uations of greater difficulty and delicacy than
that of the Governor of a British colony which possesses representative
institutions. A constitutional sovereign, but with frail and temporary
tenure, he is expected not to reign only but to govern; and to govern
under the orders of a distant minister, who, if he has one eye on the
colony, must keep the other on home politics. Thus, without any power in
himself, he is a meeting-point of two different and generally antagonistic
forces--the will of the imperial government and the will of the local
legislature. To act in harmony with both these forces, and to bring them
into something of harmony with each other, requires, under the most
favourable circumstances, a rare union of firmness with patience and tact.
But the difficulties were much aggravated in a West Indian colony in the
early days of Emancipation.

[Sidenote: such as Jamaica.]

Here the local legislature was a democratic oligarchy, partly composed of
landowners, but chiefly of overseers, with no permanent stake in the
country. And this legislature had to be induced to pass measures for the
benefit of those very blacks of whose enforced service they had been
deprived, and whose paid labour they found it difficult to obtain. Add to
this that, in Jamaica, a long period of contention with the mother-country
had left a feeling of bitter resentment for the past, and sullen
despondency as regards the future. Moreover, the balance had to be held
between the Church of England on the one hand, which was in possession of
all the ecclesiastical endowments, and probably of all the learning and
cultivation of the island, and, on the other hand, the various sects,
especially that of the Baptists, who, having fought vigorously for the
Negroes in the battle of Emancipation, now held undisputed sway over their
minds, and who, as was natural, found it difficult to abandon the position
of demagogues and agitators.

Lord Elgin was at once fortunate and unfortunate in coming after the most
conciliatory and popular of governors, Sir C. Metcalfe. The island was in
a state of peace and harmony which had been long unknown to it; but the
singular affection, which Metcalfe had inspired in all classes, made them
look forward with the most gloomy forebodings to the advent of his
successor.

[Sidenote: State of opinion in the island.]

Moreover, to use Lord Elgin's own language, a tone of despondency with
reference to the prospects of the