8 



TRINIDAD. 



does not venture where there is no security and little profit ; but 

 that state of depression has been brought on by a variety of 

 causes, and is principally connected with the institution of slavery, 

 which prevailed for several ages throughout the Archipelago. 

 Negro slavery may be said to be the root of our difficulties the 

 effects of which must be felt for some time to come. 



For a period of years European interest and public opinion 

 were in favour, not only of the establishment, but also of the ex- 

 tension and maintenance, of slavery and the- slave trade ; and so 

 callous had public feeling become in regard to the unfortunate 

 bondsmen that those humane provisions, which formed part of the 

 primitive law of slavery, were allowed to fall into desuetude, and 

 an unlimited and ruthless authority was practically yielded to the 

 grasp of the slaveholder. 



The time, however, was coming when new sources of colonial 

 wealth were to be opened up, and the evils of slavery made 

 glaringly evident. A strong and proportionate reaction took 

 place, and public opinion, which had slumbered for years, was 

 aroused in all its might in favour of the oppressed African race, 

 and against its oppressors. All parties concerned in, as well as 

 everything connected with, negro slavery were indiscriminately 

 anathematised, and an unmitigated condemnation was broadly 

 passed on the slaveholder and the white class inhabiting the 

 colonies. The planter was loaded with the crime of all Israel, and 

 sent forth as the scapegoat into the wilderness of political and 

 social abandonment. Nay, so violent was the enmity of his 

 arraigners, that every species of injustice was practised towards 

 him in retaliation for the crying injustice of slavery ; and, unfor- 

 tunately for these colonies for the emancipated as well as for 

 the planters any act which would have benefited the class of 

 proprietors was regarded as an injury aimed at the class of 

 labourers. As a consequence, all other considerations, save that 

 of protecting the emancipated slave, were overlooked ; and 

 quite inconsistently with the admission that years of oppression 

 had degraded the slave and rendered him unfit for the duties of a 

 freeman the emancipated, who required years of gradual pre- 

 paration for a new and responsible position in society, were at 

 once granted greater liberty than is possessed by the great 

 majority of the people in Europe, whilst distrust in the whole pro- 

 prietary class was sedulously nourished ; and, let me remark here, 

 that the greatest praise is due to the emancipated for having re- 

 sisted the almost incessant excitement under which they were placed. 

 It was not apparently recognised that, by acquiring all the rights 

 of freemen, the emancipated had come, de facto, under the obli- 

 gation of fulfilling all the duties of freemen ; and that the grant- 

 ing of the former, without exacting the latter, was essentially the 

 destroying of social equilibrium, by doing away with all counter- 



