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.
Again at sea, and on the way back to Barbadoes. The commodore of the
training squadron had offered me a berth to St. Vincent, but he intended
to work up under sail against the north-east trade, which had risen to
half a gale, and I preferred the security and speed of the mail boat.
Among the passengers was Miss ----, the lady whom I had seen sketching
on the way to the Blue Basin. She showed me her drawings, which were
excellent. She showed me in her mosquito-bitten arms what she had
endured to make them, and I admired her fortitude. She was English, and
was on her way to join her father at Codrington College.
We had a wild night, but those long vessels care little for winds and
waves. By morning we had fought our way back to Grenada. In the St.
Vincent roadstead, which we reached the same day, the ship was stormed
by boatloads of people who were to go on with us; boys on their way to
school at Barbadoes, ladies young and old, white, black, and mixed, who
were bound I know not where. The night fell dark as pitch, the storm
continued, and we were no sooner beyond the shelter of the land than
every one save Miss ---- and myself was prostrate. The vessel ploughed
on upon her way indifferent to us and to them. We were at Bridgetown by
breakfast time, and I was now to have an opportunity of studying more at
leisure the earliest of our West Indian colonies.
Barbadoes is as unlike in appearance as it is in social condition to
Trinidad or the Antilles. There are no mountains in it, no forests, no
rivers, and as yet no small freeholders. The blacks, who number nearly
200,000 in an island not larger than the Isle of Wight, are labourers,
working for wages on the estates of large proprietors. Land of their own
they have none, for there is none for them. Work they must, for they
cannot live otherwise. Thus every square yard of soil is cultivated, and
turn your eyes where you will you see houses, sugar canes, and sweet
potatoes. Two hundred and fifty years of occupation have imprinted
strongly an English character; parish churches solid and respectable,
the English language, the English police and parochial system. However
it may be in the other islands, England in Barbadoes is still a solid
fact. The headquarters of the West Indian troops are there. There is a
commander-in-chief residing in a 'Queen's House,' so called. There is a
savannah where there are English barracks under avenues of almond and
mahogany. Red coats are scattered about the grass. Officers canter about
playing polo, and naval and military uniforms glitter at the side of
carriages, and horsemen and horsewomen take their evening rides, as well
mounted and as well dressed as you can see in Rotten Row. Barbadoes is
thus in pleasing contrast with the conquered islands which we have not
taken the trouble to assimilate. In them remain the wrecks of the French
civilisation which we superseded, while we have planted nothing of our
own. Barbadoes, the European aspect of it at any rate, is English
throughout.
The harbour, when we arrived, was even more brilliant than we had left
it a fortnight before. The training squadron had gone, but in the place
of it the West Indian fleet was there, and there were also three
American frigates, old wooden vessels out merely on a cruise, but
heavily sparred, smart and well set up, with the stars and stripes
floating carelessly at their sterns, as if in these western seas, be the
nominal dominion British, French, or Spanish, the American has a voice
also and intends to be heard.
We had no sooner anchored than a well-appointed boat was alongside with
an awning and an ensign at the stern. Colonel ----, the chief of the
police, to whom it belonged, came on board in search of Miss ----, who
was to be his guest in Bridgetown. She introduced me to him. He insisted
on my accompanying him home to breakfast, and, as he was a person in
authority, I had nothing to do but obey. Colonel ----, to whose
politeness then and afterwards I was in many ways indebted, had seen
life in various forms. He had been in the navy. He had been in the army.
He had been called to the bar. He was now the head of the Barbadoes
police, with this anomalous addition to his other duties, that in
default of a chaplain he read the Church service on Sundays in the
barracks. He had even a license from the bishop to preach sermons, and
being a man of fine character and original sense he discharged this last
function, I was told, remarkably well. His house was in the heart of the
town, but shaded with tropical trees. The rooms were protected by deep
outside galleries, which were overrun with Bougainvillier creepers. He
was himself the kindest of entertainers, his Irish lady the kindest of
hostesses, with the humorous high breeding of the old Sligo aristocracy,
to whom she belonged. I found that I had been acquainted with some of
her kindred there long ago, in the days when the Anglo-Irish rule had
not been discovered to be a upas tree, and cultivated human life was
still possible in Connaught. Of the breakfast, which consisted of all
the West Indian dainties I had ever heard or read of, I can say nothing,
nor of the pleasant talk which followed. I was to see more of Colonel
----, for he offered to drive me some day across the island, a promise
which he punctually fulfilled. My stay with him for the present could be
but brief, as I was expected at Government House.
I have met with exceptional hospitality from the governors of British
colonies in many parts of the world. They are not chosen like the Roman
proconsuls from the ranks of trained statesmen who have held high
administrative offices at home. They are appointed, as I said just now,
from various motives, sometimes with a careful regard to fitness for
their post, sometimes with a regard merely to routine or convenience or
to personal influence brought to bear in their favour. I have myself
seen some for whom I should have thought other employment would have
been more suitable; but always and everywhere those that I have fallen
in with have been men of honour and integrity above reproach or
suspicion, and I have met with one or two gentlemen in these situations
whose admirable qualities it is impossible to praise too highly, who in
their complicated responsibilities--responsibilities to the colonies and
responsibilities to the authorities at home--have considered conscience
and duty to be their safest guides, have cared only to do what they
believed to be right to the best of their ability, and have left their
interests to take care of themselves.
