; but occasional
items were of a scale ranging from five to eight hundred each, and hundreds
numbered above one hundred each. In many of these instances the same
persons are listed as possessing several holdings, with Sir Edward Hyde
East particularly notable for the large number of his great squads. The
degree of absenteeism is indicated by the frequency of English nobles,
knights and gentlemen among the large proprietors. Thus the Earl of
Balcarres had 474 slaves; the Earl of Harwood 232; the Earl and Countess of
Airlie 59; Earl Talbot and Lord Shelborne jointly 79; Lord Seaford 70; Lord
Hatherton jointly with Francis Downing, John Benbow and the Right Reverend
H. Philpots, Lord Bishop of Exeter, two holdings of 304 and 236 slaves
each; and the three Gladstones, Thomas, William and Robert 468 slaves
jointly.[8]

[Footnote 8: "Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims," in the British
official _Account: and Papers, 1837-1838_, vol. XLVIII.]

Such an average scale and such a prevalence of absenteeism never prevailed
in any other Anglo-American plantation community, largely because none of
the other staples required so much manufacturing as sugar did in preparing
the crops for market. As Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793: "the business of
sugar planting is a sort of adventure in which the man that engages must
engage deeply.... It requires a capital of no less than thirty thousand
pounds sterling to embark in this employment with a fair prospect of
success." Such an investment, he particularized, would procure and
establish as a going concern a plantation of 300 acres in cane and 100
acres each in provision crops, forage and woodland, together with the
appropriate buildings and apparatus, and a working force of 80 steers, 60
mules and 250 slaves, at the current price for these last of L50 sterling
a head.[9] So distinctly were the plantations regarded as capitalistic
ventures that they came to be among the chief speculations of their time
for absentee investors.

[Footnote 9: Bryan Edwards, _History of the West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.]

When Lord Chesterfield tried in 1767 to buy his son a seat in Parliament he
learned "that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for that
the rich East and West Indians had secured them all at the rate of three
thousand pounds at the least."[10] And an Englishman after traveling in the
French and British Antilles in 1825 wrote: "The French colonists, whether
Creoles or Europeans,