TOPICS OF THE DAY.
1.11.b DISTURBANCES IN BARBADOES.
WE V.h4R the exact nature.of the recent occurrences in Barbadoes, or the precise policy of the Governor— points upon which we shall have something to say presently— one thing is quite clear, that the public has missed the earlier history of the affair, without which the relations between all parties cannot be understood. We shall, therefore, preface any comments of our own by a brief narrative of the facts, as contained in the despatches and speeches published in the Official Gazette of Barbadoes. There can be no doubt, then, that Mr. Pope Hennessy accepted office as Governor of the Windward Islands pledged to forward a plan of uniting those islands, of which Barbadoes is the principal, with the Leeward Islands, into one extensive West-Indian Confederation. The plan was a favourite one with Lord Kimberley ; it was warmly approved by Lord Carnarvon ; Sir Rawson Rawson, the pre- vious aovernor, was censured after his departure for not bringing it before the Legislature, and Mr. Pope-Hennessy was directed to carry it out, if only the Legislature could be induced to agree. There was no wish to force it on a reluctant Legislature, but there was every wish to induce that Legislature to accept the plan. The Governor also heartily approved the policy, not only because it was the policy of the Office, but because he saw in it a remedy for the excessive poverty of the masses of the people, which the heads of the Episcopalian Church, of the Wesleyan Church, and of the Moravian Community had just denounced to him as unexampled. "We have never seen," they said, "a community in which there existed such intense and apparently hopeless poverty as in this." Mr. Hennessy had seen much of this poverty himself, he had read, he says, facts taken in evidence before a Royal Commission ; he saw, or imagined, slackness in the Legislature to touch the subject, and he there- fore opened his second Session in a long and able speech, in which he declared, among other things, that vagrancy and crime were increasing in the island, that the condition of the masses was a "very sad" one, though the finances were very prosperous, intimated not obscurely that the Legislature was wanting in consideration for the poor—this is not said in so many words, but it is implied throughout the speech—and specially rebuked it for neglecting to repeal an oppressive license-tax levied upon petty traders, a tax which the Chief Judge of the Assistant-Court of Appeal, on March 12, 1875, described as "imposing a monstrous hardship upon the indus- try of a class of people whose sole existence, in the majority of cases, depended upon cake-selling." Mr. Hennessy further stated his belief that local taxation was heavy, that enough was not spent on education, and that the deep poverty of the people, which had begun to be dangerous, as shown by the in- -creasing number of incendiary fires, could best be relieved by a scheme of Confederation, which would, he intimated, increase the facilities for emigration to the neighbouring islands. The redundant population of Barbadoes would, he explained, be imported into those Colonies, instead of coolies from India,— that is, as we understand him, would be imported as the coolies are, by State aid and under State regulations. The Assembly, which had previously been much irritated by the Governor's " democratic " policy—he seems to have tried to conciliate the shopkeepers by asking some of them to Government House—by his severe reflections on the wasteful- ness manifested in building contracts voted by the Legislature, and by his determination to diminish the practice of flogging for prison offences, which he nearly abolished,—with this result, that the average of forty-two prison offences per week sank to one—returned a lengthy and controversial address in reply to the speech. The address is not informal or unmannerly, but its general tone is both sulky and satirical, Mr. Hennessy being informed that the Alelay in abolishing the License Act was accidental, that the cause of the evils he pointed to was redundant population, that taxation and pauperism were both low in comparison with Great Britain, that wages followed a natural law, and that "the firm and intense conviction of the House of Assembly is, that a Confederation such as that pro- posed in the despatches from two successive Ministers already alluded to, and which has been so ably treated in your Excel- lency's speech, is not calculated to be advantageous to this colony, in the interest of any class or condition of its popula- tion, but on the contrary, the House is fully satisfied that it would be simply disastrous to the interests of all classes and conditions of the inhabitants of the colony." The Assembly; in fact, denied the Governor's statements ridiculed his logic, and rejected the English proposal he brought forward. So far the dispute is strictly political, the Legislature re- jecting, as the Legislature of the Cape rejected, confederation. and the affair might have passed unnoticed outside the Colonial Office but for one peculiarity in the condition of the island, the suffering of the body of the people. There are too many of them for the wants of the employers of labour. Their poverty-stricken condition is admitted by the Assembly itself,. though it ascribes the fact wholly to their numbers ; it has been the subject of a Royal Commission ordered by the acting Governor, Mr. Freeling, the report of which, according to Mr. Hennessy, will be most painful ; it is strongly affirmed by all the heads of the religious communities, and it is almost de- monstrated by the enthusiasm excited among the lower classes of the population by the bare idea that the Queen's Repre- sentative pitied them. No population not suffering could have been so excited by the merest mention of a rise of wages.. No race-feeling was immediately involved, for the Legislature represented all classes and colours ; and as the West Indian Committee is careful to state, many black and coloured persons sympathised with theirs and the Members' view ; but a strong feeling, resembling that so often displayed in France, and in a less degree, in our own agricultural districts, the feeling between employers and employed, did unquestionably arise. The labourers thought the Governor was on their side, and the employers were irritated by their enthusiasm, by the Governor's apparent desire to conciliate the poor,-and by the possibility that the abundant labour which is the source of the prosperity of Barbadoes