The Governor of Barbadoes is not despotic. He controls the
administration, but there is a constitution as old as the Stuarts; an
Assembly of thirty-three members, nine of whom the Crown nominates, the
rest are elected. The friction is not so violent as when the number of
the nominated and elected members is equal, and as long as a property
qualification was required for the franchise, the system may have worked
tolerably without producing any violent mischief. There have been recent
modifications, however, pointing in the same direction as those which
have been made in Jamaica. By an ordinance from home the suffrage has
been widely extended, obviously as a step to larger intended changes.
Under such conditions and with an uncertain future a governor can do
little save lead and influence, entertain visitors, discharge the
necessary courtesies to all classes of his subjects, and keep his eyes
open. These duties at least Sir Charles Lee discharges to perfection,
the entertaining part of them on a scale so liberal that if Pere Labat
came back he would suppose that the two hundred years which have gone by
since his visit was a dream, and that Government House at least was
still as he left it. In an establishment which had so many demands upon
it, and where so many visitors of all kinds were going and coming, I had
no claim to be admitted. I felt that I should be an intruder, and had I
been allowed would have taken myself elsewhere, but Sir Charles's
peremptory generosity admitted of no refusal. As a subject I was bound
to submit to the Queen's representative. I cannot say I was sorry to be
compelled. In Government House I should see and hear what I could
neither have seen nor heard elsewhere. I should meet people who could
tell me what I most wanted to know. I had understood already that owing
to the sugar depression the state of the island was critical. Officials
were alarmed. Bankers were alarmed. No one could see beyond the next
year what was likely to happen. Sir Charles himself would have most to
say. He was evidently anxious. Perhaps if he had a fault, he was over
anxious; but with the possibility of social confusion before him, with
nearly 200,000 peasant subjects, who in a few months might be out of
work and so out of food, with the inflammable negro nature, and a
suspicious and easily excited public opinion at home, the position of a
Governor of Barbadoes is not an enviable one. The Government at home, no
doubt with the best intentions, has aggravated any peril which there may
be by enlarging the suffrage. The experience of Governor Eyre in Jamaica
has taught the danger of being too active, but to be too inactive may be
dangerous also. If there is a stir again in any part of these islands,
and violence and massacre come of it, as it came in St. Domingo, the
responsibility is with the governor, and the account will be strictly
exacted of him.
I must describe more particularly the reasons which there are for
uneasiness. On the day on which I landed I saw an article in a
Bridgetown paper in which my coming there was spoken of as perhaps the
last straw which would break the overburdened back. I know not why I
should be thought likely to add anything to the load of Barbadian
afflictions. I should be a worse friend to the colonies than I have
tried to be if I was one of those who would quench the smoking flax of
loyalty in any West Indian heart. But loyalty, I very well know, is
sorely tried just now. The position is painfully simple. The great
prosperity of the island ended with emancipation. Barbadoes suffered
less than Jamaica or the Antilles because the population was large and
the land limited, and the blacks were obliged to work to keep
themselves alive. The abolition of the sugar duties was the next blow.
The price of sugar fell, and the estates yielded little more than the
expense of cultivation. Owners of properties who were their own
managers, and had sense and energy, continued to keep themselves afloat;
but absenteeism had become the fashion. The brilliant society which is
described by Labat had been melting for more than a century. More and
more the old West Indian families removed to England, farmed their lands
through agents and overseers, or sold them to speculating capitalists.
The personal influence of the white man over the black, which might have
been brought about by a friendly intercourse after slavery was
abolished, was never so much as attempted. The higher class of gentry
found the colony more and more distasteful to them, and they left the
arrangement of the labour question to persons to whom the blacks were
nothing, emancipated though they might be, except instruments of
production. A negro can be attached to his employer at least as easily
as a horse or a dog. The horse or dog requires kind treatment, or he
becomes indifferent or sullen; so it is with the negro. But the forced
equality of the races before the law made more difficult the growth of
any kindly feeling. To the overseer on a plantation the black labourer
was a machine out of which the problem was to get the maximum of work
with the minimum of pay. In the slavery times the horse and dog relation
was a real thing. The master and mistress joked and laughed with their
dark bondsmen, knew Caesar from Pompey, knew how many children each had,
gave them small presents, cared for them when they were sick, and
maintained them when they were old and past work. All this ended with
emancipation. Between whites and blacks no relations remained save that
of employer and employed. They lived apart. They had no longer, save in
exceptional instances, any personal communication with each other. The
law refusing to recognise a difference, the social line was drawn the
harder, which the law was unable to reach.
In the Antilles the plantations broke up as I had seen in Grenada. The
whites went away, and the land was divided among the negroes. In
Barbadoes, the estates were kept together. The English character and the
English habits were stamped deeper there, and were not so easily
obliterated. But the stars in their courses have fought against the old
system. Once the West Indies had a monopoly of the sugar trade. Steam
and progress have given them a hundred _natural_ competitors; and on the
back of these came the _unnatural_ bounty-fed beetroot sugar
competition. Meanwhile the expense of living increased in the days of
inflated hope and 'unexampled prosperity.' Free trade, whatever its
immediate consequences, was to make everyone rich in the end. When the
income of an estate fell short one year, it was to rise in the next, and
the money was borrowed to make ends meet; when it didn't rise, more
money was borrowed; and there is now hardly a property in the island
which is not loaded to the sinking point. Tied to sugar-growing,
Barbadoes has no second industry to fall back upon. The blacks, who are
heedless and light-hearted, increase and multiply. They will not
emigrate, they are so much attached to their homes; and the not distant
prospect is of a general bankruptcy, which may throw the land for the
moment out of cultivation, with a hungry unemployed multitude to feed
without means of feeding them, and to control without the personal
acquaintance and influence which alone can make control possible.
