incapable of stopping at less.

From this comparative sketch of the history of the slaves in the
States, in the West Indies and countries adjacent, it will be perceived
that in the latter scenes of bondage everything had conspired to render
a fusion of interests between the ruling and the servile classes not
only easy, but inevitable. In the very first generation after their
introduction, the Africans began to press upward, a movement which
every decade has accelerated, in spite of the changes which supervened
as each of the Colonies fell under British sway. Nearly two centuries
had by this time elapsed, and the coloured influence, which had grown
with their wealth, education, numbers, and unity, though [251]
circumscribed by the emancipation of the slaves, and the consequent
depression in fortune of all slave-owners, never was or could be
annihilated. In the Government service there were many for whom the
patronage of god-parents or the sheer influence of their family had
effected an entrance. The prevalence and potency of the influences we
have been dilating upon may be gauged by the fact that personages no
less exalted than Governors of various Colonies--of Trinidad in three
authentic cases--have been sharers in the prevailing usages, in the
matter of standing sponsors (by proxy), and also of relaxing in the
society of some fascinating daughter of the sun from the tension and
wear of official duty. In the three cases just referred to, the most
careful provision was made for the suitable education and starting in
life of the issues. For the god-children of Governors there were
places in the public service, and so from the highest to the lowest the
humanitarian intercourse of the classes was confirmed.

Consequent on the frequent abandonment of their plantations by many
owners who despaired of being able to get along by paying [252] their
way, an opening was made for the insinuation of Absenteeism into our
agricultural, in short, our economic existence. The powerful sugar
lords, who had invested largely in the cane plantations, were fain to
take over and cultivate the properties which their debtors doggedly
refused to continue working, under pretext of the entire absence, or at
any rate unreliability, of labour. The representatives of those new
transatlantic estate proprietors displaced, but never could replace,
the original cultivators, who were mostly gentlemen as well as
agriculturists. It was from this ov