496 Our Colonies. [ May, 
Society, with its crowd of votaries, to many of whom, (as one of them was | 
told by Dr. Dodson, in the Admiralty Court,) “ godliness is great gain” 
—and most of whose consciences are so thin-skinned, that the exercise of 
the offices of charity in their own country does not furnish a plaister 
thick enough for them. Then the “old ladies, and old gentlemen with 
old lady-like minds—antiquated spinsters, and bachelors of slender wits, 
who veut their overflowing sensibilities upon the ill-used blacks—about 
whom they know just as much as they do of the man in the moon. The 
rear is brought up by a crowd of missionaries, who, having conceived a 
noble disgust of “ sewing nether stocks,” cobbling shoes, or seating 
breeches, prefer the more dignified and less laborious task of converting 
the slaves in the West Indies, many of whom are better informed, and 
most of whom are more honest, than those Mawworms who, under the 
impulse of a “ call,” devote themselves to “ rum and true religion.” 
Another set of the enemies of the West India colonies, are those who 
are interested in bringing into this country the produce of the East. If 
the burthens which England has imposed upon Jamaica were taken off, 
and she was left to trade freely, she would have nothing to fear from — 
the competition of the Mauritius or any other place. Until that is done, — 
she has a right to look with no small degree of jealousy to the part 
which East India Directors and East India Proprietors take in the 
attack that is made upon her. 
Another division of the foes of the West India colonies are those 
old haters of the government of England, the Whigs. Their mouths 
are at this moment stopped; and since they hope more effectually — 
to compass their objects, they prefer the insidious appearance of a — 
truce, to the open hostility they have always before avowed, and 
which is so deeply implanted in them, that fire would not burn it out. 
They have bullied and cajoled, and at length succeeded in obtain- — 
ing the surrender of a valuable portion of the British constitu- 
tion, and the recognition of Popery as a part of the law of this land. ~ 
With such a triumph, we see no reason why they should despair of 
destroying the nation’s existence; and in that laudable design they 
have hitherto exerted themselves, with that eager zeal which they 
never display but in a bad cause, to obstruct those measures of the 
government which had for their view the tranquillizing differences, 
and to swell the cry against the colonists. There are minor shades 
of distinction, some of which are so minutely marked that they are 
‘not worth tracing, and others arise from certain individual enemies 
belonging to several of the classes. Some of the saints are in the East 
Indian interest; some of the whigs are saints, like Buxton and Dr 
Lushington ; some have no religion at all, like Brougham ; some have the 
old revolutionary taint in them—their early fond recollections of the Amis 
des Noirs, of the Abbé Grégoire, and of Robespierre, still cling about 
their hearts.—*‘ Que nos colonies périssent !” ring in their ears ; and they 
would make Jamaica like Hayti, where, thanks to their judicious and 
humane dealings, want and desolation and misery reign over fields, where 
plenty and content once smiled; where the whip has been laid aside 
and the humane substitute of a large thick stick resorted to; and wher 
every man is so free, that if he does not work willingly, he is imprisoned | 
and enforced to it by stripes and starvation. ‘y 
But all these several classes, whether saints or sinners,—whigs or jaco 
bins—actuated by sordid interests or perplexed by amorbid sensibility— 
all of them combine and make use, as occasion serves, of one another 
/ 
