ections,--active and all--enduring as
they were, could yet thrive without the support of human sympathy,
because they were sustained by so abiding a sense of the divine
presence, and so absolute a submission to the divine will, as raised
him habitually to that higher region where the reproach of man could not
reach, and the praise of man might not presume to follow him."]

Mr. Macaulay was admirably adapted for the arduous and uninviting task
of planting a negro colony. His very deficiencies stood him in good
stead; for, in presence of the elements with which he had to deal, it
was well for him that nature had denied him any sense of the ridiculous.
Unconscious of what was absurd around him, and incapable of being
flurried, frightened, or fatigued, he stood as a centre of order and
authority amidst the seething chaos of inexperience and insubordination.
The staff was miserably insufficient, and every officer of the Company
had to do duty for three in a climate such that a man is fortunate if he
can find health for the work of one during a continuous twelvemonth. The
Governor had to be in the counting-house, the law-court, the school, and
even the chapel. He was his own secretary, his own paymaster, his own
envoy. He posted ledgers, he decided causes, he conducted correspondence
with the Directors at home, and visited neighbouring potentates on
diplomatic missions which made up in danger what they lacked in dignity.
In the absence of properly qualified clergymen, with whom he would have
been the last to put himself in competition, he preached sermons
and performed marriages;--a function which must have given honest
satisfaction to one who had been so close a witness of the enforced
and systematised immorality of a slave-nursery. Before long, something
fairly resembling order was established, and the settlement began to
enjoy a reasonable measure of prosperity. The town was built, the fields
were planted, and the schools filled. The Governor made a point of
allotting the lightest work to the negroes who could read and write; and
such was the stimulating effect of this system upon education that he
confidently looked forward "to the time when there would be few in
the colony unable to read the Bible." A printing-press was in constant
operation, and in the use of a copying-machine the little community was
three-quarters of a century ahead of the London public offices.

But a severe ordeal was in store for the nascent civili