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

by James Anthony Froude

Barbadoes is as unlike in appearance as it is in social condition to Trinidad or the Antilles. There are no mountains in it, no forests, no rivers, and as yet no small freeholders. The blacks, who number nearly 200,000 in an island not larger than the Isle of Wight, are labourers, working for wages on the estates of large proprietors. Land of their own they have none, for there is none for them. Work they must, for they cannot live otherwise. Thus every square yard of soil is cultivated, and turn your eyes where you will you see houses, sugar canes, and sweet potatoes. Two hundred and fifty years of occupation have imprinted strongly an English character; parish churches solid and respectable, the English language, the English police and parochial system. However it may be in the other islands, England in Barbadoes is still a solid fact. The headquarters of the West Indian troops are there. There is a commander-in-chief residing in a 'Queen's House,' so called. There is a savannah where there are English barracks under avenues of almond and mahogany. Red coats are scattered about the grass. Officers canter about playing polo, and naval and military uniforms glitter at the side of carriages, and horsemen and horsewomen take their evening rides, as well mounted and as well dressed as you can see in Rotten Row. Barbadoes is thus in pleasing contrast with the conquered islands which we have not taken the trouble to assimilate. In them remain the wrecks of the French civilisation which we superseded, while we have planted nothing of our own. Barbadoes, the European aspect of it at any rate, is English throughout.

The harbour, when we arrived, was even more brilliant than we had left it a fortnight before. The training squadron had gone, but in the place of it the West Indian fleet was there, and there were also three American frigates, old wooden vessels out merely on a cruise, but heavily sparred, smart and well set up, with the stars and stripes floating carelessly at their sterns, as if in these western seas, be the nominal dominion British, French, or Spanish, the American has a voice also and intends to be heard.

We had no sooner anchored than a well-appointed boat was alongside with an awning and an ensign at the stern. Colonel ——, the chief of the police, to whom it belonged, came on board in search of Miss ——, who was to be his guest in Bridgetown. She introduced me to him. He insisted on my accompanying him home to breakfast, and, as he was a person in authority, I had nothing to do but obey. Colonel ——, to whose politeness then and afterwards I was in many ways indebted, had seen life in various forms. He had been in the navy. He had been in the army. He had been called to the bar. He was now the head of the Barbadoes police, with this anomalous addition to his other duties, that in default of a chaplain he read the Church service on Sundays in the barracks. He had even a license from the bishop to preach sermons, and being a man of fine character and original sense he discharged this last function, I was told, remarkably well. His house was in the heart of the town, but shaded with tropical trees. The rooms were protected by deep outside galleries, which were overrun with Bougainvillier creepers. He was himself the kindest of entertainers, his Irish lady the kindest of hostesses, with the humorous high breeding of the old Sligo aristocracy, to whom she belonged. I found that I had been acquainted with some of her kindred there long ago, in the days when the Anglo-Irish rule had not been discovered to be a upas tree, and cultivated human life was still possible in Connaught. Of the breakfast, which consisted of all the West Indian dainties I had ever heard or read of, I can say nothing, nor of the pleasant talk which followed. I was to see more of Colonel ——, for he offered to drive me some day across the island, a promise which he punctually fulfilled. My stay with him for the present could be but brief, as I was expected at Government House.

I have met with exceptional hospitality from the governors of British colonies in many parts of the world. They are not chosen like the Roman proconsuls from the ranks of trained statesmen who have held high administrative offices at home. They are appointed, as I said just now, from various motives, sometimes with a careful regard to fitness for their post, sometimes with a regard merely to routine or convenience or to personal influence brought to bear in their favour. I have myself seen some for whom I should have thought other employment would have been more suitable; but always and everywhere those that I have fallen in with have been men of honour and integrity above reproach or suspicion, and I have met with one or two gentlemen in these situations whose admirable qualities it is impossible to praise too highly, who in their complicated responsibilities—responsibilities to the colonies and responsibilities to the authorities at home—have considered conscience and duty to be their safest guides, have cared only to do what they believed to be right to the best of their ability, and have left their interests to take care of themselves.

The Governor of Barbadoes is not despotic. He controls the administration, but there is a constitution as old as the Stuarts; an Assembly of thirty-three members, nine of whom the Crown nominates, the rest are elected. The friction is not so violent as when the number of the nominated and elected members is equal, and as long as a property qualification was required for the franchise, the system may have worked tolerably without producing any violent mischief. There have been recent modifications, however, pointing in the same direction as those which have been made in Jamaica. By an ordinance from home the suffrage has been widely extended, obviously as a step to larger intended changes.

Under such conditions and with an uncertain future a governor can do little save lead and influence, entertain visitors, discharge the necessary courtesies to all classes of his subjects, and keep his eyes open. These duties at least Sir Charles Lee discharges to perfection, the entertaining part of them on a scale so liberal that if Père Labat came back he would suppose that the two hundred years which have gone by since his visit was a dream, and that Government House at least was still as he left it. In an establishment which had so many demands upon it, and where so many visitors of all kinds were going and coming, I had no claim to be admitted. I felt that I should be an intruder, and had I been allowed would have taken myself elsewhere, but Sir Charles's peremptory generosity admitted of no refusal. As a subject I was bound to submit to the Queen's representative. I cannot say I was sorry to be compelled. In Government House I should see and hear what I could neither have seen nor heard elsewhere. I should meet people who could tell me what I most wanted to know. I had understood already that owing to the sugar depression the state of the island was critical. Officials were alarmed. Bankers were alarmed. No one could see beyond the next year what was likely to happen. Sir Charles himself would have most to say. He was evidently anxious. Perhaps if he had a fault, he was over anxious; but with the possibility of social confusion before him, with nearly 200,000 peasant subjects, who in a few months might be out of work and so out of food, with the inflammable negro nature, and a suspicious and easily excited public opinion at home, the position of a Governor of Barbadoes is not an enviable one. The Government at home, no doubt with the best intentions, has aggravated any peril which there may be by enlarging the suffrage. The experience of Governor Eyre in Jamaica has taught the danger of being too active, but to be too inactive may be dangerous also. If there is a stir again in any part of these islands, and violence and massacre come of it, as it came in St. Domingo, the responsibility is with the governor, and the account will be strictly exacted of him.

