of England"; and without the stream of wealth pouring into Great
Britain from Barbados and Jamaica, the long struggle with France would
have been impossible.

The term "as rich as a West Indian" was proverbial, and in 1803 the
West Indies were accountable for one-third of the imports and exports
of Great Britain.

The price of sugar in 1803 was fifty-two shillings a hundredweight.
Wealth was pouring into the island and into the pockets of the
planters. Lady Nugent constantly alludes to sugar estates worth
20,000 or 30,000 pounds a year. These planters were six weeks distant
from England, and, except during the two years' respite which followed
the Treaty of Amiens, Great Britain had been intermittently at war with
either France or Spain during the whole of the eighteenth century. The
preliminary articles of peace between France and Britain were signed
on October 1, 1801, the Peace of Amiens itself on March 27, 1802, but
in July, 1803, hostilities between the two countries were again
renewed. All this meant that communications between the colony and the
motherland were very precarious. Nominally a mail-packet sailed from
Jamaica once a month, but the seas were swarming with swift-sailing
French and Spanish privateers, hanging about the trade-routes on the
chance of capturing West Indiamen with their rich cargoes, so the
mail-packets had to wait till a convoy assembled, and were then
escorted home by men-of-war. This entailed the increasing isolation of
the white community in Jamaica, who, in their outlook on life,
retained the eighteenth-century standpoint. Now the eighteenth century
was a thoroughly gross and material epoch. People had a pretty taste
in clothes, and a nice feeling for good architecture, graceful
furniture, and artistic house decoration, but this was a veneer only,