fflicted by in aggravation of the difficulties of their lot.
Only typical examples can here be given out of hundreds upon hundreds
which might easily be cited and proved against the incumbents of the
abovementioned chief stipendiary magistracies. One such example was a
matter of everyday discussion at the time of Mr. Froude's visit. The
inhabitants were even backed in their complaints by the Governor, who
had, in response to their cry of distress, forwarded their prayer [86]
to the home authorities for relief from the hard treatment which they
alleged themselves to be suffering at the hands of the then magistrate.
Our allusion here is to the chief town, Port of Spain, the magistracy
of which embraces also the surrounding districts, containing a total
population of between 60,000 and 70,000 souls. Mr. R. D. Mayne filled
this responsible office during the latter years of Sir J. R. Longden's
governorship. He was reputed, soon after his arrival, to have
announced from the bench that in every case he would take the word of a
constable in preference to the testimony of any one else. The
Barbadian rowdies who then formed the major part of the constabulary of
Trinidad, and whose bitter hatred of the older residents had been not
only plainly expressed, but often brutally exemplified, rejoiced in the
opportunity thus afforded for giving effect to their truculent
sentiments. At that time the bulk of the immigrants from Barbados were
habitual offenders whom the Government there had provided with a free
passage to wherever they elected to betake themselves. The more
intelligent of the men flocked to the Trinidad [87] police ranks, into
which they were admitted generally without much inquiry into their
antecedents. On this account they were shunned by the decent
inhabitants, a course which they repaid with savage animosity.
Perjuries the most atrocious and crushing, especially to the
respectable poor, became the order of the day. Hundreds of innocent
persons were committed to gaol and the infamy of convict servitude,
without the possibility of escape from, or even mitigation of, their
ignominious doom. A respectable woman (a native of Barbados, too, who
in the time of the first immigration of the better sort of her
compatriots had made Trinidad her home) was one of the first victims of
this iniquitous state of affairs.

The class of people to which she belonged was noted as orderly,
industrious and law-abiding, and, being s