He appears to have been a man of means, and in that he was an exception. I am sure that nearly all the planters felt they needed every penny their estates would produce, many were already deeply dipped, and few and far between were those who could afford to try experiments in the cause of right. But Lewis persevered, and I am glad to think that in the end he was no loser, his negroes worked, and his estates did pay. He actually on one occasion dismissed a bookkeeper for having ill-treated a negro, and took the evidence of four negroes against the denial of the accused--and this in a time when a negro's evidence was inadmissible! “I immediately discharged the book-keeper, who contented himself with simply denying the blow having been given by him; but I told him that I could not possibly allow his single unsupported denial to outweigh concordant witnesses to the assertation: and if he grounded his claim to being believed merely upon his having a white skin, on Cornwall estate at least that claim would not be admitted; and that as the fact was clearly established nothing should induce me to retain him upon my property except his finding some means of appeasing the injured negro, and prevailing on him to intercede on his behalf.” How dared he! In Jamaica! “This was a humiliation to which he could not bring himself to stoop; and accordingly the man has left the estate. I was kept awake the greater part of the night by the songs and rejoicings of the negroes at their triumph over the offending bookkeeper.” And this man had only sluiced a slave with dirty water, called him a rascal, and knocked him down with a broom because he did not clear away some spilled water fast enough! No wonder the planters felt this newcomer was attempting dangerous innovations. “It is extraordinary,” writes Lady Nugent, more than ten years earlier, “to witness the immediate effect that the climate” (always the climate) “and habit of living in this country have upon the minds and manners of Europeans, particularly the lower orders. In the upper ranks they become indolent and inactive, regardless of everything but eating and drinking and indulging themselves, are almost entirely under the dominion of their mulatto favourites. In the lower orders they are the same, with the addition of conceit and tyranny, considering the negroes as creatures formed entirely to administer to their ease, and to be subject to their caprice, and I have found much difficulty to persuade those great people and superior beings, our white domestics, that the blacks are human beings or have souls. I allude more particularly to our German and our other upper men servants.” I am afraid there were a good many people like Lady Nugent's German and other upper men servants.