advance money on such risks, the nominal owners could not even get as
much as to pay wages. A plantation valued at perhaps L60,000 a few years
before, and easily mortgaged for half that amount, received L16,000 for
compensation with which to pay off the claim, and then wanted cash to
carry on as well. Banks were established, but only solvent estates could
get help from them, and consequently hundreds were abandoned in the
larger colonies, and hardly one, with the exception of those in
Barbados, could produce as much sugar as formerly. West Indian Nabobs,
who had been getting their ten thousand a year and living in England,
went out to see what could be done. Their incomes were entirely gone,
and with them all hopes for the future. Widows and children lost their
only means of support, and ruin fell on hundreds of families in England
as well as in the West Indies. But not only did this downfall affect the
owners and their relations, but merchants as well. Old firms shook to
their very foundations, while many became bankrupt, to bring suffering
to the homes of thousands who had hardly known of the sugar colonies
beyond the invectives of the anti-slavery society. Many who had been
strong advocates of emancipation now wished they had never said anything
about it, but the die was cast, and there could never again be anything
like the shilly-shallying of the French at Hayti.

[Illustration: CHINESE WOOD-CARRIER.]

[Illustration: EAST INDIAN COOLIE.]

The negroes would not work, and there were no means of forcing them to
do so. The anti-slavery party still had their delegates in the West
Indies to see that the "poor negro" was not oppressed in any way, and
their representatives in Parliament to call the Government to account if
they allowed any vagrancy laws, or even the shadow of a coercive measure
in the colonies. One ordinance after another for this purpose was
disallowed, until every planter was in despair.

[Illustration: EAST INDIAN COOLIE FAMILY.]

[Illustration: COOLIE BARBER.]

To retain their labourers was a matter of life or death. Some continued
the old slave allowances to put them in good humour, but as these made
the negroes independent of wages, the privilege was abused. They took
everything and did nothing in return. Some went so far as to say that
the Queen had promised that their late masters should supply them as
usual, entirely regardless of the amount of work they did. This made the
planters sore. W