"King William's People" 107 



shall be considered as private property in the same manner as 

 agreed to by the capitulation to General Whyte in May, 1796.'' 

 To which the answer was : — 



"All private property whatsoever, of individuals, is to be 

 respected." 

 Now the Berbice Association — the nominal proprietors of Berbice — 

 owned the Winkel Negroes (the blac< artificers of the Colon}') and also 

 four " 0010113' Estates." These were Pins. St. Jan, Dageraid, Dankbaar- 

 heid and San voort. In 1796 the estates — following the view taken by 

 the French in 1782 — had been considered private property; the Winkel 

 Department — as we might say the Public Works Department — only had 

 never been so considered. Now this view was changed and the " Colony 

 Estates" were considered to be fair booty of war as well as the Winkel 

 Department. Tr had been well had they not been. The Winkel Negroes, 

 workshops, &c, were necessary for the construction and maintenance of 

 public works ; several of the Negroes were employed at the fort. The 

 Colony plantations were of no public utility whatever. Water Street 

 lights are never weary of asserting that any concern run by Government 

 is bound to be a failure. Certain specific instances lend a little support 

 to the jibe. The records of the Court of Civil Justice, on the other hand, 

 contain a rather fair number of bankruptcies which had their origin in 

 Water Street. In this matter of the Colony plantations- -as opposed to 

 estates ru> by private persons — the Government did nor make a success 

 of it. In fact, they failed badly. 



In 1810 a proposal was made to the Government by Colonel Staples 

 to lease the Winkel Negroes, together with the four Crown estates, for a 

 period of twenty-one years. A lease was prepared, and had actually been 

 signed by Colonel Staples, when a hitch came. As an after-thought the 

 Imperial Government insisted on a clause being inserted that any defi- 

 ciency of slaves when the lease was up must be made good by the lessee. 

 To this Colonel Staples declined to agree, pointing out that on a retro- 

 spect of the management of those Negroes during the last four years, even 

 under the Government's own agents, there had been a very grave 

 decrease in the gangs. The decrease was put down to the unhealthy 

 localities in which the estates happened to be situated. Colonel Staples 

 did not propose to remove the estates from where they were, and there- 

 fore it was to be apprehended that certain further decreases might occur 

 for which the lessee was not prepared to be pecuniarily responsible. The 

 Government, however, were not prepar d to waive the c ause, and so the 

 lease was abandoned, Colonel Staples being compensated. 



Then came the " Berbice Crown E -states' Commissioners." This was 

 a body of men, recruited in part from the Directors of the African Insti- 

 tution, whose mission was, not merely or so much to make the Ciown 

 estates, plus the Winkel Department, pay, but by a " different system " 

 and by " other and by milder means " to reduce and finally to stop the 

 mortality that was thinning the gangs. The Berbice Commissioners 

 were The Right Honourable Nicholas Vansittart (Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer), the Right Honourable Charles Long (Paymaster of the 