At home there is a general knowledge that things are not going on well
out there. But, true to our own ways of thinking, we regard it as their
affair and not as ours. If cheap sugar ruins the planters, it benefits
the English workman. The planters had their innings; it is now the
consumer's turn. What are the West Indies to us? On the map they appear
to belong more to the United States than to us. Let the United States
take them and welcome. So thinks, perhaps, the average Englishman; and,
analogous to him, the West Indian proprietor reflects that, if admitted
into the Union, he would have the benefit of the American market, which
would set him on his feet again; and that the Americans, probably
finding that they, if not we, could make some profit out of the islands,
would be likely to settle the black question for him in a more
satisfactory manner.
That such a feeling as this should exist is natural and pardonable; and
it would have gone deeper than it has gone if it were not that there are
two parties to every bargain, and those in favour of such a union have
met hitherto with no encouragement. The Americans are wise in their
generation. They looked at Cuba; they looked at St. Domingo. They might
have had both on easy terms, but they tell you that their constitution
does not allow them to hold dependent states. What they annex they
absorb, and they did not wish to absorb another million and a half of
blacks and as many Roman Catholics, having enough already of both. Our
English islands may be more tempting, but there too the black cloud
hangs thick and grows yearly thicker, and through English indulgence is
more charged with dangerous elements. Already, they say, they have every
advantage which the islands can give them. They exercise a general
protectorate, and would probably interfere if France or England were to
attempt again to extend their dominions in that quarter; but they prefer
to leave to the present owners the responsibility of managing and
feeding the cow, while they are to have the milking of it.
Thus the proposal of annexation, which has never gone beyond wishes and
talk, has so far been coldly received; but the Americans did make their
offer a short time since, at which the drowning Barbadians grasped as at
a floating plank. England would give them no hand to save them from the
effects of the beetroot bounties. The Americans were willing to relax
their own sugar duties to admit West Indian sugar duty free, and give
them the benefit of their own high prices. The colonies being unable to
make treaties for themselves, the proposal was referred home and was
rejected. The Board of Trade had, no doubt, excellent reasons for
objecting to an arrangement which would have flung our whole commerce
with the West Indies into American hands, and might have formed a
prelude to a closer attachment. It would have been a violation also of
those free-trade principles which are the English political gospel.
Moreover, our attitude towards our colonies has changed in the last
twenty years; we now wish to preserve the attachment of communities whom
a generation back we should have told to do as they liked, and have
bidden them God speed on their way; and this treaty may have been
regarded as a step towards separation. But the unfortunate Barbadians
found themselves, with the harbour in sight, driven out again into the
free-trade hurricane. We would not help them ourselves; we declined to
let the Americans help them; and help themselves they could not. They
dare not resent our indifference to their interests, which, if they were
stronger, would have been more visibly displayed. They must wait now for
what the future will bring with as much composure as they can command,
but I did hear outcries of impatience to which it was unpleasant to
listen. Nay, it was even suggested as a means of inducing the Americans
to forego their reluctance to take them into the Union, that we might
relinquish such rights as we possessed in Canada if the Americans would
relieve us of the West Indies, for which we appeared to care so little.
If Barbadoes is driven into bankruptcy, the estates will have to be
sold, and will probably be broken up as they have been in the Antilles.
The first difficulty will thus be got over. But the change cannot be
carried out in a day. If wages suddenly cease the negroes will starve,
and will not take their starvation patiently. At the worst, however,
means will probably be found to keep the land from falling out of
cultivation. The Barbadians see their condition in the light of their
grievances, and make the worst of it. The continental powers may tire of
the bounty system, or something else may happen to make sugar rise. The
prospect is not a bright one, but what actually happens in this world is
generally the unexpected.
As a visit my stay at Government House was made simply delightful to me.
I remained there (with interruptions) for a fortnight, and Lady L----
did not only permit, but she insisted that I should be as if in an
hotel, and come and go as I liked. The climate of Barbadoes, so far as I
can speak of it, is as sparkling and invigorating as champagne. Cocktail
may be wanted in Trinidad. In Barbadoes the air is all one asks for, and
between night breezes and sea breezes one has plenty of it. Day begins
with daylight, as it ought to do. You have slept without knowing
anything about it. There are no venomous crawling creatures. Cockroaches
are the worst, but they scuttle out of the way so alarmed and ashamed of
themselves if you happen to see them, that I never could bring myself to
hurt one. You spring out of bed as if the process of getting up were
actually pleasant. Well-appointed West Indian houses are generally
provided with a fresh-water swimming bath. Though cold by courtesy the
water seldom falls below 65 deg., and you float luxuriously upon it without
dread of chill. The early coffee follows the bath, and then the stroll
under the big trees, among strange flowers, or in the grotto with the
ferns and humming birds. If it were part of one's regular life, I
suppose that one would want something to do. Sir Charles was the most
active of men, and had been busy in his office for an hour before I had
come down to lounge. But for myself I discovered that it was possible,
at least for an interval, to be perfectly idle and perfectly happy,
surrounded by the daintiest beauties of an English hothouse, with palm
trees waving like fans to cool one, and with sensitive plants, which are
common as daisies, strewing themselves under one's feet to be trodden
upon.
