In the years following emancipation the colony was in a serious condition. The report of a commission in 1850 proved that it was virtually ruined, and only by the introduction of immigrants to provide a reliable labour supply were the sugar estates saved from total extinction. By 1853 the colony had begun to make headway, and Sir Henry Barkly, the then governor, was able to state in his speech to the Combined Court in January that its progress was in every way satisfactory. During Governor Barkly's administration the long series of struggles between the legislature and the executive terminated, and when he left in May 1853 he did so with the respect and good-will of all classes. The strengthening of the labour supply was not effected without troubles. In 1847 the negroes in Berbice attacked the persons and property of the Portuguese immigrants, the riots spreading to Demerara and Essequibo, and not until the military were called out were the disturbances quelled. Similar riots in 1862 were only stopped by the prompt and firm action of the new governor, Mr (afterwards Sir) Francis Hincks, while rows between negroes and Chinese and negroes and East Indians were frequent. Gradually, however, things quieted down, and until 1883 the estates as a whole did well. In 1884 the price of sugar fell so seriously as to make the prospects of the colony very gloomy, and for nearly two decades proprietors had to be content with a price kept artificially low by bounty-fed beet-sugar, many estates being ruined, while those that survived only did so by the application of every economy, and by their owners availing themselves of every new discovery in the sciences of cultivation and manufacture. The year 1889 was marked by an outbreak on the part of a section of the negro population in Georgetown directed against the Portuguese residents there. A Portuguese had murdered his black paramour and had been convicted and sentenced to death. The governor commuted the sentence to penal servitude for life. Shortly after this a Portuguese stall-holder in the market assaulted a small black boy whom he suspected of pilfering, the latter having to be taken to a hospital, while the former, after being taken to a police station was, through some misunderstanding or informality, at once released. Almost immediately excitable and unreasoning negroes were rushing about loudly proclaiming that the boy was dead, that the Portuguese were allowed to kill black people and to go free, and calling on one another to take their own revenge. Mobs gathered quickly, attacked individual Portuguese and wrecked their shops and houses, and not until the city had been given up for two days to scenes of disgraceful disorder were the efforts of the police and special constables successful in quelling the disturbances. The damage done amounted to several thousands of dollars, the Portuguese owners being eventually compensated from general revenue.