visit to the administrator--The old
fort and barracks--Conversation with an American--Constitution
of Dominica--Land at Roseau 113
CHAPTER XI.
Curiosities in Dominica--Nights in the tropics--English and Catholic
churches--The market place at Roseau--Fishing extraordinary--A
storm--Dominican boatmen--Morning walks--Effects of the
Leeward Islands Confederation--An estate cultivated as it ought
to be--A mountain ride--Leave the island--Reflections 132
CHAPTER XII.
The Darien canal--Jamaican mail packet--Captain W.--Retrospect
of Jamaican history--Waterspout at sea--Hayti--Jacmel--A
walk through the town--A Jamaican planter--First sight of the
Blue Mountains--Port Royal--Kingston--The Colonial Secretary--Gordon
riots--Changes in the Jamaican constitution 155
CHAPTER XIII.
The English mails--Irish agitation--Two kinds of colonies--Indian
administration--How far applicable in the West Indies--Land at
Kingston--Government House--Dinner party--Interesting
officer--Majuba Hill--Mountain station--Kingston
curiosities--Tobacco--Valley in the Blue Mountains 180
CHAPTER XIV.
Visit to Port Royal--Dockyard--Town--Church--Fort Augusta--The
eyrie in the mountains--Ride to Newcastle--Society in
Jamaica--Religious bodies--Liberty and authority 195
CHAPTER XV.
The Church of England in Jamaica--Drive to Castleton--Botanical
Gardens--Picnic by the river--Black women--Ball at Government
House--Mandeville--Miss Roy--Country society--Manners--American
visitors--A Moravian missionary--The modern
Radical creed 208
CHAPTER XVI.
Jamaican hospitality--Cherry Garden--George William Gordon--The
Gordon riots--Governor Eyre--A dispute and its consequences--Jamaican
country-house society--Modern speculation--A
Spanish fable--Port Royal--The commodore--Naval theatricals--The
modern sailor 224
CHAPTER XVII.
Present state of Jamaica--Test of progress--Resources of the
island--Political alternatives--Black supremacy and probable
consequences--The West Indian problem 243
CHAPTER XVIII.
Passage to Cuba--A Canadian commissioner--Havana--The Moro--The
city and harbour--Cuban money--American visitors--The
cathedral--Tomb of Columbus--New friends--The late rebellion--Slave
emancipation--Spain and progress--A bull fight 253
CHAPTER XIX.
Hotels in Havana--Sights in the city--Cigar manufactories--West
Indian industries--The Captain-General--The Jesuit college--Father
Vinez--Clubs in Havana--Spanish aristocracy--Sea
lodging house 272
CHAPTER XX.
Return to Havana--The Spaniards in Cuba--Prospects--American
influence--Future of the West Indies--English rumours--Leave
Cuba--The harbour at night--The Bahama Channel--Hayti--Port
au Prince--The black republic--West Indian history 291
CHAPTER XXI.
Return to Jamaica--Cherry Garden again--Black servants--Social
conditions--Sir Henry Norman--King's House once more--Negro
suffrage--The will of the people--The Irish python--Conditions
of colonial union--Oratory and statesmanship 308
CHAPTER XXII.
Going home--Retrospect--Alternative courses--Future of the
Empire--Sovereignty of the sea--The Greeks--The rights of
man--Plato--The voice of the people--Imperial federation--Hereditary
colonial policy--New Irelands--Effects of party government 318
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Mountain Crater, Dominica _Frontispiece_
Silk Cotton Tree, Jamaica _Title page_
Blue Basin, Trinidad _To face page_ 72
Morning Walk, Dominica 136
Port Royal, Jamaica 171
Valley in the Blue Mountains, Jamaica 194
Kingston and Harbour, from Cherry Gardens 234
Havana, from the Quarries 258
Port au Prince, Hayti 288
THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES.
CHAPTER I.
Colonial policy--Union or separation--Self-government--Varieties of
condition--The Pacific colonies--The West Indies--Proposals for a
West Indian federation--Nature of the population--American union and
British plantations--Original conquest of the West Indies.
The Colonial Exhibition has come and gone. Delegates from our great
self-governed dependencies have met and consulted together, and have
determined upon a common course of action for Imperial defence. The
British race dispersed over the world have celebrated the Jubilee of the
Queen with an enthusiasm evidently intended to bear a special and
peculiar meaning. The people of these islands and their sons and
brothers and friends and kinsfolk in Canada, in Australia, and in New
Zealand have declared with a general voice, scarcely disturbed by a
discord, that they are fellow-subjects of a single sovereign, that they
are united in feeling, united in loyalty, united in interest, and that
they wish and mean to preserve unbroken the integrity of the British
Empire. This is the answer which the democracy has given to the
advocates of the doctrine of separation. The desire for union while it
lasts is its own realisation. As long as we have no wish to part we
shall not part, and the wish can never rise if when there is occasion we
can meet and deliberate together with the same regard for each other's
welfare which has been shown in the late conference in London.
