f the great fight which saved the British Empire.
That was below the cliffs of Dominica; and Captain W----, as many others
have done, was confounding Dominica with St. Domingo.

The next morning we were to anchor at Port Royal. We had a Jamaica
gentleman of some consequence on board. I had failed so far to make
acquaintance with him, but on this last evening he joined me on deck,
and I gladly used the opportunity to learn something of the present
condition of things. I was mistaken in expecting to find a more vigorous
or more sanguine tone of feeling than I had left at the Antilles. There
was the same despondency, the same sense that their state was hopeless,
and that nothing which they could themselves do would mend it. He
himself, for instance, was the owner of a large sugar estate which a few
years ago was worth 60,000_l._ It was not encumbered. He was his own
manager, and had spared no cost in providing the newest machinery. Yet,
with the present prices and with the refusal of the American Commercial
Treaty, it would not pay the expense of cultivation. He held on, for it
was all that he could do. To sell was impossible, for no one would buy
even at the price of the stock on the land. It was the same story which
I had heard everywhere. The expenses of the administration, this
gentleman said, were out of all proportion to the resources of the
island, and were yearly increasing. The planters had governed in the old
days as the English landlords had governed Ireland. They had governed
cheaply and on their own resources. They had authority; they were
respected; their word was law. Now their power had been taken from them,
and made over to paid officials, and the expense was double what it used
to be. Between the demands made on them in the form of taxation and the
fall in the value of their produce their backs were breaking, and the
'landed interest' would come to an end. I asked him, as I had asked many
persons without getting a satisfactory answer, what he thought that the
Imperial Government could do to mend matters. He seemed to think that it
was too late to do anything. The blacks were increasing so fast, and the
white influence was diminishing so fast, that Jamaica in a few years
would be another Hayti.

In this gentleman, too, I found to my sorrow that there was the same
longing for admission to the American Union which I had left behind me
at the Antilles. In spite of soldiers and the naval station, the old
coun