Volume 2

The history, civil and commercial, of the British colonies in the West Indies. In two volumes. ... / [Bryan Edwards].

  • Bryan Edwards
Date:
1794
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history, civil and commercial, of the British colonies in the West Indies. In two volumes. ... / [Bryan Edwards]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/542 page 6
    BOOK IV. L..— weighty charge in itfelf, and more important in its conle- quencts, can fcarcely fall to the lot of man. I have, I think, in a former place, affigned the caufes to which it is partly afcribable that emigrants from various parts of the mother-country, fucceffively conftitute the bulk of the fugar cclonifts; of whom it is certain that the major part re- tain, in a confiderable degree, the manners and habits of life in which they were educated. Yet there are authors who aftedt to defcribe the inhabitants of all the Weft Indies, as a herd of criminals and convidts; and cite the ftale crimes and violences of lawlefs men, a century ago, when thefe iflands were the rendezvous of pirates and bucaniers, as a juft repre- fentation of the reigning colonial habits, manners, and dilpo- fitions! Calumnies fo grofs, defeat themfelves by their abiur- dity;—but although it is in the higheft degree ridiculous to imagine that a voyage acrofs the Atlantick creates any fudden or radical change in the human mind, yet, notwithftanding what has been juft obferved concerning local manners and habits in the different claffes of European fettlers, it cannot be denied that there prevails befides, fomething of a marked and predominant charadter common to all the White refi- dents. Of this character it appears to me that the leading feature is an independent fpirit, and a difplay of confcious equality, through-
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