Events mock at human foresight, and nothing is certain but the
unforeseen. Constitutional government and an independent executive were
conferred upon our larger colonies, with the express and scarcely veiled
intention that at the earliest moment they were to relieve the mother
country of responsibility for them. They were regarded as fledgelings
who are fed only by the parent birds till their feathers are grown, and
are then expected to shift for themselves. They were provided with the
full plumage of parliamentary institutions on the home pattern and
model, and the expectation of experienced politicians was that they
would each at the earliest moment go off on their separate accounts, and
would bid us a friendly farewell. The irony of fate has turned to folly
the wisdom of the wise. The wise themselves, the same political party
which were most anxious twenty years ago to see the colonies
independent, and contrived constitutions for them which they conceived
must inevitably lead to separation, appeal now to the effect of those
very constitutions in drawing the Empire closer together, as a reason
why a similar method should be immediately adopted to heal the
differences between Great Britain and Ireland. New converts to any
belief, political or theological, are proverbially zealous, and perhaps
in this instance they are over-hasty. It does not follow that because
people of the same race and character are drawn together by equality and
liberty, people of different races and different characters, who have
quarrelled for centuries, will be similarly attracted to one another.
Yet so far as our own colonies are concerned it is clear that the
abandonment by the mother country of all pretence to interfere in their
internal management has removed the only cause which could possibly have
created a desire for independence. We cannot, even if we wish it
ourselves, shake off connections who cost us nothing and themselves
refuse to be divided. Politicians may quarrel; the democracies have
refused to quarrel; and the result of the wide extension of the suffrage
throughout the Empire has been to show that being one the British people
everywhere intend to remain one. With the same blood, the same
language, the same habits, the same traditions, they do not mean to be
shattered into dishonoured fragments. All of us, wherever we are, can
best manage our own affairs within our own limits; yet local spheres of
self-management can revolve round a common centre while there is a
centripetal power sufficient to hold them; and so long as England 'to
herself is true' and continues worthy of her ancient reputation, there
are no causes working visibly above the political horizon which are
likely to induce our self-governed colonies to take wing and leave us.
The strain will come with the next great war. During peace these
colonies have only experienced the advantage of union with us. They will
then have to share our dangers, and may ask why they are to be involved
in quarrels which are not of their own making. How they will act then
only experience can tell; and that there is any doubt about it is a
sufficient answer to those rapid statesmen who would rush at once into
the application of the same principle to countries whose continuance
with us is vital to our own safety, whom we cannot part with though they
were to demand it at the cannon's mouth.
But the result of the experiment is an encouragement as far as it has
gone to those who would extend self-government through the whole of our
colonial system. It seems to lead as a direct road into the 'Imperial
Federation' which has fascinated the general imagination. It removes
friction. We relieve ourselves of responsibilities. If federation is to
come about at all as a definite and effective organisation, the
spontaneous action of the different members of the Empire in a position
in which they are free to stay with us or to leave us as they please,
appears the readiest and perhaps the only means by which it can be
brought to pass. So plausible is the theory, so obviously right would it
be were the problem as simple and the population of all our colonies as
homogeneous as in Australia, that one cannot wonder at the ambition of
politicians to win themselves a name and achieve a great result by the
immediate adoption of it. Great results generally imply effort and
sacrifice. Here effort is unnecessary and sacrifice is not demanded.
Everybody is to have what he wishes, and the effect is to come about of
itself. When we think of India, when we think of Ireland, prudence tells
us to hesitate. Steps once taken in this direction cannot be undone,
even if found to lead to the wrong place. But undoubtedly, wherever it
is possible, the principle of self-government ought to be applied in our
colonies and will be applied, and the danger now is that it will be
tried in haste in countries either as yet unripe for it or from the
nature of things unfit for it. The liberties which we grant freely to
those whom we trust and who do not require to be restrained, we bring
into disrepute if we concede them as readily to perversity or
disaffection or to those who, like most Asiatics, do not desire liberty,
and prosper best when they are led and guided.
In this complex empire of ours the problem presents itself in many
shapes, and each must be studied and dealt with according to its
character. There is the broad distinction between colonies and conquered
countries. Colonists are part of ourselves. Foreigners attached by force
to our dominions may submit to be ruled by us, but will not always
consent to rule themselves in accordance with our views or interests, or
remain attached to us if we enable them to leave us when they please.
