James Froude - The English in the West Indies; Or, The Bow of Ulysses

Once more, if we mean to keep the blacks as British subjects, we are bound to govern them, and to govern them well. If we cannot do it, we had better let them go altogether. And here is the real difficulty. It is not that men competent for such a task cannot be found. Among the public servants of Great Britain there are persons always to be found fit and willing for posts of honour and difficulty if a sincere effort be made to find them. Alas! in times past we have sent persons to rule our Baratarias to whom Sancho Panza was a sage – troublesome members of Parliament, younger brothers of powerful families, impecunious peers; favourites, with backstairs influence, for whom a provision was to be found; colonial clerks, bred in the office, who had been obsequious and useful.

One had hoped that in the new zeal for the colonial connection such appointments would have become impossible for the future, yet a recent incident at the Mauritius has proved that the colonial authorities are still unregenerate. The unfit are still maintained in their places; and then, to prevent the colonies from suffering too severely under their incapacity, we set up the local councils, nominated or elected, to do the work, while the Queen's representative enjoys his salary. Instances of glaring impropriety like that to which I have alluded are of course rare, and among colonial governors there are men of quality so high that we would desire only to see their power equal to it. But so limited is the patronage, on the other hand, which remains to the home administrations, and so heavy the pressure brought to bear upon them, that there are persons also in these situations of whom it may be said that the less they do, and the less they are enabled to do, the better for the colony over which they preside.

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ὦ τἑκνον, οὐχ ἅπαντα τῷ γήρᾳ κακἁ;

This is the explanation of the name which is given by Dampier.

Labat seems to say that they were hung up alive in these cages, and left to die there. He says elsewhere, and it may be hoped that the explanation is the truer one, that the recently imported negroes often destroyed themselves, in the belief that when dead they would return to their own country. In the French islands as well as the English, the bodies of suicides were exposed in these cages, from which they could not be stolen, to convince the poor people of their mistake by their own eyes. He says that the contrivance was successful, and that after this the slaves did not destroy themselves any more.

I have been told that this picture is overdrawn, that Grenada is the most prosperous of the Antilles, that its exports are increasing, that English owners are making large profits again, that the blacks are thriving beyond example, that there are twenty guns in the Fort, that the wharves and Quay are in perfect condition, that there are no roofless warehouses, that in my description of St. George's I must have been asleep or dreaming. I can only repeat and insist upon what I myself saw. I know very well that in parts of the island a few energetic English gentlemen are cultivating their land with remarkable success. Any enterprising Englishman with capital and intelligence might do the same. I know also that in no part of the West Indies are the blacks happier or better off. But notwithstanding the English interest in the Island has sunk to relatively nothing. Once Englishmen owned the whole of it. Now there are only thirty English estates. There are five thousand peasant freeholds, owned almost entirely by coloured men, and the effect of the change is written upon the features of the harbour. Not a vessel of any kind was to be seen in it. The great wooden jetty where cargoes used to be landed, or taken on board, was a wreck, the piles eaten through, the platform broken. On the Quay there was no sign of life, or of business, the houses along the side mean and insignificant, while several large and once important buildings, warehouses, custom houses, dwelling houses, or whatever they had been, were lying in ruins, tropical trees growing in the courtyards, and tropical creepers climbing over the masonry showing how long the decay had been going on. These buildings had once belonged to English merchants, and were evidence of English energy and enterprise, which once had been and now had ceased to be. As to the guns in the fort, I cannot say how much old iron may be left there. But I was informed that only one gun could be fired and that with but half a charge.

This is of little consequence or none, but unless the English population can be reinforced, Grenada in another generation will cease to be English at all, while the prosperity, the progress, even the continued civilisation of the blacks depends on the maintenance there of English influence and authority.

The negroes in the interior are beginning to cultivate sugar cane in small patches, with common mills to break it up. If the experiment succeeds it may extend.

Traen las cabezas atadas con unos panuelos labrados hermosos que parecen de lejos de seda y almazarrones.