After breakfast the heat would be considerable, but with an umbrella I
could walk about the town and see what was to be seen. Alas! here one
has something to desire. Where Pere Labat saw a display of splendour
which reminded him of Paris and London, you now find only _stores_ on
the American pattern, for the most part American goods, bad in quality
and extravagantly dear. Treaty or no treaty, it is to America that the
trade is drifting, and we might as well concede with a good grace what
must soon come of itself whether we like it or not. The streets are
relieved from ugliness by the trees and by occasional handsome
buildings. Often I stood to admire the pea-green Nelson. Once I went
into the Assembly where the legislature was discussing more or less
unquietly the prospects of the island. The question of the hour was
economy. In the opinion of patriot Barbadians, sore at the refusal of
the treaty, the readiest way to reduce expenditure was to diminish the
salaries of officials from the governor downwards. The officials,
knowing that they were very moderately paid already, naturally demurred.
The most interesting part of the thing to me was the _hall_ in which the
proceedings were going on. It is handsome in itself, and has a series of
painted windows representing the English sovereigns from James I. to
Queen Victoria. Among them in his proper place stood Oliver Cromwell,
the only formal recognition of the great Protector that I know of in any
part of the English dominions. Barbadoes had been Cavalier in its
general sympathies, but has taken an independent view of things, and
here too has had an opinion of its own.
Hospitality was always a West Indian characteristic. There were
luncheons and dinners, and distinguished persons to be met and talked
to. Among these I had the special good fortune of making acquaintance
with Sir Charles Pearson, now commanding-in-chief in those parts. Even
in these days, crowded as they are by small incidents made large by
newspapers, we have not yet forgotten the defence of a fort in the
interior of Zululand where Sir Charles Pearson and his small garrison
were cut off from their communications with Natal. For a week or two he
was the chief object of interest in every English house. In obedience to
orders which it was not his business to question, he had assisted Sir T.
Shepstone in the memorable annexation of the Transvaal. He had seen also
to what that annexation led, and, being a truth-speaking man, he did not
attempt to conceal the completeness of our defeat. Our military
establishment in the West Indies is of modest dimensions; but a strong
English soldier, who says little and does his duty, and never told a lie
in his life or could tell one, is a comforting figure to fall in with.
One feels that there will be something to retire upon when
parliamentary oratory has finished its work of disintegration.
The pleasantest incident of the day was the evening drive with Lady
L----. She would take me out shortly before sunset, and bring me back
again when the tropical stars were showing faintly and the fireflies had
begun to sparkle about the bushes, and the bats were flitting to and fro
after the night moths like spirits of darkness chasing human souls.
The neighbourhood of Bridgetown has little natural beauty; but the roads
are excellent, the savannah picturesque with riding parties and polo
players and lounging red jackets, every one being eager to pay his or
her respect to the gracious lady of the Queen's representative. We
called at pretty villas where there would be evening teas and lawn
tennis in the cool. The society is not extensive, and here would be
collected most of it that was worth meeting. At one of these parties I
fell in with the officers of the American squadron, the commodore a very
interesting and courteous gentleman whom I should have taken for a
fellow-countryman. There are many diamonds, and diamonds of the first
water, among the Americans as among ourselves; but the cutting and
setting is different. Commodore D---- was cut and set like an
Englishman. He introduced me to one of his brother officers who had been
in Hayti. Spite of Sir Spenser St. John, spite of all the confirmatory
evidence which I had heard, I was still incredulous about the alleged
cannibalism there. To my inquiries this gentleman had only the same
answer to give. The fact was beyond question. He had himself known
instances of it.
The commodore had a grievance against us illustrating West Indian
manners. These islands are as nervous about their health as so many old
ladies. The yellow flags float on ship after ship in the Bridgetown
roadstead, and crews, passengers, and cargoes are sternly interdicted
from the land. Jamaica was in ill name from small-pox, and, as Cuba will
not drop its intercourse with Jamaica, Cuba falls also under the ban.
The commodore had directed a case of cigars from Havana to meet him at
Barbadoes. They arrived, but might not be transferred from the steamer
which brought them, even on board his own frigate, lest he might bring
infection on shore in his pocket. They went on to England, to reach him
perhaps eventually in New York.
Colonel ----'s duties, as chief of the police, obliged him to make
occasional rounds to visit his stations. He recollected his promise, and
he invited me one morning to accompany him. We were to breakfast at his
house on our return, so I anticipated an excursion of a few miles at the
utmost. He called for me soon after sunrise with a light carriage and a
brisk pair of horses. We were rapidly clear of the town. The roads were
better than the best I have seen out of England, the only fault in them
being the white coral dust which dazzles and blinds the eyes. Everywhere
there were signs of age and of long occupation. The stone steps leading
up out of the road to the doors of the houses had been worn by human
feet for hundreds of years. The houses themselves were old, and as if
suffering from the universal depression--gates broken, gardens
disordered, and woodwork black and blistered for want of paint. But if
the habitations were neglected, there was no neglect in the fields.
Sugar cane alternated with sweet potatoes and yams and other strange
things the names of which I heard and forgot; but there was not a weed
to be seen or broken fence where fence was needed. The soil was clean
every inch of it, as well hoed and trenched as in a Middlesex market
garden. Salt fish and flour, which is the chief food of the blacks, is
imported; but vegetables enough are raised in Barbadoes to keep the cost
of living incredibly low; and, to my uninstructed eyes, it seemed that
even if sugar and wages did fail there could be no danger of any sudden
famine. The people were thick as rabbits in a warren; women with loaded
baskets on their heads laughing and chirruping, men driving donkey
carts, four donkeys abreast, smoking their early pipes as if they had
not a care in the world, as, indeed, they have not.
