ts, or the governor sent to them from the Spanish
Court, the good Spaniards of Trinidad; till the peace of 1783 woke
them up, and they found themselves suddenly in a new, and an
unpleasantly lively, world.

Rodney's victories had crippled Spain utterly; and crippled, too,
the French West Indian islands, though not France itself: but the
shrewd eye of a M. Rome de St. Laurent had already seen in Trinidad
a mine of wealth, which might set up again, not the Spanish West
Indians merely, but those of the French West Indians who had
exhausted, as they fancied, by bad cultivation, the soils of
Guadaloupe, Martinique, and St. Lucia. He laid before the Intendant
at Caraccas, on whom Trinidad then depended, a scheme of
colonisation, which was accepted, and carried out in 1783, by a man
who, as far as I can discover, possessed in a pre-eminent degree
that instinct of ruling justly, wisely, gently, and firmly, which is
just as rare in this age as it was under the ancien regime. Don
Josef Maria Chacon was his name,--a man, it would seem, like poor
Kaiser Joseph of Austria, born before his time. Among his many
honourable deeds, let this one at least be remembered; that he
turned out of Trinidad, the last Inquisitor who ever entered it.

Foreigners, who must be Roman Catholics (though on this point Chacon
was as liberal as public opinion allowed him to be), were invited to
settle on grants of Crown land. Each white person of either sex was
to have some thirty-two acres, and half that quantity for every
slave that he should bring. Free people of colour were to have half
the quantity; and a long list of conditions was annexed, which,
considering that they were tainted with the original sin of slave-
holding, seem wise and just enough. Two articles especially
prevented, as far as possible, absenteeism. Settlers who retired
from the island might take away their property; but they must pay
ten per cent on all which they had accumulated; and their lands
reverted to the Crown. Similarly, if the heirs of a deceased
settler should not reside in the colony, fifteen per cent was to be
levied on the inheritance. Well had it been for every West Indian
island, British or other, if similar laws had been in force in them
for the last hundred years.

So into Trinidad poured, for good and evil, a mixed population,
principally French, to the number of some 12,000; till within a year
or two the island was S