Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong Page 6

  They continued in the same vein – an attempt to satisfy planters, missionaries and slaves which had the effect of making matters considerably worse.

  In August 1823 Governor Murray imposed martial law at the first sign of armed discontent, but despite the pleadings of the Rev. John Smith, appointed by the London Missionary Society to Demerara in 1817, and of moderate slave leaders, the uprising gathered numbers and pace. Some planters and managers were forcibly detained, but relatively little physical harm was inflicted on them. Military retribution on the other hand was swift and harsh; severed heads of alleged ringleaders were publicly displayed pour encourager les autres, and John Smith was imprisoned for actions which were held to indicate excessive sympathy for the slaves.11

  Smith died in captivity of pneumonia, becoming known among the slaves as the Martyr of Demerara. News of his fate, and of the severity of the colonial authorities’ response to the uprising, had a major impact in Britain. It greatly advanced the cause of the reformers, facilitating their task and setting the scene for further steps towards abolition. As has been observed, the origins of the slave trade were economic, but racist attitudes were essential in sustaining it; those attitudes were apparent in the colonists’ approach to the question of religious instruction for the slave population.12

  The London Missionary Society, established in 1796, was one of several missionary organisations in Britain set up to further, among other causes, the abolition of slavery. In Demerara it began its work at Plantation Le Resouvenir at the invitation of its owner, who believed that slaves would be less inclined to discontent if influenced by the teachings of the church. That was not how the missionaries themselves saw their objective, nor did it reflect the views of most planters, who considered that Christianity would be dangerously subversive if it became accessible to slaves. The role of the missionaries, the planters thought, should be somehow to instil contentedness in the slaves without teaching them Christianity, or indeed educating them at all. This was also the view of the local colonial authorities; a government-influenced newspaper of the day reflected their approach: ‘It is dangerous to make slaves Christians, without giving them their liberty.’13

  In the face of this hostility the missionaries had an uphill struggle. The British 1824 ‘Amelioration’ Order in Council nevertheless obliged the planters to allow religious instruction among their slaves. In September 1825 and September 1826 the substance of the Order in Council was promulgated in Demerara and Berbice respectively in the form of Ordinances issued by the Governors. Many planters initially resisted, claiming that Britain did not have the right to legislate for the two colonies. They maintained that in accepting the capitulation of the territories in 1803 Britain had, in effect, granted them a charter, and that the relevant powers were therefore vested in the Court of Policy, not the Privy Council (Charles Elliot later set out persuasive arguments against this view).14 Most planters, however, complied with the Ordinances, with great reluctance and not a little bad grace, making life for the slaves in respect of the legislation as difficult as they legitimately could. Providing for the local implementation of the measures previously announced to Parliament, these and similar Ordinances elsewhere required the appointment, in each of the colonies directly responsible to the British Crown, of a Protector of Slaves.15 In Demerara the first holder of the post was Colonel Aretas William Young, a veteran of the Peninsular War who had served for significant periods as deputy to the Governor of Trinidad. He was well thought of by Governor D’Urban, but not by the home government, which viewed his reporting as inadequate and his general approach increasingly out of step with the gathering momentum towards abolition. He was suspended in 1830.16

  Chapter Five

  Office and Delusion

  The Amelioration legislation of 1824 was revisited with the issue of successor Orders in Council in February 1830 and November 1831, informed by the experiences of the first Protectors and taking account of the continuing debate in Parliament.

  The 1830 Order was a major sweeping up exercise intended to consolidate the various proclamations, ordinances and other laws made in the Crown colonies during the previous six years. The parliamentary record notes the contents of the clauses concerned with Protectors of Slaves:

  The appointment of a protector of slaves in each of the crown colonies, saving existing offices…. The protectors not to be owners or managers of slaves on paying of a forfeiture of office. Until that forfeiture is publicly declared, all intermediate acts are to be valid. The protector may hire slaves for his domestic service if unable to hire free servants…. The protectors to be constantly resident except by the licence of the secretary of state.1

  Importantly for Elliot, the Order also provided for Assistant Protectors to be appointed to execute all lawful instructions of Protectors. Protectors and Assistants could not act as magistrates, but were required to be kept informed of major prosecutions against slaves, and were to represent the slaves, taking action against their accusers where necessary.

  The 1831 Order in Council was similarly concerned in part with what Protectors of Slaves should not do, as well as with what they should, but its main thrust was to try to tighten earlier regulation by explicitly prohibiting a number of practices used by slave owners and managers to circumvent it. The Anti-Slavery Society had some reservations but was inclined to welcome the Order as a measure which, if properly implemented, would cause Protectors to be less identified with the colonial administration and the planters and more with those whom it was their role to protect.2 Its main additional provisions, which built on and extended the 1824 and 1830 Orders, were that Protectors were not to have any personal interest in slaves or in the land on which they worked; Protectors were to have power to enter any estate or house to make contact with a slave; slaves were authorised to bring complaints directly to the attention of the Protector, with a pass, but with impunity if a pass was refused; Protectors were to be authorised to require the attendance before them of persons complained against, and potential witnesses, and to imprison, pending further examination, any refusing to attend; and Protectors were to hold an inquest on the body of any slave dying ‘in a sudden, violent or extraordinary manner’.3,4

