uation of manager; and perhaps in time, if they
evinced sufficient capacity, would reach the highest object of their
ambition and become an attorney. It will be recollected that the poet
Burns passed a whole day in taking leave of his "Highland Mary," when he
had made his arrangements for going to the West Indies and obtaining a
situation as overseer on a sugar plantation. Very few cases ever came to
my knowledge where a creole, a white person born and "brought up" in the
West Indies, was engaged on an estate in any capacity. The creoles were
reputed lazy, loose in their morals, ignorant and unfaithful agents.
They were seldom employed, unless on a plantation which was notoriously
unhealthy; where no man, unless he was born in the torrid zone, could
expect to resist successfully the poisonous effects of the miasma.

From what I have said it will be inferred that the manager of a
plantation possessed great power, and that the treatment of the slaves
was regulated in a great measure by the promptings of his head and
heart. A manager with a clear understanding, equable temper, and
elevated principles, could reconcile his duty to the proprietor with
justice and even kindness towards the slaves. So far from treating
them with cruelty or even severity, he allowed them every reasonable
indulgence, and while he exacted the full quota of labor, looked after
their condition, and made them as comfortable and contented as can be
expected in a state of bondage. Such managers were seen in Grenada, and
where they ruled, the estates were prosperous, and the slaves cheerful
and happy.

Some managers, however, were of a different character, and, instigated
by whim, liquor, an evil temper, hatred to the African race, or a desire
to get an impossible amount of work, acted the part of tyrants and
oppressors, and made the slaves feel that they were trodden beneath the
foot of a master.

But policy, a regard for the interest of the owner of the estate,
generally prevented the infliction of ill treatment and privations which
bore severely on the slaves; and public opinion, as well as the laws of
the colony, restrained the manager from the commission of extraordinary
acts of cruelty. In the British island of Tortola, only a few years
before my sojourn in Grenada, the manager of a plantation was arrested
for causing the death of a slave by inhuman punishment. He was tried,
convicted of murder, and hanged. The penalty exacted met the sanction o