“Do you see that man,” he said. “There is a man that wears as good a coat as I do, and can be trusted with anything about the property, but because he will go to that---------- preaching place, you see what a tremendous punishment I have laid upon him; and if I will serve that man so, what won't I do to the rest of you if you disobey my orders and go to Bellemont chapel.” Undoubtedly Williams could have induced the people on the estate to go to church, and undoubtedly he encouraged them to disobey their master. It shows a great step upwards in the status of the slave, and it shows us clearly the cruelty of slavery. Why should not a man worship where he pleased? But it was for disobedience that Williams was punished. Bleby talks about him as we should of a saint and martyr. He may have been, but in the eyes of his master he was merely a very disobedient slave whom he had to break lest the disaffection spread. Bleby is an amusing person, though he does not intend it. He finds in the end that all those who had ill-treated the slaves suffered punishment at the hands of God. Most of them were cut off in their prime, by accident or suicide, all but Mr Bridges the rector, who had his deserts in a different manner. “One morning, having breakfasted on board a ship in the harbour with his four youthful and lovely daughters, who were but too fondly beloved, and several other ladies and gentlemen, the whole party went out for a short excursion in the ship's boats. While they were thus pleasurably engaged a squall arose, unobserved by the party in the boats, and swept suddenly across the bay ['beautiful Kingston Harbour'), when the boat containing the four young ladies and two or three other persons was capsized, and the sisters all disappeared, to be seen no more. The agony of the bereaved parent while he gazed from the other boat upon the spot where his children had been swallowed up in a moment, may be more easily conceived than described. He was stricken to the dust. The towering pride which was characteristic of the man gave way when he thus felt the hand of God upon him.” It was men like Bleby who took the religious training of the slaves in hand. And they succeeded in gaining their confidence, not because they were the best people to have their minds and morals in charge, but for the very same reason that such Nonconformists succeeded in England. They saw how cruelly, heavily, the established rules pressed upon those in the lower social stratum, and they not only sympathised with them but promised reparation in another life.