The Sugar Barons (75 page)
26. Luxury and Debt
‘Sugar, sugar, is the incessant cry’: Ramsay, | |
‘epidemical disorder’: Sheridan, | |
‘Threats, Arguments & the force of money’: Smith, | |
‘Thus I am placed in his shoes’: ibid., 130. | |
‘the greatest failure that ever happened here’: ibid., 190. | |
had by the 1770s accumulated more than 26,000 acres across 11 parishes: Craton and Walvin, | |
‘a very fine piece of water, which in winter is commonly stocked with wild-duck and teal’: Long, | |
‘that respectable but unfortunate family’: Cundall, | |
‘fraudulent Trading of the Sugar Planters’: Massie, | |
‘the interest of the home-consumer has been sacrificed’: Smith, | |
the only impulse is to eat as much as possible and do as little work as possible. ibid., 159. | |
two-thirds of all American slaves worked for the sugar barons: Thomas, | |
‘Some happier island …’: Pope, ‘Essay on Man’, 1:107. | |
‘a place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants, and a dungeon of slaves’: Boswell, | |
‘negro whipping Beckford’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, | |
‘For B … f … d he was chosen May’r …’: quoted in Drescher, | |
‘made in less enlightened times than our own’: Beilby Porteus, quoted in Ryden, | |
‘The status of slavery is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law’: Deerr, | |
‘I absolutely deny all Slave-holding to be consistent with any degree of even natural Justice’: Wesley, | |
‘the inconsistency of holding slaves’: Clarkson, | |
‘without seeing the inconsistency of such conduct’: Benezet, | |
‘Wherefore we’, the Newport Quakers resolved, ‘on that account do Disown him’: Bolhouse, ‘Abraham Redwood’, 31. | |
‘1 boye slave Dyed’: Brig | |
‘and forced overboard eighty of them which obliged the rest to submit’: Donnan, | |
‘than the taking of Fort William Henry did in 1757’: Stout, | |
‘What are the people of England now going to do with us?’: Tench Francis to Nicholas Brown, 16 September 1763, JCBL Box 7, Folder 4, Letter 7. | |
‘What method will be best for us to Take’: Letter to Nicolas Brown & Co., 28 October 1763, quoted in Wiener, ‘Rhode Island Merchants and the Sugar Act’, 471. | |
‘open a correspondence with the principal merchants in all our sister colonies’: | |
‘in order to … Join with Those of the other Colonys’: Nicholas Brown to David Van Horne, 24 January 1764, quoted in Hedges, | |
the first to lodge an official protest against the Sugar Act: Donnan, | |
‘rich, proud, and overbearing Planters of the West Indies’: | |
‘excessive contraband Trade carried on at Rhode Island’: Stout, | |
‘without the concurrent Assistance of | |
‘they ceased firing before we had convinced them of their error’: Smith to Colvill, 12 July 1764, Bartlett, | |
‘There was not a man on the continent of America who does not consider the Sugar Act’: Sheridan, | |
‘every one is convinced of the Necessity of a Unanimity amongst the Colonies’: 31 July 1764, JCBL, Box 7. Folder 2, Letter 20. | |
‘Rummagings and Searchings, Unladings & Detainings’: Crane, | |
‘can walk the streets without being affronted’: Stout, | |
criticism of the term ‘mother country’: | |
producing nearly 80 per cent of Stamp Act revenue before the measure’s repeal in February 1766: O’Shaughnessy, | |
‘I was at the House of Commons yesterday’ letter of 17 February 1767, LNHA | |
‘George Grenville and his Stamp Act raised the foul fiend’: Taylor and Pringle, | |
‘natural appendages of North America’: O’Shaughnessy, |
27. The War Against America
‘nothing will save Barbados and the Leewards’: Handler, | |
‘You will starve the islands’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, | |
as early as 1652 Barbados had requested representation in Parliament: | |
‘the horrors of a Civil War’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, | |
‘too many friends of America in this island’: ibid., 142. | |
‘the North Americans might beat the English’: Burnard, | |
‘the total reduction of the colonies by the Administration’: Silas Deane to Robert Morris, 26 April 1776, quoted in Clark and Morgan, | |
‘falsely imagining that he might declare his mind here’: | |
‘to inspire [them] with courage to beat the Yankee Rebels’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, | |
‘entirely covered with Blood’: | |
‘to sweeten his tea for breakfast by Christmas’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, | |
‘My God! It is all over’: Rodger, | |
‘The attack on Jamaica makes more noise than all North America’: Nankivell, ‘Rodney’s Victory over DeGrasse’, 119. | |
‘miserably shattered’: Bridges, | |
‘the decks were covered with the blood …’: Blane, | |
‘to prepare an elegant Marble Statue of your Lordship’: J. Arch., Stephen Fuller letter book, Volume Two, 1B/5/14/2. | |
