The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

The government consists of a Governor, Council, and House of Assembly; King, Lords, and Commons again. Twenty years ago I should thoroughly have approved of this; but now I am hardly sure whether a population of ten or twelve thousand individuals, of whom much more than half are women, and more than half the remainder are negroes, require so composite a constitution. Would not a strict Governor, with due reference to Downing Street, do almost as well? But then to make the change; that would be difficulty.

"We have them pretty well in hand," a gentleman whispered to me who was in some shape connected with the governing powers. He was alluding, I imagine, to the House of Assembly. Well, that is a comfort. A good majority in the Lower House is a comfort to all men—except the minority.

There are nine parishes, each returning four members to this House of Assembly. But though every parish requires four members, I observe that half a clergyman is enough for most of them. But then the clergymen must be paid. The council here consists chiefly of gentlemen holding government offices, or who are in some way connected with the government; so that the Crown can probably contrive to manage its little affairs. If I remember rightly Gibraltar and Malta have no Lords or Commons. They are fortresses, and as such under military rule; and so is Bermuda a fortress. Independently of her purely military importance, her size and population is by no means equal to that of Malta. The population of Malta is chiefly native, and foreign to us;—and the population of Bermuda is chiefly black.

But then Malta is a conquered colony, whereas Bermuda was "settled" by Britons, as the word goes. That makes all the difference. That such a little spot as Bermuda would in real fact be better without a constitution of its own, if the change could only be managed, that I imagine will be the opinion of most men who have thought about the matter.

And now for the convict establishment. I received great kindness and hospitality from the controller of it; but this, luckily, does not prevent my speaking freely on the matter. He had only just then newly arrived from England, had but now assumed his new duties, and was therefore neither responsible for anything that was amiss, or entitled to credit for what had been permanently established there on a good footing. My own impression is that of the latter there was very little.

In these days our penal establishments, and gaol arrangements generally, are, certainly, matters of very vital importance to us. In olden times, and I include the last century and some part of this among olden times, we certainly did not manage these matters well. Our main object then was to get rid of our ruffians; to punish them also, certainly; but, as a chief matter, to get rid of them. The idea of making use of them, present or future use, had hardly occurred to us; nor had we begun to reflect whether the roguery of coming years might not be somewhat lessened by curing the rogues—by making them not rogues. Now-a-days, we are reflecting a good deal on this question.

Our position now has been all altered. Circumstances have done much to alter it; we can no longer get rid of the worst class of criminals by sending them to Botany Bay. Botany Bay has assumed a will of its own, and won't have them at any price. But philanthropy has done more even than circumstances, very much more. We have the will, the determination as well as the wish, to do well by our rogues, even if we have not as yet found the way; and this is much. In this, as in everything else, the way will follow the will, sooner or later.

But in the mean time we have been trying various experiments, with more or less success; forgiving men half their terms of punishment on good behaviour; giving them tickets of leave; crank-turning; solitary confinement; pietising—what may be called a system of gaol sanctity, perhaps the worst of all schemes, as being a direct advertisement for hypocrisy; work without result, the most distressing punishment going, one may say, next to that of no work at all; enforced idleness, which is horrible for human nature to contemplate; work with result, work which shall pay; good living, pound of beef, pound of bread, pound of potatoes, ounce of tea, glass of grog, pipe of tobacco, resulting in much fat, excellent if our prisoners were stalled oxen to be eaten; poor living, bread and water, which has its recommendations also, though it be so much opposed to the material humanity of the age; going to school, so that life if possible may be made to recommence; very good also, if life would recommence; corporal punishment, flogging of the body, horrible to think of, impossible to be looked at; spirit punishment, flogging of the soul, best of all if one could get at the soul so as to do it effectually.

All these schemes are being tried; and as I believe that they are tried with an honest intent to arrive at that which is best, so also do I believe that we shall in time achieve that which is, if not heavenly best, at any rate terrestrially good;—shall at least get rid certainly of all that is hellishly bad. At present, however, we are still groping somewhat uncertainly. Let us try for a moment to see what the Bermuda groping has done.

I do not in the least doubt that the intention here also has been good; the intention, that is, of those who have been responsible for the management of the establishment. But I do not think that the results have been happy.