ts of slavery. Barbadoes was
proverbial for it. As far as was practicable, the colored people were
excluded from all business connections; though merchants were compelled
to make clerks of them for want of better, that is, _whiter_, ones.
Colored merchants of wealth were shut out of the merchants' exchange,
though possessed of untarnished integrity, while white men were admitted
as subscribers without regard to character. It was not a little
remarkable that the rooms occupied as the merchants' exchange were
rented from a colored gentleman, or more properly, a _negro_;[A] who,
though himself a merchant of extensive business at home and abroad, and
occupying the floor below with a store, was not suffered to set his foot
within them. This merchant, it will be remembered, is educating a son
for a learned profession at the university of Edinburgh. Colored
gentlemen were not allowed to become members of literary associations,
nor subscribers to the town libraries. Social intercourse was utterly
interdicted. To visit the houses of such men as we have already
mentioned in a previous chapter, and especially to sit down at their
tables, would have been a loss of caste; although the gentry were at the
same time living with colored concubines. But most of all did this
wicked prejudice delight to display itself in the churches. Originally,
we believe, the despised color was confined to the galleries, afterwards
it was admitted to the seats under the galleries, and ultimately it was
allowed to extend to the body pews below the cross aisle. If perchance
one of the proscribed class should ignorantly stray beyond these
precincts, and take a seat above the cross aisle, he was instantly, if
not forcibly, removed. Every opportunity was maliciously seized to taunt
the colored people with their complexion. A gentleman of the highest
worth stated that several years ago he applied to the proper officer for
a license to be married. The license was accordingly made out and handed
to him. It was expressed in the following insulting style: "T---- H----,
F.M., is licensed to marry H---- L----, F.C.W." The initials F.M. stood
for _free mulatto_, and F.C.W. for _free colored woman_! The gentleman
took his knife and cut out the initials; and was then threatened with a
prosecution for forging his license.

[Footnote A: Mr. London Bourne, the merchant mentioned in the previous
chapter.]

It must be admitted that this cruel feeling still exists in Barba