On we went, the Colonel's horses stepping out twelve miles an hour, and
I wondered privately what was to become of our breakfast. We were
striking right across the island, along the coral ridge which forms the
backbone of it. We found ourselves at length in a grove of orange trees
and shaddocks, at the old church of St. John's, which stands upon a
perpendicular cliff; Codrington College on the level under our feet, and
beyond us the open Atlantic and the everlasting breakers from the trade
winds fringing the shore with foam. Far out were the white sails of the
fishing smacks. The Barbadians are careless of weather, and the best of
boat sailors. It was very pretty in the bright morning, and the church
itself was not the least interesting part of the scene. The door was
wide open. We went in, and I seemed to be in a parish church in England
as parish churches used to be when I was a child. There were the
old-fashioned seats, the old unadorned communion table, the old pulpit
and reading desk and the clerk's desk below, with the lion and the
unicorn conspicuous above the chancel arch. The white tablets on the
wall bore familiar names dating back into the last century. On the floor
were flagstones still older with armorial bearings and letters cut in
stone, half effaced by the feet of the generations who had trodden up
the same aisles till they, too, lay down and rested there. And there was
this, too, to be remembered--that these Barbadian churches, old as they
might seem, had belonged always to the Anglican communion. No mass had
ever been said at that altar. It was a milestone on the high road of
time, and was venerable to me at once for its antiquity and for the era
at which it had begun to exist.
At the porch was an ancient slab on which was a coat of arms, a crest
with a hand and sword, and a motto, '_Sic nos, sic nostra tuemur._' The
inscription said that it was in memory of Michael Mahon, 'of the kingdom
of Ireland,' erected by his children and grandchildren. Who was Michael
Mahon? Some expatriated, so-called rebel, I suppose, whose sword could
not defend him from being Barbados'd with so many other poor wretches
who were sent the same road--victims of the tragi-comedy of the English
government of Ireland. There were plenty of them wandering about in
Labat's time, ready, as Labat observes, to lend a help to the French,
should they take a fancy to land a force in the island.
The churchyard was scarcely so home-like. The graves were planted with
tropical shrubs and flowers. Palms waved over the square stone
monuments--stephanotis and jessamine crept about the iron railings. The
primroses and hyacinths and violets, with which we dress the mounds
under which our friends are sleeping, will not grow in the tropics. In
the place of them are the exotics of our hot-houses. We too are,
perhaps, exotics of another kind in these islands, and may not, after
all, have a long abiding place in them.
Colonel ----, who with his secular duties combined serious and spiritual
feeling, was a friend of the clergyman of St. John's, and hoped to
introduce me to him. This gentleman, however, was absent from home. Our
round was still but half completed; we had to mount again and go another
seven miles to inspect a police station. The police themselves were, of
course, blacks--well-grown fine men, in a high state of discipline. Our
visit was not expected, but all was as it should be; the rooms well
swept and airy, the horses in good condition, stables clean, harness and
arms polished and ready for use. Serious as might be the trials of the
Barbadians and decrepit the financial condition, there were no symptoms
of neglect either on the farms or in the social machinery.
Altogether we drove between thirty and forty miles that morning. We were
in time for breakfast after all, and I had seen half the island. It is
like the Isle of Thanet, or the country between Calais and Boulogne. One
characteristic feature must not be forgotten: there are no rivers and no
waterpower; steam engines have been introduced, but the chief motive
agent is still the never-ceasing trade wind. You see windmills
everywhere, as it was in the time of Labat. The planters are reproached
as being behind the age; they are told that with the latest improvements
they might still defy their beetroot enemy. It may be so, but a wind
which never rests is force which costs little, and it is possible that
they understand their own business best.
Another morning excursion showed me the rest of the country, and
introduced me to scenes and persons still more interesting. Sir Graham
Briggs[8] is perhaps the most distinguished representative of the old
Barbadian families. He is, or was, a man of large fortune, with vast
estates in this and other islands. A few years ago, when prospects were
brighter, he was an advocate of the constitutional development so much
recommended from England. The West Indian Islands were to be
confederated into a dominion like that of Canada, to take over the
responsibilities of government, and to learn to stand alone. The decline
in the value of property, the general decay of the white interest in the
islands, and the rapid increase of the blacks, taught those who at one
time were ready for the change what the real nature of it would be. They
have paused to consider; and the longer they consider the less they like
it.
Sir Graham had called upon me at Government House, and had spoken fully
and freely about the offered American sugar treaty. As a severe sufferer
he was naturally irritated at the rejection of it; and in the mood in
which I found him, I should think it possible that if the Americans
would hold their hands out with an offer of admission into the Union, he
and a good many other gentlemen would meet them halfway. He did not say
so--I conjecture only from natural probabilities, and from what I should
feel myself if I were in their position. Happily the temptation cannot
fall in their way. An American official laconically summed up the
situation to me: 'As satellites, sir, as much as you please; but as
parts of the primary--no, sir.' The Americans will not take them into
the Union; they must remain, therefore, with their English primary and
make the best of it; neither as satellites, for they have no proper
motion of their own, nor as incorporated in the British Empire, for they
derive no benefit from their connection with it, but as poor relations
distantly acknowledged. I did not expect that Sir Graham would have
more to say to me than he had said already: but he was a cultivated and
noteworthy person, his house was said to be the most splendid of the old
Barbadian merchant palaces, and I gratefully accepted an invitation to
pay him a short visit.
