.
We do not know whether Williams' epigram was a sober opinion or merely
one cast off in a fit of irritation, that moment of "haste," which
even the Psalmist knew, when he was led to sweep all mankind in under
the term of "liar." But, further, if Williams was the deliberate
sycophant and racial toady Gardner strives to shelter behind his
shield of excuse, how was it that he had not won from the planter
party, whose voice reaches us through Long, a more softened if not a
more favorable opinion? There must have been some marked independence
of spirit about a man who cut himself off thus on the one side and on
the other. He was an educated man, placed in a false position; cut off
by the narrowmindedness of the educated men around him from the
environment for which training and education had fitted him. Had his
savage epigram employed the term "slave," instead of "negro," and that
was practically what it meant, it could stand as a thought-compelling
truth, pointing beyond the slave to the tyrant system that made the
slave.

Gardner, whose history was published in 1876, was, by class, of the
missionaries, and by disposition a liberal, and a conscientious
liberal. His estimate of Williams is thoroughly well-intentioned, and
not wholly inadequate. It lacks subtlety, rather than sympathy. I
cannot help hoping that time will bring to light material by which
something may be attempted regarding the personality and character of
Francis Williams, nearer what one feels instinctively is the truth
than the outline at present holding the field.

Francis Williams has been mentioned as the author of the song:
"Welcome, welcome, fellow debtor," but on what grounds, beyond
tradition, it is not clear. We have, however, a Latin poem which is
indubitably his work. It was addressed to General George Haldane, who
arrived in Jamaica as Governor, April 17, 1758. It is panegyric, after
the fashion of the eighteenth century, that is excessively so, but
there are lines in it worth remembering. It is thus inscribed:

Integerrimo et Fortissimo
Viro
GEORGIO HALDANO, ARMIGERO,
Insulae Jamaicensis Gubernatori;
Cui, omnes morum, virtutumque dotes billicarum,
In cumulum accesserunt,
CARMEN.[226]

DENIQUE venturum fatis volventibus annum (_e_)
Cuncta per extensum laeta videnda diem,
Excussis adsunt curis, sub inagine (_f_) clara