TRINIDAD : THEN AND NOW. 37 



island two years before, and had noted its possi- 

 bilities as a field of emigration, He induced the 

 Spanish government to publish a decree encouraging 

 foreigners to come and settle ; and immigrants be- 

 gan to arrive from the Caribbean islands, most of 

 them French, a few Irish, — for Catholics alone were 

 admitted ; but a liberal-minded governor, Don Chacon 

 was sent out to carry the decree into effect, and he 

 was not adverse to Protestants. The amount of land 

 grant was in proportion to the number of slaves 

 possessed. Kidnapping of black men from the other 

 islands became so prevalent that a clause in a 

 Grenada act passed in 1784 was directed specially 

 against this practise. ' ' 



I will here leave Sir Charles Lucas, and turn to 

 Joseph who had special facilities for seeing old 

 documents and family papers. Writing on this 

 point, he says — " From the cause stated, Trinidad 

 became towards the end of last century (18th) 

 notoriously the home of the knave and the receptacle 

 for stolen slaves and black and coloured people who 

 had been kidnapped and then sold as slaves but who 

 had not been slaves in the neighbouring colonies 

 from which they had been kidnapped. All people 

 going from Trinidad to any of the neighbouring 

 islands were looked upon with suspicion ; and in the 

 island of Grenada so much was suffered from the 

 visits of the inhabitants of this island, that a law was 

 made expressly against them." 



This might be a suitable place to insert a brief 

 summary of this law, but I think it will be more 