I must describe more particularly the reasons which there are for uneasiness. On the day on which I landed I saw an article in a Bridgetown paper in which my coming there was spoken of as perhaps the last straw which would break the overburdened back. I know not why I should be thought likely to add anything to the load of Barbadian afflictions. I should be a worse friend to the colonies than I have tried to be if I was one of those who would quench the smoking flax of loyalty in any West Indian heart. But loyalty, I very well know, is sorely tried just now. The position is painfully simple. The great prosperity of the island ended with emancipation. Barbadoes suffered less than Jamaica or the Antilles because the population was large and the land limited, and the blacks were obliged to work to keep themselves alive. The abolition of the sugar duties was the next blow. The price of sugar fell, and the estates yielded little more than the expense of cultivation. Owners of properties who were their own managers, and had sense and energy, continued to keep themselves afloat; but absenteeism had become the fashion. The brilliant society which is described by Labat had been melting for more than a century. More and more the old West Indian families removed to England, farmed their lands through agents and overseers, or sold them to speculating capitalists. The personal influence of the white man over the black, which might have been brought about by a friendly intercourse after slavery was abolished, was never so much as attempted. The higher class of gentry found the colony more and more distasteful to them, and they left the arrangement of the labour question to persons to whom the blacks were nothing, emancipated though they might be, except instruments of production. A negro can be attached to his employer at least as easily as a horse or a dog. The horse or dog requires kind treatment, or he becomes indifferent or sullen; so it is with the negro. But the forced equality of the races before the law made more difficult the growth of any kindly feeling. To the overseer on a plantation the black labourer was a machine out of which the problem was to get the maximum of work with the minimum of pay. In the slavery times the horse and dog relation was a real thing. The master and mistress joked and laughed with their dark bondsmen, knew Cæsar from Pompey, knew how many children each had, gave them small presents, cared for them when they were sick, and maintained them when they were old and past work. All this ended with emancipation. Between whites and blacks no relations remained save that of employer and employed. They lived apart. They had no longer, save in exceptional instances, any personal communication with each other. The law refusing to recognise a difference, the social line was drawn the harder, which the law was unable to reach.

In the Antilles the plantations broke up as I had seen in Grenada. The whites went away, and the land was divided among the negroes. In Barbadoes, the estates were kept together. The English character and the English habits were stamped deeper there, and were not so easily obliterated. But the stars in their courses have fought against the old system. Once the West Indies had a monopoly of the sugar trade. Steam and progress have given them a hundred natural competitors; and on the back of these came the unnatural bounty-fed beetroot sugar competition. Meanwhile the expense of living increased in the days of inflated hope and 'unexampled prosperity.' Free trade, whatever its immediate consequences, was to make everyone rich in the end. When the income of an estate fell short one year, it was to rise in the next, and the money was borrowed to make ends meet; when it didn't rise, more money was borrowed; and there is now hardly a property in the island which is not loaded to the sinking point. Tied to sugar-growing, Barbadoes has no second industry to fall back upon. The blacks, who are heedless and light-hearted, increase and multiply. They will not emigrate, they are so much attached to their homes; and the not distant prospect is of a general bankruptcy, which may throw the land for the moment out of cultivation, with a hungry unemployed multitude to feed without means of feeding them, and to control without the personal acquaintance and influence which alone can make control possible.

At home there is a general knowledge that things are not going on well out there. But, true to our own ways of thinking, we regard it as their affair and not as ours. If cheap sugar ruins the planters, it benefits the English workman. The planters had their innings; it is now the consumer's turn. What are the West Indies to us? On the map they appear to belong more to the United States than to us. Let the United States take them and welcome. So thinks, perhaps, the average Englishman; and, analogous to him, the West Indian proprietor reflects that, if admitted into the Union, he would have the benefit of the American market, which would set him on his feet again; and that the Americans, probably finding that they, if not we, could make some profit out of the islands, would be likely to settle the black question for him in a more satisfactory manner.

That such a feeling as this should exist is natural and pardonable; and it would have gone deeper than it has gone if it were not that there are two parties to every bargain, and those in favour of such a union have met hitherto with no encouragement. The Americans are wise in their generation. They looked at Cuba; they looked at St. Domingo. They might have had both on easy terms, but they tell you that their constitution does not allow them to hold dependent states. What they annex they absorb, and they did not wish to absorb another million and a half of blacks and as many Roman Catholics, having enough already of both. Our English islands may be more tempting, but there too the black cloud hangs thick and grows yearly thicker, and through English indulgence is more charged with dangerous elements. Already, they say, they have every advantage which the islands can give them. They exercise a general protectorate, and would probably interfere if France or England were to attempt again to extend their dominions in that quarter; but they prefer to leave to the present owners the responsibility of managing and feeding the cow, while they are to have the milking of it.