might be greatly reduced. We an know how bitter prejudice can be on both sides on this subject even in these Islands, and in -Barbadoes there are local causes to make it still more intense. The labourers are excessively numerous—ten to one of all other classes, and packed in the proportion of 800 to the square mile—are very ignorant, and are apparently apt—though we understand the Assembly to deny this in part—to express their feelings, like our own mobs in 1838-43, and a Constantinople mob always, by fire-raising. The employers, on the other hand, are feir, are divided from the labourers by colour or degree of civilisa- tion, and are inordinately proud of their success in avoiding the results of emancipation in some other colonies. They- think their influence in the Legislature, their severe govern- ment in the prisons, and their method of ruling generally, essential to the island, and regard Mr. Pope Hennessy very much as a county full of English farmers would regard the government of a politician penetrated with the ideas of Mr. Arch. Moreover, they are inheritors of the slave-holding tradition, and fear at heart lest any turbulent assertion of independence or expression of animosity, such as in this- country would end in a riot, should in Barbadoes end in a formidable rising, and possibly a massacre, not of the whites, but of the well-to-do. When, therefore, the excitement of the people ended in some riots—the cause of which is still unknown, but which we believe occurred at public meetings called by the 'angry employers to denounce the Governor—they at once believed in a general conflagration, and, as a conflagration: might end in a termination of their local system, and the sub- stitution of the Jamaica form of government, suspected the Governor of wishing and encouraging the "outbreaks." Men heated by caste-feeling, alarmed for their property, and aware of being hopelessly outnumbered, will in such circumstances- believe anything, and suspect anybody of any amount of "plots." So far as appears, there is no evidence forthcoming in support of their suspicion. Mr. Neville Lubbock, in his speech of Tuesday to Lord Carnarvon, does indeed, affirm, on the affidavit of" one Thomas Nurse, a freeholder in the parish of St. Philip," that Mr. Hennessy attended a meeting of twenty-four persons in the most lawless district of the island, "sat beside a notable thief," and told the people that they were seriously taxed in the rum and liquor licenses ; but the state- ment seems to be incredible, unless, indeed, the Governor was accidentally present in a meeting he knew nothing about, and told the people that as taxpayers they had, of course, an interest in politics,—which, besides being true, is not in itself an incendiary speech.
There is no other evidence as yet whatever—for Mr. Hen- nessy's tendency to pardon criminals may be merely politic—and that this story is hopelessly opposed to all that is known of the Governor, who is a Conservative of Conservatives, an Imperi- alist in temper, and very solicitous for his personal dignity. He is not at all the kind of man who impresses us with con- fidence in anything but his ability, and he may, for aught we know, have suddenly turned agitator ; but all his history, all his faults, and all his supposed ambitions point to a very dif- ferent character from that which the Barbadian employers attribute to him. His business in life is to succeed as a Governor, not to inspire the Colonial Office with a conviction that he is an "unsafe man." On the other hand, it is clear that the Barbadians in England are misinformed by excited correspondents in the island, ready to believe any legend, how- ever slight the evidence for its truth. They have published a telegram stating positively that there are "riots throughout the island," that plantation-houses have been sacked, that there has been an enormous destruction of property, that forty rioters have been shot, and that the people are taking refuge in the shipping. Those are definite statements, capable of proof, and as yet there is no proof forthcoming. The Colonial Office of course asked for information, and received in reply telegrams which admit rioting, and a request for troops, sub- sequently sent back, but assert that no white person has been injured, that the soldiers have not fired a shot, that the military authorities reported that there had been much exaggeration, and that the rioters had been committed for trial before a Special Commission. The two sets of telegrams are irrecon- cilable, and though, of course, Mr. Pope Hennessy may have courted permanent disgrace and immediate dismissal by invent- ing facts or concealing truths, the supposition seems to us ridiculous. Why on earth should Mr. Pope Hennessy, of all living men, ruin himself to place a wild mob temporarily at the top of a colony which he was directed to persuade into accept- ing a project of conciliation? Of course he may have done it, as he may have proclaimed himself Emperor of Barbadoes, but till we see some evidence of his action, we shall continue to believe that the labouring population of Barbadoes, steeped in ignorance and poverty, have been excited by a hope of better days to be produced by -bonfederation, and have resented the contemptuous rejection of the project by local " wreckings," which have been suppressed by the Governor by force, though without the violence attributed to him by his excited opponents. To demand a Governor's recall for such a reason is preposterous, and io concede it would be to lay down the principle that for the Governor of a Colony to plead the cause of the immense majority before their own Legislature in regular constitutional form, and by arguments endorsed by his own superiors, is a dereliction of duty. It is the mis- fortune of all tropical Colonies that a plea for the masses of the people is supposed by the dominant caste to be a plea for insurrection, and is sometimes so misunderstood by the people ; but no Minister can accept that as a reason for not proposing plans which, in his heart, he believes to be for the good of the majority. That rioting, and very serious rioting, followed the proposal of Lord John Russell's Reform Bill, is simply one proof among many how urgently that Reform Bill was required. A Governor who instigates a mob to terrorise a Legislature de- serves impeachment, but he does not deserve impeachment because he propounds a policy so good that a mob rages at the Legislature which rejects it.
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