she was seized with violent convulsions, which were nearly fatal; and
though, to the surprise of the medical men, she rallied from this attack,
her health was seriously impaired, and she died in the summer of the
following year.

[Sidenote: Position of a Governor in a West Indian colony]

There are probably few situations of greater difficulty and delicacy than
that of the Governor of a British colony which possesses representative
institutions. A constitutional sovereign, but with frail and temporary
tenure, he is expected not to reign only but to govern; and to govern
under the orders of a distant minister, who, if he has one eye on the
colony, must keep the other on home politics. Thus, without any power in
himself, he is a meeting-point of two different and generally antagonistic
forces--the will of the imperial government and the will of the local
legislature. To act in harmony with both these forces, and to bring them
into something of harmony with each other, requires, under the most
favourable circumstances, a rare union of firmness with patience and tact.
But the difficulties were much aggravated in a West Indian colony in the
early days of Emancipation.

[Sidenote: such as Jamaica.]

Here the local legislature was a democratic oligarchy, partly composed of
landowners, but chiefly of overseers, with no permanent stake in the
country. And this legislature had to be induced to pass measures for the
benefit of those very blacks of whose enforced service they had been
deprived, and whose paid labour they found it difficult to obtain. Add to
this that, in Jamaica, a long period of contention with the mother-country
had left a feeling of bitter resentment for the past, and sullen