the property of a certain Sir ----, a high official of a past
generation, who wished to part with it, and found a convenient purchaser
in the Government.

The hospitalities at Government House were well maintained under the
J---- administration. The Colonel was gracious, the lady beautiful and
brilliant. There were lawn parties and evening parties, when all that
was best in the island was collected; the old Jamaican aristocracy, army
and navy officers, civilians, eminent lawyers, a few men among them of
high intelligence. The tone was old-fashioned and courteous, with
little, perhaps too little, of the _go-a-headism_ of younger colonies,
but not the less agreeable on that account. As to prospects, or the
present condition of things in the island, there were wide differences
of opinion. If there was unanimity about anything, it was about the
consequences likely to arise from an extension of the principle of
self-government. There, at all events, lay the right road to the wrong
place. The blacks had nothing to complain of, and the wrong at present
was on the other side. The taxation fell heavily on the articles
consumed by the upper classes. The duty on tea, for instance, was a
shilling a pound, and the duties on other luxuries in the same
proportion. It scarcely touched the negroes at all. They were acquiring
land, and some thought that there ought to be a land tax. They would
probably object and resist, and trouble would come if it was proposed,
for the blacks object to taxes. As long as there are white men to pay
them, they will be satisfied to get the benefit of the expenditure; but
let not their English friends suppose that when they have the island for
their own they will tax themselves for police or schools, or for any
other of those educational institutions from which the believers in
progress anticipate such glorious results.

As to the planters, it seemed agreed that when an estate was
unencumbered and the owner resided upon it and managed it himself, he
could still keep afloat. It was agreed also that when the owner was an
absentee the cost of management consumed all the profits, and thus the
same impulse to sell which had gone so far in the Antilles was showing
itself more and more in Jamaica also. Fine properties all about the
island were in the market for any price which purchasers could be found
to give. Too many even of the old English families were tired of the
struggle, and were longing to be out of it