HISTORICAL. 
29 
“ At the same time will be let for five years, two women 
servants, two girls, and a good fisherman.”* 
“ Also will he sold at the said house, a slave boy aged 
nine years, and a slave girl aged seven years, with a few 
articles of furniture, &c.”f 
The East India Company having reared this little settlement in 
the lap of luxury through a period of 182 years, sparing nothing 
that could add to its prosperity and advancement, as well as to the 
comfort and enjoyment of its inhabitants, it is not to be wondered 
at that the latter little understood the meaning of self-reliance. The 
annual expenditure in the Island by the Company amounted to eighty 
or ninety thousand pounds, and they maintained a garrison there of 
three companies of artillery, called the St. Helena Artillery, a St. 
Helena Kegiment of four companies, in all 700 strong, exclusive of 
a corps of militia ; but ere long, a heavy blow fell upon this 
flourishing, peaceful, and happy British Settlement — one from which 
it has never recovered, and since which it has gradually descended 
in the scale of prosperity. 
It was in the year 1833, that the St. Helenians received the 
almost crushing intelligence, that, by Act of Parliament dated 
28th August of the same year, the Island was no longer to be ruled 
by the Honourable East India Company after the 22nd April, 
1834, but to be transferred to His Majesty’s Government. There was 
little time allowed for reflection ; the garrison was dispersed, some 
being pensioned, some taking office under the new Government ; 
while the Civil Establishments were broken up, and many who had 
been accustomed to affluence were reduced almost in a moment to 
comparative poverty.! Gn the 24th February, 1836, Major-General 
Middlemore arrived, and, with a garrison composed of H.M.’s 
91st Begiment, took possession of the Island in the name of King 
William the Fourth. 
The East India Company’s Governor had received an income of 
about 9000/. a year, while the Governor appointed by the Crown 
was to receive about one-fourth of that amount. Plantation House, 
his residence, a mansion with its undulating and well-wooded park. 
* The Monthly Register, St. Helena, 1810. f Ibid. 
J So hard did the Company’s treatment of their servants press upon many of them, that 
twenty years after this event officers of high rank might be seen digging the soil side by side 
with their own negro servant in the struggle to support their families. 
