84 



TRINIDAD : THEN AND NOW 



flag is once unfurled and set flowing free to the freer 

 winds of heaven, it affords the utmost liberty to each 

 individual forming the component parts of the coun- 

 try over which destiny calls it to rule, irrespective of 

 nationality, class or colour. It is, perhaps, this char- 

 acteristic more than any other, which makes for 

 success in colonising. 



In no case was this more truly exemplified than 

 in the conduct of the English Government towards 

 the captured colony of Trinidad. They displaced a 

 tyrannical, illiberal government, who, but for the 

 humanity of its then governor, Don Chacon, would 

 have sacrificed to the Inquisition — whose members 

 had but a short time before been expelled from 

 Trinidad by Chacon — or banished from the land 

 every Englishman not professing the same religion 

 as themselves. And yet what do we find when these 

 Englishmen obtain the upper hand ? With that 

 sacred instinct for religious liberty, that feeling that 

 a man's religious belief is a sacred thing between 

 himself and his God, and that almost divine spirit of 

 fair play — which are dominant characteristics of the 

 English governing race — they recognise the inhabi- 

 tants of this captured country as social equals, and 

 sign a Convention, demonstrating to a people who 

 had long cringed under a tyrannous government, a 

 sample of British equity, which assured to them and 

 other individuals not only religious but civil liberty, 

 as shown in the two following clauses : — 



" The free exercise of their religion is allowed to 

 all the inhabitants." 



