460 TRINIDAD. 



governed the colony from March 1854, to October, 1856. In 

 this year, 1850, he had an Ordinance passed " amending- and 

 consolidating the law with regard to the appointment of wardens 

 and their powers and duties,'''' and giving power to the Governor 

 " to form such and so many wards as he should see fit into 

 wards unions, and to appoint one warden for the several wards 

 comprised in such unions/'' The wardens became salaried 

 officers; and, remarkable enough, none of the thirty-two wardens 

 who had served gratuitously under Lord Harris were appointed 

 to the well-paid offices created by the Ordinance of 1856, though 

 several, to my knowledge, would have gladly accepted the 

 situation. 



In August, 1854, cholera broke out in the island, and was 

 most fatal. About that time the Court of Rome had sent, as 

 legate to the West Indies, the Right Reverend Dr. Spaccapietra. 

 Trinidad was one of the islands he had instruction to visit. 

 Archbishop Smith had just died, and Bishop Spaccapietra was 

 appointed archbishop in his stead. The good prelate soon won 

 the sympathy and admiration of all by his unremitting exertions 

 during the prevalence of the pestilence : energetic, indefatigable, 

 he would respond, by night and by day, to the call even of the 

 lowest ; by the poorest class he was venerated as a father and a 

 benefactor. But Dr. Spaccapietra was a foreigner, and Governor 

 Elliot, no doubt incited by sectarian friends, would not recognise 

 him as archbishop, and withdrew his salary. This was regarded 

 by the Catholics as unjustifiable interference ; public meetings 

 were held all over the island ; a committee was elected, called 

 the Catholic Committee ; petitions, most numerously signed, were 

 addressed to the Secretary of State and her Majesty the Queen, 

 claiming for the Catholics of Trinidad the rights guaranteed to 

 them by the capitulation. In this they were supported by a party 

 of Protestants. The Governor, nothing moved, persisted in his 

 determination to annoy the Catholics. A committee had been 

 appointed to collect funds for the relief of the orphans and widows 

 of the Crimean war. All the ministers of religion, including the 

 Baptist minister, were named members of the committee ; but 

 the Catholic archbishop was excluded, under the pretext that he 

 was a foreigner and could not be recognised. This exclusion 

 was, by the Catholics, considered as a gratuitous insult and a 

 grievance ; a petition was addressed to her Majesty, complaining 



