Towards the end of the last century a new class of men appeared in the West Indies--the Protestant missionaries. Catholic missions had been established in the Spanish possessions since the time of Columbus, but hitherto, with the exception of a few Moravians, no other Church had done anything to convert the slaves in the British colonies. Between 1780 and 1790, Methodist societies were established in most of the islands, notwithstanding the opposition of the planters, who in some cases appear to have thought that baptized Christians could no longer be held in slavery. This vulgar error, however, was not the real cause of the antagonism to these teachers, but rather the feeling natural to a master which makes him resent any outside interference between himself and his servants. The best and kindest were the first to feel this. The slaves were their children, and to them they applied, in all their troubles and difficulties, as to a great father. It followed, therefore, that when the missionaries came and proclaimed themselves friends to the slaves, giving them advice in secular as well as religious matters, the cordial feeling was broken. "Massa" was much put out, for he liked to hold the position of a little god to these poor ignorant creatures over whom he held such power. The slaves were sometimes whipped as bad children when they did wrong, and as children they cared little for a flogging. It is easily conceivable that a humane missionary might feel more pain at witnessing such a punishment than the culprit himself, but it is a fact that cruel punishment was never mentioned by the slaves as an excuse for a revolt. The missionaries were shocked at the apparent nakedness and destitution of the negroes, as a visitor to the West Indies will be even now. They did not remember that their clothing and houses were well suited to the climate, and that a home in the English sense of the word would not have been appreciated by them. These things were reported to the societies at home, the members of which knew no more about the tropics than the merchant who once sent a consignment of warming-pans to Barbados. Those who wanted to raise a cry of cruelty to the poor slave, circulated these facts, and put their own construction upon them, one going so far as to state that there were no chimneys to the houses, as if this omission were a slave disability or oppression, although any visitor to the colonies could have told him that these conveniences were hardly found anywhere.