rose without letting their imaginations stray through the rich gardens of fair England. Mr Rogers asked if this was so bad. After all, was it not only natural that one should wish to return to one's provenance? Mr McDonald stormed this defensive position and expanded his argument thus. When, according to our physician, the decline in revenues from tropical American holdings set in, the overseas owners as a class increasingly neglected to visit the tropical zone, and some among them even to care for their personal possessions. These men of the privileged pigmentation, who eschew the slightest labour as not only painful but degrading, have of late begun to exhaust their scant credit in England, transferring their holdings to the jurisdiction of agents, managers, overseers and book-keepers. They are now happy to see their properties maintained in any way, so long as they continue to reap a small reward while some profit remains.
According to Mr McDonald the day of profitable exploitation of West Indian sugar is in its eventide, due in part to trading restrictions, and in part to the new age of industry dawning in England. Thus, fewer men of calibre are wont to appear in the tropics, and the dire consequences of abandoning control to others are everyday visible. Throughout the region places once of honour and trust are being gradually filled by mediocrities and scoundrels. Multiple office-holding has apparently become commonplace and is being carried out to extravagant lengths, as self-created lawyers, self-educated physicians, and venal merchants carry the day. The good doctor swears that at any moment the legislative and administrative organization of our own island is likely to collapse, and he is sure that there can be few local estates not now hopelessly entangled in debt, and indeed he insists that many are probably mortgaged beyond their real value.
It was at this crossroad that I felt I ought to remind my companions, in as pleasant a fashion as possible, of my position as the daughter of an absentee owner. While it would be true to claim that my father has a healthy annual income returned to the mother-country, and has also been known to indulge in the common practice of borrowing heavily with his trans-Atlantic properties as security, surely the fact that I had arrived to inspect the estate made him less culpable than these absentee blackguards. They agreed, but suggested that their basic argument was sound. Absenteeism was the primary cause of social breakdown, for just as one could not run a school without a headmaster, or a monarchical system without a monarch, one could not hope to run these tropical possessions without commitment to responsibility at the highest level. It was further suggested that in the West Indies the white expatriate of upper rank is liable to become simply indolent and inert, regardless of all but eating, drinking and self-indulgence. 'What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time, Be but to sleep and feed?' Mr McDonald declared. The passion with which he declaimed these lines from Hamlet surprised me not a little. I had not thought him so excitable. In the lower orders, they are the same, with the addition of conceit and tyranny, considering the negroes to be creatures formed merely to administer to their ease, and to be subject to their vagary. These degraded white people appear to be the offscum, the offscouring, indeed the very dregs of English life. It is near impossible, contended our physician-politician, to persuade these white people, high or low, that blacks are human beings, or that they might possess souls.
On completion of this interlude, Mr Rogers replaced upon the table a piece of bread that was already half-way lifted to his mouth, and sought clarification from Mr McDonald that he had understood him correctly. He claimed that our physician, this same man who appeared to be defending the blacks, was one who had frequently spoken otherwise of our darker brethren.
Mr
According to Mr McDonald the day of profitable exploitation of West Indian sugar is in its eventide, due in part to trading restrictions, and in part to the new age of industry dawning in England. Thus, fewer men of calibre are wont to appear in the tropics, and the dire consequences of abandoning control to others are everyday visible. Throughout the region places once of honour and trust are being gradually filled by mediocrities and scoundrels. Multiple office-holding has apparently become commonplace and is being carried out to extravagant lengths, as self-created lawyers, self-educated physicians, and venal merchants carry the day. The good doctor swears that at any moment the legislative and administrative organization of our own island is likely to collapse, and he is sure that there can be few local estates not now hopelessly entangled in debt, and indeed he insists that many are probably mortgaged beyond their real value.
It was at this crossroad that I felt I ought to remind my companions, in as pleasant a fashion as possible, of my position as the daughter of an absentee owner. While it would be true to claim that my father has a healthy annual income returned to the mother-country, and has also been known to indulge in the common practice of borrowing heavily with his trans-Atlantic properties as security, surely the fact that I had arrived to inspect the estate made him less culpable than these absentee blackguards. They agreed, but suggested that their basic argument was sound. Absenteeism was the primary cause of social breakdown, for just as one could not run a school without a headmaster, or a monarchical system without a monarch, one could not hope to run these tropical possessions without commitment to responsibility at the highest level. It was further suggested that in the West Indies the white expatriate of upper rank is liable to become simply indolent and inert, regardless of all but eating, drinking and self-indulgence. 'What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time, Be but to sleep and feed?' Mr McDonald declared. The passion with which he declaimed these lines from Hamlet surprised me not a little. I had not thought him so excitable. In the lower orders, they are the same, with the addition of conceit and tyranny, considering the negroes to be creatures formed merely to administer to their ease, and to be subject to their vagary. These degraded white people appear to be the offscum, the offscouring, indeed the very dregs of English life. It is near impossible, contended our physician-politician, to persuade these white people, high or low, that blacks are human beings, or that they might possess souls.
On completion of this interlude, Mr Rogers replaced upon the table a piece of bread that was already half-way lifted to his mouth, and sought clarification from Mr McDonald that he had understood him correctly. He claimed that our physician, this same man who appeared to be defending the blacks, was one who had frequently spoken otherwise of our darker brethren.
Mr
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