46 



PUBLIC SALARIES, 



of labor, occasioned by the emancipation of slaves, which 

 compelled them to surrender their accustomed market to 

 the cheaper slave-grown productions of Cuba and Brazil. 

 The number of those who are opposed to colonial protec- 

 tion is too small to constitute a party, and hence, that sub- 

 ject rarely enters into the formation of party issues of any 

 kind. 



The party lines are most distinctly drawn between what 

 are known, the one as the " King's House," and the other 

 the " Country Party " — the former being the administration 

 and the latter, the opposition parties. The prominent 

 measure pending between them at the last Assembly, of a 

 strictly party character, was the retrenchment of salaries. 

 The country party is composed mostly of the planters and 

 large proprietors of land, who insist that in the present de- 

 pressed and impoverished condition of the island, it is im- 

 possible to pay the enormous salaries which were granted 

 in the days of their prosperity. They say, and with rea- 

 son, that forty thousand dollars a year is too much for a 

 governor of four hundred thousand people, when the Pre- 

 sident of the United states, with twenty millions of subjects 

 receives only twenty-five thousand a year — that fifteen 

 thousand dollars for a Chief Justice of Jamaica, and 

 ten thousand for each of his associates, is extravagant, 

 when the Chief Justice of the highest tribunal in the 

 United States only gets six thousand dollars; and so 



