ernors are, of course,
all of them imbued, to some extent, with the ministerial policy--at
least it is reasonable to assume that they are so. At all events,
whether they are so or not, their position almost necessitates their
doing their utmost to carry out, with success, the ministerial views and
general policy. To embody the substance of the answer given by a
talented lieutenant-governor, in my own hearing, to an address which set
forth, somewhat strongly, the ruined prospects and wasted fortunes of
the colonists under his government: 'It must, or it ought to be, the
object and the desire of every governor or lieutenant-governor in the
British West Indian Islands, to disappoint and stultify, if he can, the
prognostications of coming ruin with which the addresses he receives
from time to time are continually charged?' Yet what say these
governors? Do not the reports of one and all of them confirm the above
statement as to the deplorable state of distress to which the West
Indian planters in the British colonies are reduced?"[179]

Again, he says: "That the British West Indian colonists have been loudly
complaining that they are ruined, is a fact so generally acknowledged,
that the very loudness and frequency of the complaint has been made a
reason for disregarding or undervaluing the grounds of it. That the West
Indians are always grumbling is an observation often heard; and, no
doubt, it is very true that they are so. But let any one who thinks that
the extent and clamor of the complaint exceeds the magnitude of the
distress which has called it forth, go to the West Indies and judge for
himself. Let him see with his own eyes the neglected and abandoned
estates,--the uncultivated fields, fast hurrying back into a state of
nature, with all the speed of tropical luxuriance--the dismantled and
silent machinery, the crumbling walls, and deserted mansions, which are
familiar sights in most of the British West Indian colonies. Let him,
then, transport himself to the Spanish islands of Porto Rico and Cuba,
and witness the life and activity which in these slave colonies prevail.
Let him observe for himself the activity of the slavers--the
improvements daily making in the cultivation of the fields and in the
processes carried on at the Ingenios or sugar-mills--and _the general
indescribable air of thriving and prosperity which surrounds the
whole_,--and then let him come back to England and say, if he honestly
can, that the Bri