The white people of Barbadoes are still exciting themselves greatly
over the project of confederation, and declare that the
11 Governor is trying to force it on the island, in spite of his re- peated assurance that this is not the intention of the Colonial Office. The Opposition complain that Mr. Pope Hennessy ex- cites the lower classes, and accuses the planters of class-legisla- tion, and have formed an association to send home a deputation and represent the facts to the Home Government. The Governor has done nothing, apparently, but suggest that legislation might be improved in the interests of the body of the population, but
the lower classes are said to be much excited, and to be attacking plantations, where they beat the managers, and are not sufficiently restrained by the police. It is quite possible that the labouring negroes, hearing that the Governor wishes something to be done for them, are hoping for impossibilities, and are therefore unruly, but it is also quite possible that there is a good deal of justice which ought to be done them. Every oligarchy tends to become selfish, and Barbadoes, besides being excessively over-populated —800 to the square mile—has been for years in the hands of a limited oligarchy.
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