FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   >>  
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
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   >>  



Top keywords:
influence
 

education

 

owners

 

Colonies

 

plantations

 
Governors
 
service
 

classes

 
slaves
 

issues


original

 

replace

 
provision
 

starting

 
cultivators
 

suitable

 
estate
 
representatives
 

places

 

public


transatlantic

 

proprietors

 

children

 

displaced

 

relaxing

 

society

 

fascinating

 

standing

 

sponsors

 

daughter


referred

 
gentlemen
 

tension

 

official

 

agriculturists

 
careful
 

lowest

 
existence
 

economic

 
working

powerful
 

agricultural

 
entire
 
Absenteeism
 

pretext

 

invested

 
cultivate
 

properties

 
refused
 

debtors