  Detailed though this legislation was, the appointment of Protectors of Slaves was only one of several measures introduced by the British government on the path to the abolition of slavery. Ministers were fully aware of the growing strength of public opinion on the issue, articulated persistently and at length in the House of Commons by such campaigners as Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton, but they were also conscious of the economic importance of slave-based crop production and of what the planters potentially stood to lose from emancipation. The patience of the reformers, on the other hand, was tested by what they saw as frustratingly slow progress; but they had some influential allies in government, one of whom was Viscount Howick, a personal friend of Elliot and later to become the third Earl Grey. During the period 1830–33, when his father Charles, second Earl Grey was Prime Minister, Howick was Under Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, a post which enabled him to acquire detailed knowledge of colonial practices and to lend authority in Parliament to the abolition movement.

  Charles Elliot’s appointment as ‘Protector of Slaves to British Guiana’ was notified in a letter from the Secretary of State of 2 February 1830.5 The current Protector in Demerara, Colonel Young, was not suspended until November that year, and the newly constituted colony of British Guiana did not formally come into existence until July 1831, so it seems unlikely that Charles and Clara Elliot and their infant daughter Harriet took up residence in the colony until late 1830 at the earliest.6

  With Elliot’s responsibilities as Protector of Slaves went ex officio membership of the Court of Policy of British Guiana. A Royal Commission announcement of 4 March 1831 had decreed that the bodies and procedures for government and administration already in place should be continued in the new Colony.7 Along with another new member, Elliot was admitt
ed to the Court of Policy on 1 November 1831.8

  Membership of the Court of Policy was not a sinecure. All members were expected to attend all meetings, which were frequent – the court met, for example, on four consecutive days after 1 November 1831, and on eight further occasions (some of which were adjourned and necessitated additional, reconvened meetings) before the end of December that year. There were now nine members: the Governor, the Chief Justice, two Fiscals (who had responsibility for law enforcement and tax collection), and the Protector of Slaves (all ex officio), and four members nominated from among the colonists. The court’s business was varied, but much of its time was spent considering petitions, estimates, and infrastructural matters such as the state of roads, bridges and public buildings. While routine and statutory items featured frequently, other business often comprised matters raised by the colonist members. Unsurprisingly such items were usually controversial; the colonist members were planters, who used their presence on the court to protect and further their own interests.

  Early in his appointment as Protector, Elliot reviewed the relevant data. Figures for the Berbice district for 1831 supplied by the Registrar of Slaves there, Mr Samuel, recorded 20,184 slaves in an overall population of 21,804.9 At the end of May 1832 the total population of Demerara/Essequibo was 65,517 and according to its Registrar of Slaves, Mr Robertson, on 31 December 1831 the number of slaves there was 58,404.10,11 Elliot’s report as Protector of Slaves was to put the figure for the end of June 1832 at 57,358, i.e. some eighty-eight per cent of the total population.12 His protection responsibilities thus covered around 75,000 to 80,000 slaves.13 They worked on some 350 plantations in an area of 83,000 square miles, and Elliot could be forgiven for thinking that his task was impossible to fulfil with anything approaching full effectiveness. At the very least, he decided, he would need two properly paid Assistant Protectors, as allowed for in the 1830 Order in Council. His first recorded active participation in the Court of Policy occurred on 16 March 1832, when he read out a paper challenging the rejection of salary provision for Assistant Protectors in the Estimates.14 Objections had been raised by the colonist members, who felt the appointment of Assistant Protectors ‘unnecessary and inexpedient for a number of reasons, and that the resources of the Colony were inadequate to meet any additional expense’.15 Elliot argued that

  it is not to be disputed that those means which it may be in the power of the Public to provide, are principally derived from the productive labor of the Slave Population, and I will beg leave to remark that this Class of His Majesty’s Subjects have a most justly founded claim to a reasonable appropriation from Public sources, for the purpose of deploying the expense of an Establishment intended efficiently to protect them, and completely to ensure to them the enjoyment of their lawful rights. Looking at the objection which has been made to the appointment of Assistant Protectors on the ground that the Slaves are already sufficiently protected by the Proprietary, it is to be remarked that this was merely stated as a matter of opinion. An opinion, no doubt, however, founded upon the admission that the Slaves ought to have all reasonable protection. Here, then, the principle is distinctly recognised.16

  Continuing to address the assertion that the interests of slaves were already adequately safeguarded by the plantation proprietors, Elliot observed that not all owners resided on their estates, and that given the size of the undertakings he would have expected more extensive reports from them. As to resources, ‘the nature of the conversation [in the Court of Policy on this part of the Estimates] seemed to me to leave quite as much room for attributing the refusal to political disinclination as to difficulties of a Financial nature’, and he concluded that in view of his remit for a slave population of ‘circa 70,000 souls dispersed over a vast extent of country, it does forcibly appear to me that the location of more than one Officer whose responsible duty it shall be to attend to that object alone, is indispensably necessary’.17,18

