The plantation owners, The Times recalled, had repeatedly warned the British people that ‘the negro was incurably idle, intractable, insolent, that he needed a strong master, and was incapable of either self-control or gentle management . . . But very little of this came out.’ The Jamaica planters, who were of course the former slave owners, had not been listened to when they had counselled the nation on the true nature of black people, and now Britain was paying the price for her refusal to accept their forewarnings. The rebellion, The Times suggested, was a catastrophic blow for those who
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