458 HISTORY 



Governor Sir James Smyth. 



The new slave code was practically completed on his assumption of the 

 government, and with a few exceptions was in accord with what had been 

 recommended by the British Ministry. It was now the duty of the new 

 Executive to apply that code to the society of the Bahamas, and thus accomplish 

 the end which had been aimed at in all the anxious endeavors of the preceding- 

 fifteen years. 



Sir James Smyth was a thoroughly conscientious man, painstaking in all 

 he undertook to do, and attentive to all the duties of his office. He was filled 

 with the abolition sentiment of the mother country, which had been the cause 

 of so much anxiety to the British colonists, and was a willing instrument for 

 the enforcement of the amelioration laws. He hated the injustice of slavery 

 and was not in sympathy with the invidious distinctions as to color and race 

 which pervaded the Colony. He also had an exalted idea of the prerogative, 

 but found here, however, that the legislature had taken into its hands several 

 important functions of the Executive. A part of the task he was to undertake 

 lay in the reclamation of legitimate executive powers from the grasp of the 

 House of Assembly. 



Attempt to Give Effect to Keforms. 



The legislature was in session when the new Governor arrived at 

 Nassau. In his closing address to that body, soon after his coming, the 

 Governor frankly congratulated the members of the House and Council, 

 that they had gone beyond what any of the other colonial legislatures 

 in the West Indies had done in the enactment of provisions for the amel- 

 ioration of their slaves."' Although so much credit was due to this body, in 

 the view of the Governor there was still one important question which they 

 had steadily refused to yield. This was the flogging of female slaves, on which 

 so much emphasis had been laid as the darkest blot on the institution of 

 slavery."' It was claimed by the slave owners that flogging was the sole means 

 of compelling the submission of refractory females, that they were more difficult 

 to deal with than the males, and that until some other mode of punishment 

 equally as effective as flogging could be discovered, they Avere unwilling to give 



^^H. v., 1829, 107. This was not a source of gratification to a body of slave- 

 holders, who were hoping that the ministry would discover the inexpediency of the 

 enactment of such laws and instruct the Governor to apply for their repeal. 



^="10 Geo. IV, 1.3. 



