The colonial proprietors resident in Great Britain felt little sympathy, either with the colonial legislatures, or with those resident in the colonies. This want of sympathy may be attributed to a peculiarity which distinguished the planters of British from those of other European colonies. The latter considered the colony in which they resided as their home. The former regarded their residence in it as temporary. They looked to the parent state as their only home, and all their acquisitions were made with a view to enjoyment in that home. This feeling accompanied them to England. It was imbibed by their families and their descendants. The colony, which had been the source of their wealth and rank, was not, as she ought to have been, the object of their grateful affection. They regarded with indifference her institutions, her legislature, her resident community. From this want of sympathy, or from the want of requisite information, they made no effort to remove the unfavourable impressions with which the executive Government and the Assemblies regarded each other, or to promote the establishment of their relations in mutual conciliation and confidence.
Another cause operated very powerfully in exciting a strong prejudice against the inhabitants of our West Indian colonies. The feeling which was naturally entertained against the slave trade and slave colonies was transferred to the resident colonists, and almost exclusively to them. By a numerous and powerful party, slavery had been contemplated in itself, and in the relations and interests which it had created, and its abolition had been endeavoured to be effected as if it were the crime of the colonies _exclusively_. It was forgotten "that it was," to use the language of Lord Stowel, "in a peculiar manner the crime of England, where it had been instituted, fostered, and encouraged, even to an excess which some of the colonies in vain endeavoured to restrain." Besides the acts passed by the legislatures of Pennsylvania and South Carolina, when those were British colonies, we find that when the Assembly of Jamaica, in 1765, was passing an act to restrain the importation of slaves into the colony, the governor of Jamaica informed the Assembly of that island, that, consistently with his instructions, he could not give his assent to a bill for that purpose, which had then been read twice. In 1774, the Jamaica Assembly attempted to prevent the further importation, by an increase of duties thereon, and for this purpose passed two acts. The merchants of Bristol and Liverpool petitioned against their allowance. The Board of Trade made a report against them. The agent of Jamaica was heard against that report; but, upon the recommendation of the Privy Council, the acts were disallowed, and the disallowance was accompanied by an instruction to the governor, dated 28th February 1775, by which he was prohibited, "upon pain of being removed from his government," from giving his assent to any act by which the duties on the importation of slaves should be augmented--"on the ground," as the instruction states, "that such duties were to the injury and oppression of the merchants of this kingdom and the obstruction of its commerce."