‘No Man has their Interest more at Heart than myself’: ibid., 1B/5/14/1. | |
‘the invincible law of absolute necessity’: Ragatz, | |
‘They can neither do without us, not we without them’: quoted in Deerr, | |
‘Our Governors and Custom-house officers pretended’: Johnstone, ‘Nelson in the West Indies’, 521. |
28. The West Indian ‘Nabobs’: Absenteeism, Decadence and Decline
‘Despair … has cut off more people in the West-Indies’: Beckford, | |
when locally owned than when it passed into the hands of the absentee William Beckford: Armstrong, | |
leaving an estate worth about £120,000: Sheridan, ‘Planter and Historian’, 45. | |
an ‘uncommon beauty’: Anon., ‘Biographical Sketch of William Beckford, Esq.’, 261. | |
‘to view the romantic wonders of his estates’: ibid., 261. | |
‘covered with a sapphire haze’: Beckford, | |
‘less romantic than, the most wild and beautiful situations of Frescati, Tivoli, and Albano’: ibid., 1: 8–9. | |
‘the vegetation here, and the stamina of the land are of such a nature’: Brumbaugh, ‘An Unpublished Letter’, 6. | |
‘vacant and inactive’: Beckford, | |
‘The situation of Hertford is one of the pleasantest in the country’: Dallas, | |
costing nearly £10,000: Anon., ‘Biographical Sketch of William Beckford, Esq.’, 261. | |
‘My native country’ and ‘paternal soil’: Brumbaugh, ‘An Unpublished Letter’, 4. | |
‘I shall carry Mrs Beckford back’: ibid., 5. | |
‘Looked over many Folio Volumes of excellent plates’: TD, 11 June 1778. | |
‘preserves the strength of the whole’: Beckford, | |
‘idle, drunken, worthless and immoral’: ibid., 2:380. | |
be lent some of his impressive collection of books: TD, 22 August 1786. | |
‘The heat becomes intolerable’: Dallas, | |
‘to almost its whole value’: ibid., 66. | |
‘really the locusts of the West Indies’: ibid., 6. | |
‘With some exceptions’: ibid., 4. | |
‘accomplished mild and pleasing’: ibid., 113. | |
‘superfluous coppers, stills and stores’: Beckford, | |
‘a design full of accident’: BL Sloane Mss 3984, fol. 217. | |
‘so treacherous a plant’: Beckford, | |
no money had been repaid four years later: Sheridan, ‘Planter and Historian’, 56. | |
‘My blood rebelled against the blow’: Dallas, | |
‘tyranny, cruelty, murder’: ibid., 109. | |
‘There is a kind of intoxication’: ibid., 66. | |
‘daily sicken’d at the ills around me’: Ashcroft, ‘Robert Charles Dallas’, 97. | |
‘I feel such repugnance … [for] negro slavery’: Watson, ‘Pollard Letters’, 100. | |
‘about flogging the Negroes. Mr K. can’t bear to see them flogged’: TD, 22 February 1782. | |
‘I had imbibed in the course of my education in England’: Ashcroft, ‘Robert Charles Dallas’, 98. | |
‘stream of misery … repugnant to our religion’: Beckford, | |
‘harrowing’: ibid., 7. | |
‘excruciating bodily sufferings’: ibid., 30–1. | |
so ‘desperate’ that they committed suicide: ibid., 22fn. | |
‘if it can be done without infringing’: ibid., 40, | |
‘in which they may take delight’: ibid., 37. | |
‘labouring poor’: ibid., 38. | |
‘to taste the comforts of protection’: ibid., 98. | |
‘humanity’ of the Africans: ibid., 17. | |
‘The negroes are slaves by nature’: Beckford, | |
‘the largest property real and personal of any subject in Europe’: MSS Beckford C. 84, fol. 54. | |
‘& the whole was blown up’: Lees-Milne, | |
‘We are waiting in this most detestable town’: MSS Beckford C. 15, fol. 3. | |
‘I cannot help confessing that no one ever embarked’: ibid., fol. 25. | |
three chefs and one confectioner employed in the kitchen: Lees-Milne, | |
‘Infernal rascal this Wildman!’: 14 April 1789, Beckford MSS C. 15, fols. 13–14. | |
‘Between this harpy and two brothers’: Thorne, | |
‘My Works at Fonthill Building planting’: 5 August 1790, Beckford MSS C. 15, fol. 123. | |
‘Some people drink to forget their unhappiness’: Lees-Milne, | |
the skies looked ‘very wild’: TD, 2 October 1780. | |
Heavy cannon were carried 100 feet from the forts: Schomburgk, | |
‘the most Beautiful Island in the World’: Burns, | |
15,000 dying on Jamaica alone: ibid., 538. | |
‘not greatly injured, or entirely destroyed’: Beckford, | |
Several puncheons had to be ‘immediately staved’: ibid., 116. | |
‘occasioned a kind of pestilence’: ibid., 115. | |
‘rapacious and unfeeling’ mortgage holders: Sheridan, ‘Planter and Historian’, 56. | |
utterly unqualified to run tropical agriculture enterprises and who had never even seen the West Indies: Edwards, | |
‘Come not to Jamaica’: 29 September 1784, MSS Beckford C. 26, fols. 67–70. | |
‘of no heart, no feeling’. Alexander, | |
‘the plaguey climate’: Brumbaugh, ‘An Unpublished Letter’, 3. | |
‘Somerly determined to come to England’: Dallas, | |
‘to recover a constitution broken down by sickness and affliction’: Beckford, | |
‘What a place – surrounded with fresh horrors!’: Cundall, ‘Jamaica Worthies’, 358. |
