the free colored people.

In 1833, an English military officer, thus wrote:

"There is a settlement of negroes a few miles from Halifax, Nova Scotia,
at Hammond's Plains. Any one would have imagined that the Government
would have taken warning from the trouble and expense it incurred by
granting protection to those who emigrated from the States during the
Revolution; 1200 of whom were removed to Sierra Leone in 1792 by their
own request. Again when 600 of the insurgent negroes--the Maroons of
Jamaica--were transported to Nova Scotia in 1796, and received every
possible encouragement to become good subjects, by being granted a
settlement at Preston, and being employed upon the fortifications at
Halifax; yet they, too, soon became discontented, and being unwilling to
earn a livelihood by labor, were, in 1800, removed to the same colony,
after costing the island of Jamaica more than $225,000, and a large
additional expense to the Province, _i. e._ Nova Scotia. Notwithstanding
which, when the runaway slaves were received on board the fleet, off the
Chesapeake, during the late war, permission was granted to them to form
a settlement at Hammond's Plains, where the same system of discontent
arose--many of the settlers professing that they would prefer their
former well-fed life of slavery, in a more congenial climate, and
earnestly petitioning to be removed, were sent to Trinidad in 1821. Some
few of those who remained are good servants and farmers, disposing of
the produce of their lands in the Halifax market; but the majority are
idle, roving, and dirty vagabonds."[85]

Thus it appears, that as late as 1821, the policy of the British
colonies of North America, was to remove the fugitive negroes from their
territories. The 1200 exported from Halifax, in 1792, were fugitive
slaves who had joined the English during the American Revolutionary war,
and had been promised lands in Nova Scotia; but the Government having
failed to meet its pledge, and the climate proving unfavorable, they
sought refuge in Africa. These shipments of the colored people, from the
British colonies at the North to those of the Tropics, was in accordance
with the plan that England had adopted at home, in reference to the same
class of persons--that of removing a people who were a public burden, to
where they could be self-supporting. This is a matter of some interest,
and is deserving of notice in this connection. On the 22d of May, 1772,
Lord Mansfield