The wicked (according to Dauxion Lavaysse, a Frenchman inoculated somewhat with scientific and revolutionary notions, who wrote a very clever book, unfortunately very rare now) said that the Trinidad cacao was then, as now, very excellent; that therefore it was sold before it was gathered; and that thus the planters were able to evade the payment of tithes.  But Senor Rabelo had planted another variety, called Forestero, from the Brazils, which was at once of hardier habit, inferior quality, and slower ripening.  Hence his trees withstood the blight:  but, en revanche, hence also, merchants would not buy his crop before it was picked:  thus his duty became his necessity, and he could not help paying his tithes.

Be that as it may, the good folk of Trinidad (and, to judge from their descendants, there must have been good folk among them) grew, from the failure of the cacao plantations, exceeding poor; so that in 1733 they had to call a meeting at San Josef, in order to tax the inhabitants, according to their means, toward thatching the Cabildo hall with palm-leaves.  Nay, so poor did they become, that in 1740, the year after the smallpox had again devastated the island and the very monkeys had died of it,—­as the hapless creatures died of cholera in hundreds a few years since, and of yellow fever the year before last, sensibly diminishing their numbers near the towns—­let the conceit of human nature wince under the fact as it will, it cannot wince from under the fact,—­in 1740, I say the war between Spain and England—­that about Jenkins’s ear—­forced them to send a curious petition to his Majesty of Spain; and to ask—­Would he be pleased to commiserate their situation?  The failure of the cacao had reduced them to such a state of destitution that they could not go to Mass save once a year, to fulfil their ‘annual precepts’; when they appeared in clothes borrowed from each other.

Nay, it is said by those who should know best, that in those days the whole august body of the Cabildo had but one pair of small-clothes, which did duty among all the members.

Let no one be shocked.  The small-clothes desiderated would have been of black satin, probably embroidered; and fit, though somewhat threadbare, for the thigh of a magistrate and gentleman of Spain.  But he would not have gone on ordinary days in a sansculottic state.  He would have worn that most comfortable of loose nether garments, which may be seen on sailors in prints of the great war, and which came in again a while among the cunningest Highland sportsmen, namely, slops.  Let no one laugh, either, at least in contempt, as the average British Philistine will think himself bound to do, at the fact that these men had not only no balance at their bankers, but no bankers with whom to have a balance.  No men are more capable of supporting poverty with content and dignity than the Spaniards of the old school.  For none are more perfect gentlemen, or more free from the base modern belief that money makes the man; and I doubt not that a member of the old Cabildo of San Josef in slops was far better company than an average British Philistine in trousers.