The Crown, therefore, as in India, rules directly by the police and the
army. And there are colonies which are neither one nor the other, where
our own people have been settled and have been granted the land in
possession with the control of an insubordinate population, themselves
claiming political privileges which had to be refused to the rest. This
was the position of Ireland, and the result of meddling theoretically
with it ought to have taught us caution. Again, there are colonies like
the West Indies, either occupied originally by ourselves, as Barbadoes,
or taken by force from France or Spain, where the mass of the population
were slaves who have been since made free, but where the extent to which
the coloured people can be admitted to share in the administration is
still an unsettled question. To throw countries so variously
circumstanced under an identical system would be a wild experiment.
Whether we ought to try such an experiment at all, or even wish to try
it and prepare the way for it, depends perhaps on whether we have
determined that under all circumstances the retention of them under our
own flag is indispensable to our safety.
I had visited our great Pacific colonies. Circumstances led me
afterwards to attend more particularly to the West ladies. They were the
earliest, and once the most prized, of all our distant possessions. They
had been won by the most desperate struggles, and had been the scene of
our greatest naval glories. In the recent discussion on the possibility
of an organised colonial federation, various schemes came under my
notice, in every one of which the union of the West Indian Islands under
a free parliamentary constitution was regarded as a necessary
preliminary. I was reminded of a conversation which I had held seventeen
years ago with a high colonial official specially connected with the
West Indian department, in which the federation of the islands under
such a constitution was spoken of as a measure already determined on,
though with a view to an end exactly the opposite of that which was now
desired. The colonies universally were then regarded in such quarters as
a burden upon our resources, of which we were to relieve ourselves at
the earliest moment. They were no longer of special value to us; the
whole world had become our market; and whether they were nominally
attached to the Empire, or were independent, or joined themselves to
some other power, was of no commercial moment to us. It was felt,
however, that as long as any tie remained, we should be obliged to
defend them in time of war; while they, in consequence of their
connection, would be liable to attack. The sooner, therefore, the
connection was ended, the better for them and for us.
By the constitutions which had been conferred upon them, Australia and
Canada, New Zealand and the Cape, were assumed to be practically gone.
The same measures were to be taken with the West Indies. They were not
prosperous. They formed no outlet for British emigration; the white
population was diminishing; they were dissatisfied; they lay close to
the great American republic, to which geographically they more properly
belonged. Representative assemblies under the Crown had failed to
produce the content expected from them or to give an impulse to
industry. The free negroes could not long be excluded from the
franchise. The black and white races had not amalgamated and were not
inclining to amalgamate. The then recent Gordon riots had been followed
by the suicide of the old Jamaican constitution. The government of
Jamaica had been flung back upon the Crown, and the Crown was impatient
of the addition to its obligations. The official of whom I speak
informed me that a decision had been irrevocably taken. The troops were
to be withdrawn from the islands, and Jamaica, Trinidad, and the English
Antilles were to be masters of their own destiny, either to form into
free communities like the Spanish American republics, or to join the
United States, or to do what they pleased, with the sole understanding
that we were to have no more responsibilities.
I do not know how far the scheme was matured. To an outside spectator it
seemed too hazardous to have been seriously meditated. Yet I was told
that it had not been meditated only but positively determined upon, and
that further discussion of a settled question would be fruitless and
needlessly irritating.
Politicians with a favourite scheme are naturally sanguine. It seemed to
me that in a West Indian Federation the black race would necessarily be
admitted to their full rights as citizens. Their numbers enormously
preponderated, and the late scenes in Jamaica were signs that the two
colours would not blend into one, that there might be, and even
inevitably would be, collisions between them which would lead to actions
which we could not tolerate. The white residents and the negroes had not
been drawn together by the abolition of slavery, but were further apart
than ever. The whites, if by superior intelligence they could gain the
upper hand, would not be allowed to keep it. As little would they submit
to be ruled by a race whom they despised; and I thought it quite certain
that something would happen which would compel the British Government to
interfere again, whether we liked it or not. Liberty in Hayti had been
followed by a massacre of the French inhabitants, and the French
settlers had done no worse than we had done to deserve the ill will of
their slaves. Fortunately opinion changed in England before the
experiment could be tried. The colonial policy of the doctrinaire
statesmen was no sooner understood than it was universally condemned,
and they could not press proposals on the West Indies which the West
Indians showed so little readiness to meet.
