They lived above the foulest drains, they breathed the closest air,
They had their yearly twinge of gout, but little seemed to care.
But though they burned their coals at home, nor fetched their ice from Wenham,
They played the man before Quebec and stormed the lines at Blenheim.
When sailors lived on mouldy bread and lumps of rusty pork,
No Frenchman dared to show his nose between the Downs and Cork.”
The conscience of the British nation slumbered peacefully until at the beginning of the nineteenth century, “in the teeth of clenched antagonisms,” the revivalistic preaching of the Evangelicals produced a marked change on religious thought and life: decency once more became fashionable. Extravagance in dress, and in the mode of living, was put down in many of the houses of the great nobles. Clerical iniquities, such as the holding of pluralities, leaving secluded country spots practically heathen, were enquired into and abuses remedied. That the change which had come over the face of things was due to the ghastly tragedies which took place on the other side of the channel, the wholesale slaughter of the French royalty and aristocracy, the tearing up by the roots of all religion and order culminating in the storming of the Bastille by a ferocious mob, is the verdict of no less an authority than Mr Gladstone, who wrote as follows: “I have heard persons of great weight and authority, such as Mr Grenville and also, I think, Archbishop Howley, ascribe the beginnings of a reviving seriousness in the upper classes of lay society to a reaction against the horrors and impieties of the first French Revolution in its later stages.” In another passage taken from “The Dinner-bell of the House of Commons,” we can feel even to-day how intense the shock must have been throughout the civilised world, and how great the impetus given to mend their ways by the demoniacal proceedings in France: “A voice like the Apocalypse sounded over Europe, and even echoed in all the courts of Europe. Burke poured the vials of his hoarded vengeance into the agitated heart of Christendom, and stimulated the panic of a world by the wild pictures of his inspired imagination.”
This was a transitional time in English national life; that it was bloodless may be ascribed to the solid sense and law-abiding temperament of the Anglo-Saxon race. Men like George Eliot’s immortal creation, “Edgar Tryan of Milby,” battled with the quiescent worldliness of an unenthusiastic episcopate. In the ardour of their convictions they depicted in glowing language the consequences of unrepented sin. Their enthusiasm and uncompromising devotion to their principles brought home to the awakening nation the horrors of the traffic in human flesh. Their very narrowness gave intensity and concentration to their work, the crowning glory of which was the passing of the Emancipation Bill, when the country paid twenty millions in cash to quiet the newly-awakened conscience, at the same time unconsciously throwing into the bargain the commercial prosperity of the West Indian colonies.
To return to Jamaica, we must not omit to mention that during the century we have been reviewing various dissenting bodies had sent out missionaries to Christianise the blacks. No churchman, however bigoted, would refuse to acknowledge the worth of their self-sacrificing and devoted labours, knowing well that much theological learning and zeal had been diverted from the Established Church on account of its unsympathetic attitude and inefficiency to cope with such ardent souls as the Wesleys and Whitfields of those days. Nor were the great Home Missionary Societies callous as to the religious condition of our plantations. The Church Missionary Society was in the field before that for the Propagation of the Gospel. Space forbids one to do more than to say that many men who were sent out died at their posts, doing their best, and making the way easier for those who followed. The first Bishop of Jamaica was Dr Lipscombe. He arrived in the island in 1824, a time when the agitation of anticipated emancipation was at its height, many of the planters threatening to transfer their allegiance to the United States, or even to assert their independence, for they foresaw the havoc which the measure would play with the sugar industry. Serious outbreaks occurred frequently amongst the blacks; lives were lost, property to the amount of £666,977 was destroyed on one occasion. In a statement of 1832 we find that during the eight years of the bishop’s residence in the island thirteen churches had been built, nine were in course of erection. The diocese numbered forty-five clergy and thirty-two catechists, religious instruction being given on two hundred and eighty estates. At this time the Church was straggling hard to teach the liberated slaves how to use their freedom; and it is noteworthy that during the festivities with which the emancipation was celebrated, extending over three days, no riot, or trouble of any kind, is recorded.
It was during the episcopate of the second Bishop of Jamaica, Dr Spencer, that the Church Missionary Societies practically withdrew help from this colony. The S.P.G. missionary connection ceased in 1865, urging in explanation the more pressing needs of other mission-fields. In these years the Church suffered materially from the withdrawal of financial support. We read of closed chapels, dilapidated school-houses, scattered congregations; but there were more troublous days in store for it, and indeed for the whole island.