[Sidenote:  Position of a Governor in a West Indian colony]

There are probably few situations of greater difficulty and delicacy than that of the Governor of a British colony which possesses representative institutions.  A constitutional sovereign, but with frail and temporary tenure, he is expected not to reign only but to govern; and to govern under the orders of a distant minister, who, if he has one eye on the colony, must keep the other on home politics.  Thus, without any power in himself, he is a meeting-point of two different and generally antagonistic forces—­the will of the imperial government and the will of the local legislature.  To act in harmony with both these forces, and to bring them into something of harmony with each other, requires, under the most favourable circumstances, a rare union of firmness with patience and tact.  But the difficulties were much aggravated in a West Indian colony in the early days of Emancipation.

[Sidenote:  such as Jamaica.]

Here the local legislature was a democratic oligarchy, partly composed of landowners, but chiefly of overseers, with no permanent stake in the country.  And this legislature had to be induced to pass measures for the benefit of those very blacks of whose enforced service they had been deprived, and whose paid labour they found it difficult to obtain.  Add to this that, in Jamaica, a long period of contention with the mother-country had left a feeling of bitter resentment for the past, and sullen despondency as regards the future.  Moreover, the balance had to be held between the Church of England on the one hand, which was in possession of all the ecclesiastical endowments, and probably of all the learning and cultivation of the island, and, on the other hand, the various sects, especially that of the Baptists, who, having fought vigorously for the Negroes in the battle of Emancipation, now held undisputed sway over their minds, and who, as was natural, found it difficult to abandon the position of demagogues and agitators.

Lord Elgin was at once fortunate and unfortunate in coming after the most conciliatory and popular of governors, Sir C. Metcalfe.  The island was in a state of peace and harmony which had been long unknown to it; but the singular affection, which Metcalfe had inspired in all classes, made them look forward with the most gloomy forebodings to the advent of his successor.

[Sidenote:  State of opinion in the island.]

Moreover, to use Lord Elgin’s own language, a tone of despondency with reference to the prospects of the owners of property had long been considered the test of a sincere regard for the welfare of Jamaica.  He who had been most successful in proclaiming the depression under which the landed and trading interests laboured, had been held to be in the popular acceptation of the term the truest friend to the colony.