I started as before in the early morning, before the sun was above the
trees. The road followed the line of the shore. Originally, I believe,
Barbadoes was like the Antilles, covered with forest. In the interior
little remains save cabbage palms and detached clumps of mangy-looking
mahogany trees. The forest is gone, and human beings have taken the
place of it. For ten miles I was driving through a string of straggling
villages, each cottage or cabin having its small vegetable garden and
clump of plantains. Being on the western or sheltered side of the
island, the sea was smooth and edged with mangrove, through which at
occasional openings we saw the shining water and the white coral beach,
and fishing boats either drawn up upon it or anchored outside with their
sails up. Trees had been planted for shade among the houses. There were
village greens with great silk-cotton trees, banyans and acacias,
mangoes and oranges, and shaddocks with their large fruit glowing among
the leaves like great golden melons. The people swarmed, children
tumbling about half naked, so like each other that one wondered whether
their mothers knew their own from their neighbours'; the fishermen's
wives selling flying fish, of which there are infinite numbers. It was
an innocent, pretty scene. One missed green fields with cows upon them.
Guinea grass, which is all that they have, makes excellent fodder, but
is ugly to look at; and is cut and carried, not eaten where it grows. Of
animal life there were innumerable donkeys--no black man will walk if he
can find a donkey to carry him--infinite poultry, and pigs, familiar
enough, but not allowed a free entry into the cabins as in Ireland. Of
birds there was not any great variety. The humming birds preferred less
populated quarters. There were small varieties of finches and sparrows
and buntings, winged atoms without beauty of form or colour; there were
a few wild pigeons; but the prevailing figure was the Barbadian crow, a
little fellow no bigger than a blackbird, a diminutive jackdaw, who gets
his living upon worms and insects and parasites, and so tame that he
would perch upon a boy's head if he saw a chance of finding anything
eatable there. The women dress ill in Barbadoes, for they imitate
English ladies; but no dress can conceal the grace of their forms when
they are young. It struck Pere Labat two centuries ago, and time and
their supposed sufferings as slaves have made no difference. They work
harder than the men, and are used as beasts of burden to fetch and
carry, but they carry their loads on their heads, and thus from
childhood have to stand upright with the neck straight and firm. They do
not spoil their shapes with stays, or their walk with high-heeled shoes.
They plant their feet firmly on the ground. Every movement is elastic
and rounded, and the grace of body gives, or seems to give, grace also
to the eyes and expression. Poor things! it cannot compensate for their
colour, which now when they are free is harder to bear than when they
were slaves. Their prettiness, such as it is, is short-lived. They grow
old early, and an old negress is always hideous.
After keeping by the sea for an hour we turned inland, and at the foot
of a steep hill we met my host, who transferred me to his own carriage.
We had still four or five miles to go through cane fields and among
sugar mills. At the end of them we came to a grand avenue of cabbage
palms, a hundred or a hundred and twenty feet high. How their slim stems
with their dense coronet of leaves survive a hurricane is one of the
West Indian marvels. They escape destruction by the elasticity with
which they yield to it. The branches, which in a calm stand out
symmetrically, forming a circle of which the stem is the exact centre,
bend round before a violent wind, are pressed close together, and stream
out horizontally like a horse's tail.
The avenue led up to Sir Graham's house, which stands 800 feet above the
sea. The garden, once the wonder of the island, was running wild, though
rare trees and shrubs survived from its ancient splendour. Among them
were two Wellingtonias as tall as the palms, but bent out of shape by
the trade winds. Passing through a hall, among a litter of Carib
curiosities, we entered the drawing-room, a magnificent saloon extending
with various compartments over the greater part of the ground-floor
story. It was filled with rare and curious things, gathered in the days
when sugar was a horn of plenty, and selected with the finest taste;
pictures, engravings, gems, antiquarian relics, books, maps, and
manuscripts. There had been fine culture in the West Indies when all
these treasures were collected. The English settlers there, like the
English in Ireland, had the tastes of a grand race, and by-and-by we
shall miss both of them when they are overwhelmed, as they are likely to
be, in the revolutionary tide. Sir Graham was stemming it to the best of
his ability, and if he was to go under would go under like a gentleman.
A dining room almost as large had once been the scene of hospitalities
like those which are celebrated by Tom Cringle. A broad staircase led up
from the hall to long galleries, out of which bedrooms opened; with cool
deep balconies and the universal green blinds. It was a palace with
which Aladdin himself might have been satisfied, one of those which had
stirred the envying admiration of foreign travellers in the last
century, one of many then, now probably the last surviving
representative of Anglo-West Indian civilisation. Like other forms of
human life, it has had its day and could not last for ever. Something
better may grow in the place of it, but also something worse may grow.
The example of Hayti ought to suggest misgivings to the most ardent
philonegro enthusiast.
West Indian cookery was famous over the world. Pere Labat devotes at
least a thousand pages to the dishes compounded of the spices and fruits
of the islands, and their fish and fowl. Carib tradition was developed
by artists from London and Paris. The Caribs, according to Labat, only
ate one another for ceremony and on state occasions; their common diet
was as excellent as it was innocent; and they had ascertained by careful
experience the culinary and medicinal virtues of every animal and plant
around them. Tom Cringle is eloquent on the same subject, but with less
scientific knowledge. My own unfortunately is less than his, and I can
do no justice at all to Sir Graham's entertainment of me; I can but say
that he treated me to a West Indian banquet of the old sort, infinite in
variety, and with subtle differences of flavour for which no language
provides names. The wine--laid up _consule Planco_, when Pitt was prime
minister, and the days of liberty as yet were not--was as admirable as
the dishes, and the fruit more exquisite than either. Such pineapples,
such shaddocks, I had never tasted before, and shall never taste again.
