] In the French and Spanish islands care was
taken of the souls of the poor creatures. They were taught their
catechism, they were baptised, and attended mass regularly. The Anglican
clergy, Labat said with professional malice, neither baptised them nor
taught them anything, but regarded them as mere animals. To keep
Christians in slavery they held would be wrong and indefensible, and
they therefore met the difficulty by not making their slaves into
Christians. That baptism made any essential difference, however, he does
not insist. By the side of Christianity, in the Catholic islands, devil
worship and witchcraft went on among the same persons. No instance had
ever come to his knowledge of a converted black who returned to his
country who did not throw away his Christianity just as he would throw
away his clothes; and as to cruelty and immorality, he admits that the
English at Barbadoes were no worse than his own people at Martinique.

In the collapse of West Indian prosperity which followed on
emancipation, Barbadoes escaped the misfortunes of the other islands.
The black population being so dense, and the place itself being so
small, the squatting system could not be tried; there was plenty of
labour always, and the planters being relieved of the charge of their
workmen when they were sick or worn out, had rather gained than lost by
the change. Barbadoes, however, was not to escape for ever, and was now
having its share of misfortunes. It is dangerous for any country to
commit its fortunes to an exclusive occupation. Sugar was the most
immediately lucrative of all the West Indian productions. Barbadoes is
exceptionally well suited to sugar-growing. It has no mountains and no
forests. The soil is clean and has been carefully attended to for two
hundred and fifty years. It had been owned during the present century by
gentlemen who for the most part lived in England on the profits of their
properties, and left them to be managed by agents and attorneys. The
method of management was expensive. Their own habits were expensive.
Their incomes, to which they had lived up, had been cut short lately by
a series of bad seasons. Money had been borrowed at high interest year
after year to keep the estates and their owners going. On the top of
this came the beetroot competition backed up by a bounty, and the
Barbadian sugar interest, I was told, had gone over a precipice. Even
the unencumbered resident proprietors could barely keep