  There had been explicit reference in a Governor’s Ordinance of 21 December 1831 (a tidying up measure updating arrangements for the collection of fines and penalties) to ‘the Protector of Slaves of British Guiana, and the Assistant Protector of Slaves of British Guiana for the District of Berbice’, and subsequently also to ‘other Assistant Protectors of Slaves of British Guiana for the District of Berbice’, but this was before the discussion of the colonial Estimates.19,20 Elliot’s case had been weakened not only by the prior existence of two unpaid assistants, John MacLeod and Edward Howard Gibbon, but by their being known as Assistant Protectors of Slaves, and as Elliot admitted, ‘it was observed [in the Court’s consideration of the Estimates] that the duties of Assistant Protectors of Slaves were performed gratuitously, and why should not that course continue to be pursued’.21 Elliot acknowledged what the volunteers had done, but pointed out that His Majesty’s Government had no means of insisting that more time and effort be spent on slave protection, in the interests of both slaves and planters, unless there were more paid designated officials. By the interests of the planters he meant not only the economic benefits of amelioration but the serious consequences for them if more were not done:

  I am … no friend to disorder, or disregard of authority, and I know no better way of preventing the fatal consequences of such a state of things, than by leading the Slave Population to believe that the proprietary fully adopt the views of the Government at home with regard to the amelioration of their condition, and that the observation of the whole extent of the laws in their favour is fairly ensured to them.22

  The financial implications of Elliot’s request were, however, a major factor in the planters’ hostility. They were not happy with their own economic situation and were aware, as was Elliot, that the Secretary of State, Lord Goderich, had made it clear in a dispatch of 5 November 1831 that he expected ‘the increased expense of a few Assistant Protectors will be abundantly provided for in the savings already made and which remain to be made in other Departments’.23,24 So far as the planter members of the Court of Policy were concerned, there were no such savings.

  Elliot’s concerns did not lead to any additional resources. In the months that followed he was supplied with information and assistance by the two Registrars of Slaves, the local magistrates, and such voluntary help as he could find.

  It did not take long for Charles Elliot to become disillusioned. The scale of his task meant that despite the authority with which he had been invested he could not take any practical initiatives to improve the lot of the slave population. He was dependent on others, not least for making slaves aware of his existence and of their right of direct complaint to him. That was done only patchily; but the fact was that he could not have coped with the workload at all had it been otherwise. He felt out on a limb, trying to operate between the colonial authorities, who were conscious of the potential for violence and rebellion if slaves were encouraged to air their grievances openly, and the planters, who were generally hostile to him and whose tolerance of his position rested on their belief that improving the slaves’ condition might help productivity.

  This economic approach was not confined to the planters. It was adopted also by Registrar Robertson in his observations on trends in the quantity and types of punishment inflicted on slaves. Analysing recent birth and death trends Robertson commented:

  The progress of the reduction of the physical strength and capacity of the Slave Population of Demerary and Essequibo is truly alarming and it is a fact which may not have been sufficiently considered , but it appears very clear that the change in this respect in the last fifteen years will have a serious and distressing influence.25

  Since 1817 the slave population had decreased by 23,644, twenty-eight per cent, at the rate of more than 1,000 a year. Robertson was concerned about the concurrent increase in the rate of punishments administered, but also about ‘the increase in the number of slaves whose age and infirmities are a drawback on its [Demerara/Essequibo’s] resources’.26 Like Colonel Young, Elliot’s predecessor as
Protector, Robertson appears not to have been in step with growing concerns about slave welfare, viewing the slave statistics primarily in terms of their effect on the Colony’s future output. Elliot, though conscious of the economic implications, was acutely aware of the injustices being done to slaves and of the impediments being deliberately placed in the way of their education and progress. From Robertson’s data, shown below, harsh treatment of slaves seemed to be on the increase.27

  Punishments including dark-room confinement, days in the stocks, flogging and imprisonment, were inflicted for a wide range of alleged offences. For the little over four months from mid-May to the end of September 1830 in Berbice, the Protector of Slaves reported that 4,582 punishments had been meted out. The main offences recorded were bad work and not finishing task (1,609 instances) and ranged through neglecting duty and insolence, to theft and petty larceny.28 Other reported reasons for punishment included attempted murder, killing stock, and mutinous language.

  The response of Lord Goderich to this report from Berbice is illustrative of the way in which he reacted to other reports of Protectors of Slaves. Following the structure of the report itself, he first dealt with the statistical overview and then commented on individual cases as he saw fit, with reference as appropriate to any earlier instruction or exhortation he had issued. In this instance he wrote to the Governor on 16 July, 1831 concerning

  Mr Beard’s despatch dated 7 February last, enclosing the Report of the Protector of Slaves in Berbice from 14 May to 29 September 1830 … I have observed with much regret that very little or no diminution has taken place in the punishments inflicted by the domestic authority of the owner.29,30

  Having pointed out that 4,582 punishments on a slave population of a little over 18,000 was a rate of around one in four, Goderich drew particular attention to one estate, Plantation Utile et Paisible, ‘which exhibits the extraordinary number of 420 punishments inflicted on the 145 slaves in a little more than four months’, instructing the Governor to