Hospitable, generous, splendid as was Sir Graham's reception of me, it
was nevertheless easy to see that the prospects of the island sat heavy
upon him. We had a long conversation when breakfast was over, which, if
it added nothing new to what I had heard before, deepened and widened
the impression of it.
The English West Indies, like other parts of the world, are going
through a silent revolution. Elsewhere the revolution, as we hope, is a
transition state, a new birth; a passing away of what is old and worn
out, that a fresh and healthier order may rise in its place. In the West
Indies the most sanguine of mortals will find it difficult to entertain
any such hope at all. We have been a ruling power there for two hundred
and fifty years; the whites whom we planted as our representatives are
drifting into helplessness, and they regard England and England's policy
as the principal cause of it. The blacks whom, in a fit of virtuous
benevolence, we emancipated, do not feel that they are particularly
obliged to us. They think, if they think at all, that they were ill
treated originally, and have received no more than was due to them, and
that perhaps it was not benevolence at all on our part, but a desire to
free ourselves from the reproach of slaveholding. At any rate, the
tendencies now in operation are loosening the hold which we possess on
the islands, and the longer they last the looser that hold will become.
French influence is in no danger of dying out in Martinique and
Guadaloupe. The Spanish race is not dying in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
England will soon be no more than a name in Barbadoes and the Antilles.
Having acquitted our conscience by emancipation, we have left our West
Indian interest to sink or swim. Our principle has been to leave each
part of our empire (except the East Indies) to take care of itself: we
give the various inhabitants liberty, and what we understand by fair
play; that we have any further moral responsibilities towards them we do
not imagine, even in our dreams, when they have ceased to be of
commercial importance to us; and we assume that the honour of being
British subjects will suffice to secure their allegiance. It will not
suffice, as we shall eventually discover. We have decided that if the
West Indies are to become again prosperous they must recover by their
own energy. Our other colonies can do without help; why not they? We
ought to remember that they are not like the other colonies. We occupied
them at a time when slavery was considered a lawful institution,
profitable to ourselves and useful to the souls of the negroes, who were
brought by it within reach of salvation.[9] We became ourselves the
chief slave dealers in the world. We peopled our islands with a
population of blacks more dense by far in proportion to the whites than
France or Spain ever ventured to do. We did not recognise, as the French
and Spaniards did, that if our western colonies were permanently to
belong to us, we must occupy them ourselves. We thought only of the
immediate profit which was to be gathered out of the slave gangs; and
the disproportion of the two races--always dangerously large--has
increased with ever-gathering velocity since the emancipation. It is now
beyond control on the old lines. The scanty whites are told that they
must work out their own salvation on equal terms with their old
servants. The relation is an impossible one. The independent energy
which we may fairly look for in Australia and New Zealand is not to be
looked for in Jamaica and Barbadoes; and the problem must have a new
solution.
Confederation is to be the remedy, we are told. Let the islands be
combined under a constitution. The whites collectively will then be a
considerable body, and can assert themselves successfully. Confederation
is, as I said before of the movement in Trinidad, but a turn of the
kaleidoscope, the same pieces with a new pattern. A West Indian
self-governed Dominion is possible only with a full negro vote. If the
whites are to combine, so will the blacks. It will be a rule by the
blacks and for the blacks. Let a generation or two pass by and carry
away with them the old traditions, and an English governor-general will
be found presiding over a black council, delivering the speeches made
for him by a black prime minister; and how long could this endure? No
English gentleman would consent to occupy so absurd a situation. The two
races are not equal and will not blend. If the white people do not
depart of themselves, black legislation will make it impossible for any
of them to stay who would not be better out of the way. The Anglo-Irish
Protestants will leave Ireland if there is an Irish Catholic parliament
in College Green; the whites, for the same reason, will leave the West
Indies; and in one and the other the connection with the British Empire
will disappear along with them. It must be so; only politicians whose
horizon does not extend beyond their personal future, and whose ambition
is only to secure the immediate triumph of their party, can expect
anything else.
Before my stay at Barbadoes ended, I had an opportunity of meeting at
dinner a negro of pure blood who has risen to eminence by his own talent
and character. He has held the office of attorney-general. He is now
chief justice of the island. Exceptions are supposed proverbially to
prove nothing, or to prove the opposite of what they appear to prove.
When a particular phenomenon occurs rarely, the probabilities are strong
against the recurrence of it. Having heard the craniological and other
objections to the supposed identity of the negro and white races, I came
to the opinion long ago in Africa, and I have seen no reason to change
it, that whether they are of one race or not there is no original or
congenital difference of capacity between them, any more than there is
between a black horse and a black dog and a white horse and a white dog.
With the same chances and with the same treatment, I believe that
distinguished men would be produced equally from both races, and Mr.