So things drifted on, remaining to appearance as they were. The troops
were not recalled. A minor confederation was formed in the Leeward
Antilles. The Windward group was placed under Barbadoes, and islands
which before had governors of their own passed under subordinate
administrators. Local councils continued under various conditions, the
popular element being cautiously and silently introduced. The blacks
settled into a condition of easy-going peasant proprietors. But so far
as the white or English interest was concerned, two causes which
undermined West Indian prosperity continued to operate. So long as sugar
maintained its price the planters with the help of coolie labour were
able to struggle on; but the beetroot bounties came to cut from under
them the industry in which they had placed their main dependence; the
reports were continually darker of distress and rapidly approaching
ruin; petitions for protection were not or could not be granted. They
were losing heart--the worst loss of all; while the Home Government, no
longer with a view to separation, but with the hope that it might
produce the same effect which it produced elsewhere, were still looking
to their old remedy of the extension of the principle of
self-government. One serious step was taken very recently towards the
re-establishment of a constitution in Jamaica. It was assumed that it
had failed before because the blacks were not properly represented. The
council was again made partially elective, and the black vote was
admitted on the widest basis. A power was retained by the Crown of
increasing in case of necessity the nominated official members to a
number which would counterbalance the elected members; but the power had
not been acted on and was not perhaps designed to continue, and a
restless hope was said to have revived among the negroes that the day
was not far off when Jamaica would be as Hayti and they would have the
island to themselves.
To a person like myself, to whom the preservation of the British Empire
appeared to be the only public cause in which just now it was possible
to feel concern, the problem was extremely interesting. I had no
prejudice against self-government. I had seen the Australian colonies
growing under it in health and strength with a rapidity which rivalled
the progress of the American Union itself. I had observed in South
Africa that the confusions and perplexities there diminished exactly in
proportion as the Home Government ceased to interfere. I could not hope
that as an outsider I could see my way through difficulties where
practised eyes were at a loss. But it was clear that the West Indies
were suffering, be the cause what it might. I learnt that a party had
risen there at last which was actually in favour of a union with
America, and I wished to find an answer to a question which I had long
asked myself to no purpose. My old friend Mr. Motley was once speaking
to me of the probable accession of Canada to the American republic. I
asked him if he was sure that Canada would like it. 'Like it?' he
replied. 'Would I like the house of Baring to take me into partnership?'
To be a partner in the British Empire appeared to me to be at least as
great a thing as to be a State under the stars and stripes. What was it
that Canada, what was it that any other colony, would gain by exchanging
British citizenship for American citizenship? What did America offer to
those who joined her which we refused to give or neglected to give? Was
it that Great Britain did not take her colonies into partnership at all?
was it that while in the United States the blood circulated freely from
the heart to the extremities, so that 'if one member suffered all the
body suffered with it,' our colonies were simply (as they used to be
called) 'plantations,' offshoots from the old stock set down as
circumstances had dictated in various parts of the globe, but vitally
detached and left to grow or to wither according to their own inherent
strength?
At one time the West Indian colonies had been more to us than such
casual seedlings. They had been precious regarded as jewels, which
hundreds of thousands of English lives had been sacrificed to tear from
France and Spain. The Caribbean Sea was the cradle of the Naval Empire
of Great Britain. There Drake and Hawkins intercepted the golden stream
which flowed from Panama into the exchequer at Madrid, and furnished
Philip with the means to carry on his war with the Reformation. The Pope
had claimed to be lord of the new world as well as of the old, and had
declared that Spaniards, and only Spaniards, should own territory or
carry on trade there within the tropics. The seamen of England took up
the challenge and replied with cannon shot. It was not the Crown, it was
not the Government, which fought that battle: it was the people of
England who fought it with their own hands and their own resources.
Adventurers, buccaneers, corsairs, privateers, call them by what name we
will, stand as extraordinary, but characteristic figures on the stage of
history, disowned or acknowledged by their sovereign as suited
diplomatic convenience. The outlawed pirate of one year was promoted the
next to be a governor and his country's representative. In those waters,
the men were formed and trained who drove the Armada through the Channel
into wreck and ruin. In those waters, in the centuries which followed,
France and England fought for the ocean empire, and England won it--won
it on the day when her own politicians' hearts had failed them, and all
the powers of the world had combined to humiliate her, and Rodney
shattered the French fleet, saved Gibraltar, and avenged York Town. If
ever the naval exploits of this country are done into an epic poem--and
since the Iliad there has been no subject better fitted for such
treatment or better deserving it--the West Indies will be the scene of
the most brilliant cantos. For England to allow them to drift away from
her because they have no immediate marketable value would be a sign that
she had lost the feelings with which great nations always treasure the
heroic traditions of their fathers. When those traditions come to be
regarded as something which concerns them no longer, their greatness is
already on the wane.