ST. HELENA 73 



Also will be sold at the said house a slave boy, aged nine years, 

 and a slave girl, aged seven years, with a few articles of furniture. 



Every effort was made by the East India Company to 

 advance the welfare and prosperity of the little island, and 

 this will be seen when it is stated that the annual expenditure 

 in the island by the Company was between eighty and 

 ninety thousand pounds. They kept the St. Helena Regi- 

 ment 700 strong (four companies), and the St. Helena 

 Artillery (three batteries), besides a strong force of militia. 

 The island was a flourishing and peaceful colony when, as 

 Mellis states, a heavy blow fell on them, a blow from which 

 the colony has never recovered. In 1833 the islanders 

 received the unexpected and unwelcome news that, by act of 

 Parliament dated August 20, the East India Company's rule 

 would end on the following April 22, 1834. I n this short 

 time the Government was broken up and the garrison dis- 

 banded, some taking service with the new Government, 

 others receiving pensions, and it is said that many who had 

 been living in comfort were reduced to bitter straits. In 

 fact, so much poverty ensued that many of the Company's 

 servants, who had been in the first rank, were to be seen till- 

 ing the ground side by side with their own negro servant 

 in order that they might support their families. Remon- 

 strances against the inadequacy of the pensions granted by 

 Government, and petitions to the East India Company 

 for grants to their discarded officers, who had served them 

 for so long, were disregarded for nine years, and then the 

 repeated appeals to their humanity wrung from them the 

 trifling grant of £740 annually among thirty-three of their 

 servants. By their arrangement of this pittance their army 

 captains who had served twenty-three years received lod. 

 per day, or £15 6s. per annum ; subalterns of nineteen 

 years standing £13 19s. per annum, and the rest were paid-in 

 the same ratio. Nor was this the full extent of the injustice 

 done for the unfortunate St. Helena establishment. They 

 had been compulsorily removed from situations which they 

 had been led to believe would be permanent, and would form 

 a provision for life, and then found themselves undeservedly 

 deprived of all employment, without which they were 

 unable to support and educate their families, whilst 

 all their appeals to the East India Company ended in their 



