The seventh class may comprehend the slaves of the Honourable Joshua
Steele, whose emancipation was attempted in Barbadoes between the years
1783 and 1790.
It appears that Mr. Steele lived several years in London. He was
Vice-president of the London Society of Arts, Manufactures, and
Commerce, and a person of talent and erudition. He was the proprietor of
three estates in Barbadoes. His agent there used to send him accounts
annually of his concerns; but these were latterly so ruinous, not only
in a pecuniary point of view, but as they related to what Mr. Steele
called the _destruction_ of his Negroes, that he resolved, though then
at the advanced age of eighty, to go there, and to look into his affairs
himself. Accordingly he embarked, and arrived there early in the year
1780.
Mr. Steele had not been long in Barbadoes, before he saw enough to
convince him that there was something radically wrong in the management
of the slaves there, and he was anxious to try, as well for the sake of
humanity as of his own interest, to effect a change in it. But how was
he to accomplish this[14]? "He considered within himself how difficult
it would be, nay, impossible, for a single proprietor to attempt so
great a novelty as to bring about an alteration of manners and customs
protected by iniquitous laws, and to which the gentlemen of the country
were reconciled as to the best possible for amending the indocile and
intractable ignorance of Negro slaves.
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