----'s well-earned success is an additional evidence of it. But it does
not follow that what can be done eventually can be done immediately, and
the gulf which divides the colours is no arbitrary prejudice, but has
been opened by the centuries of training and discipline which have given
us the start in the race. We set it down to slavery. It would be far
truer to set it down to freedom. The African blacks have been free
enough for thousands, perhaps for tens of thousands of years, and it has
been the absence of restraint which has prevented them from becoming
civilised. Generation has followed generation, and the children are as
like their father as the successive generations of apes. The whites, it
is likely enough, succeeded one another with the same similarity for a
long series of ages. It is now supposed that the human race has been
upon the planet for a hundred thousand years at least, and the first
traces of civilisation cannot be thrown back at farthest beyond six
thousand. During all those ages mankind went on treading in the same
steps, century after century making no more advance than the birds and
beasts. In Egypt or in India or one knows not where, accident or natural
development quickened into life our moral and intellectual faculties;
and these faculties have grown into what we now experience, not in the
freedom in which the modern takes delight, but under the sharp rule of
the strong over the weak, of the wise over the unwise. Our own
Anglo-Norman race has become capable of self-government only after a
thousand years of civil and spiritual authority. European government,
European instruction, continued steadily till his natural tendencies are
superseded by a higher instinct, may shorten the probation period of the
negro. Individual blacks of exceptional quality, like Frederick Douglas
in America, or the Chief Justice of Barbadoes, will avail themselves of
opportunities to rise, and the freest opportunities ought to be offered
them. But it is as certain as any future event can be that if we give
the negroes as a body the political powers which we claim for ourselves,
they will use them only to their own injury. They will slide back into
their old condition, and the chance will be gone of lifting them to the
level to which we have no right to say that they are incapable of
rising.
Chief Justice R---- owes his elevation to his English environment and
his English legal training. He would not pretend that he could have made
himself what he is in Hayti or in Dahomey. Let English authority die
away, and the average black nature, such as it now is, be left free to
assert itself, and there will be no more negroes like him in Barbadoes
or anywhere.
Naturally, I found him profoundly interested in the late revelations of
the state of Hayti. Sir Spenser St. John, an English official, after
residing for twelve years in Port au Prince, had in a published
narrative with many details and particulars, declared that the republic
of Toussaint l'Ouverture, the idol of all believers in the new gospel of
liberty, had, after ninety years of independence, become a land where
cannibalism could be practised with impunity. The African Obeah, the
worship of serpents and trees and stones, after smouldering in all the
West Indies in the form of witchcraft and poisoning, had broken out in
Hayti in all its old hideousness. Children were sacrificed as in the old
days of Moloch and were devoured with horrid ceremony, salted limbs
being preserved and sold for the benefit of those who were unable to
attend the full solemnities.
That a man in the position of a British resident should have ventured on
a statement which, if untrue, would be ruinous to himself, appeared in a
high degree improbable. Yet one had to set one incredibility against
another. Notwithstanding the character of the evidence, when I went out
to the West Indies I was still unbelieving. I could not bring myself to
credit that in an island nominally Catholic, where the French language
was spoken, and there were cathedrals and churches and priests and
missionaries, so horrid a revival of devil-worship could have been
really possible. All the inquiries which I had been able to make, from
American and other officers who had been in Hayti, confirmed Sir S. St.
John's story. I had hardly found a person who entertained a doubt of it.
I was perplexed and uncertain, when the Chief Justice opened the subject
and asked me what I thought. Had I been convinced I should have turned
the conversation, but I was not convinced and I was not afraid to say
so. I reminded him of the universal conviction through Europe that the
Jews were habitually guilty of sacrificing children also. There had been
detailed instances. Alleged offenders had been brought before courts of
justice at any time for the last six hundred years. Witnesses had been
found to swear to facts which had been accepted as conclusive. Wretched
creatures in Henry III.'s time had been dragged by dozens at horses'
tails through the streets of London, broken on the wheel, or torn to
pieces by infuriated mobs. Even within the last two years, the same
accusation had been brought forward in Russia and Germany, and had been
established apparently by adequate proof. So far as popular conviction
of the guilt of the Jews was an evidence against them, nothing could be
stronger; and no charge could be without foundation on ordinary
principles of evidence which revived so often and in so many places. And
yet many persons, I said, and myself among them, believed that although
the accusers were perfectly sincere, the guilt of the Jews was from end
to end an hallucination of hatred. I had looked into the particulars of
some of the trials. They were like the trials for witchcraft. The belief
had created the fact, and accusation was itself evidence. I was
prepared to find these stories of child murder in Hayti were bred
similarly of anti-negro prejudice.
Had the Chief Justice caught at my suggestion with any eagerness I
should have suspected it myself. His grave diffidence and continued
hesitation in offering an opinion confirmed me in my own. I told him
that I was going to Hayti to learn what I could on the spot. I could not
expect that I, on a flying visit, could see deeper into the truth than
Sir Spenser St. John had seen, but at least I should not take with me a
mind already made up, and I was not given to credulity. He took leave of
me with an expression of passionate anxiety that it might be found
possible to remove so black a stain from his unfortunate race.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] As I correct the proofs I learn, to my great sorrow, that Sir Graham
is dead. I have lost in him a lately made but valued friend; and the
colony has lost the ablest of its legislators.
[9] It was on this ground alone that slavery was permitted in the French
islands. Labat says:
C'est une loi tres-ancienne que les terres soumises aux rois de France
rendent libres tous ceux qui s'y peuvent retirer. C'est ce qui fit que
le roi Louis XIII, de glorieuse memoire, aussi pieux qu'il etoit sage,
eut toutes les peines du monde a consentir que les premiers habitants
des isles eussent des esclaves: et ne se rendit enfin qu'aux pressantes
sollicitations qu'on luy faisoit de leur octroyer cette permission que
parce qu'on lui remontra que c'etoit un moyen infaillible et l'unique
qu'il y eut pour inspirer le culte du vrai Dieu aux Africains, les
retirer de l'idolatrie, et les faire perseverer jusqu'a la mort dans la
religion chretienne qu'on leur feroit embrasser.--Vol. iv. p. 14.