rived from
Barbados to receive the capitulation, which was demanded on the same
terms as that of St Eustatius, although neither party knew what these
terms were. Nothing was left but submission, although the authorities
protested against such an unheard-of manner of dictating unknown terms.
The Governor of Barbados had heard from one of the inhabitants of that
island that the Directeur-General of Demerara had expressed, at his
dinner-table, his fears that in case of a war the river would be
plundered by privateers, and of his preferring to surrender to one of
the king's ships: for this reason he had sent the men-of-war. This was
considered a bit of "sharp practice" by the Demerarians, but perhaps
turned out for the best.

Two commissioners were appointed by the colony to go in one of the
English vessels to St. Eustatius and arrange the articles of
capitulation, which were fortunately on altogether different lines from
those of that island. Surinam, St. Martin's, Saba, and St.
Bartholomew's also surrendered on the same unknown terms, but the
admiral said that he and General Vaughan thought they ought to be put on
a different footing. They would not treat them like the other, whose
inhabitants, belonging to a State bound by treaty to assist Great
Britain, had yet nevertheless assisted her public enemies and the rebels
to her State, with every necessary and implement of war as well as
provisions, thus perfidiously breaking the very treaties they had sworn
to maintain.

The treatment of St. Eustatius caused a great stir, not only in the West
Indies, but in England as well. A remonstrance was sent to Rodney by the
merchants of St. Kitt's, who claimed that a large quantity of their
goods had been seized. Some of these were insured in England, and they
considered their Excellencies responsible for their losses, for which
they would seek redress by all the means in their power. It was
impossible, they said, for many of them to be more utterly ruined than
they then were, and they asked that certificates in reference to their
property should be sent to England, in demanding which they were
claiming a right rather than a favour. In reply, Rodney said he was
surprised that gentlemen who called themselves subjects and merchants of
Great Britain, should, when it was in their power to lodge their effects
in the British islands to windward, under the protection of British
laws, send them to leeward to St. Eustatius, where, in the eye