The British state and slavery: George Baillie, merchant of London and St Vincent, and the
Exchequer loans of the 1790s.1
Nicholas Draper, UCL
To date little systematic work has been done on the role of the British state in the Atlantic
slave-economy. The role of the British state in many other forms of economic activity in the
long eighteenth century has certainly been the subject of re-examination in recent years.2 At
the same time, new work, including the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project on the
universe of British slave-owners, has deepened our understanding of the role of thousands of
individuals in the slave-system. But not much has yet been done to connect these two streams
of research and rethinking. The British state of course seized major slave-colonies by
conquest or war in three successive waves of expansion of Britain’s slave-empire in the mid17th century, 1763 and the early 1800s; it organised and administered these territories; it
subsequently provided the military and navy support on which the colonies depended against
both external and internal threats; it set and sustained the regulatory framework of colonial
preference for sugar and other products of the Caribbean; and it owned enslaved people itself.
But in addition it periodically intervened to provide financial support directly to slaveowners. The compensation paid to slave-owners in the 1830s was only the last of such
significant financial engagements with slave-owners by the British state, in a pattern of crisis
intervention spanning precisely the period of the rise and eventual triumph of abolitionism,
from hurricane relief extended to Jamaican and Barbados in 1780 and the bailing out of the
Grenada and St Vincent slave-owners and merchants in the 1790s to the measures for ‘relief’
in the early 1830s: the latter made available up to £1 million in short-term government loans
to slave-owners, £500,000 to Jamaica in the wake of the Baptist War and £500,000 to
Barbados, St Vincent and St Lucia after the Great Caribbean Hurricane.3
This paper examines one of the most material of these episodes, the Exchequer loans made to
Grenada and St Vincent slave-owners and merchants following the insurrection in the
Windward Islands in the 1790s, through the lens of George Baillie (?1755-1809), a largescale slave-factor and West India merchant focused on the Windwards in a period of rapid
wealth-creation and wealth-destruction in the slave-economy. His partnerships and business
connections linked London, Liverpool and Bristol with the Caribbean, and he was both a
prime mover in soliciting state aid and one of the main beneficiaries of the loans advanced by
the British government. Previous accounts of this lending have tended to take for granted the
propensity of the government to provide such funding.4 This paper uses new archival
1
This preliminary paper includes partial results from work-in-progress on a cache of material held at the
Museum of London in Docklands relating to the Grenada and St Vincent Exchequer loans of the 1790s. I am
grateful to Vicky Holmes, archivist at the Museum of London in Docklands, and to Chris Ellmers, formerly
curator at the Museum of London, for their recent help in tracing this uncatalogued material in the Museum of
London in Docklands’ archives. Dr Tom Wareham, formerly of the Museum of London in Docklands, had
kindly drawn these papers to my attention some 10 years ago.
2
E.g. Julian Hoppit, ‘Political Power and British Economic Life, 1650-1870’ in R. Floud et al. (eds.) The
Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) pp.
344-367; Perry Gauci (ed.) Regulating the British Economy 1660-1850 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011).
3
1831-32 (627) 3 Will. IV.--Sess. 1831-2. A bill for enabling His Majesty to direct the issue of exchequer bills,
to a limited amount, for the purposes and in the manner therein mentioned .
4
S.G. Checkland, ‘Two Scottish West Indian Liquidations after 1793’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy,
4.2 (June 1957) 127-143; Douglas J. Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic world, 1750-1820
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005) pp. 182-185.
material at the Museum of London in Docklands, together with Baillie’s own polemical
pamphlets written in the early 1800s after his business had foundered, to re-explore this
government support of slave-owners and merchants in the 1790s, and to reconstruct Baillie’s
private and public trans-Atlantic networks (especially his credit networks).5 It aims to shed
new light on the relationship between the British state and slavery, to raise questions about
the meaning of the co-existence of large-scale state support for slave-owners with the culture
of abolitionism, to demonstrate the extent to which ‘the market’ was embedded in the
frameworks of the imperial state, and to add to the evidence for the inter-relationship between
slavery in the Caribbean and the development of credit networks and credit institutions in
Britain.
George Baillie
George Baillie was a cousin of the Baillie family of Dochfour and Bristol, members of whom
were deeply embedded in the slave-economy over two generations.6 George Baillie was
unusual in the family in that he left a series of public letters and a pamphlet Narrative of his
business affairs, and that he ultimately failed.7
He had gone to the Caribbean in the early 1770s as a young man, became a partner in a series
of local merchant firms and ‘had done a great deal of business in the sale of African cargoes,
which was much connected with drawing bills for the proceeds on James Baillie & Co. at
long sights.’ After upwards of 20 years in the West Indies, he arrived in England August
1793. He was the founder and ‘uncontrouled manager’ of both the successive houses of G.
Baillie & Co. 8 The first of these was the partnership carried on as West India merchants for
some years in London between Geo. Baillie, Nathaniel Snell, John Turing, Robert Lang, and
Eric Mackay (Lord Reay) under George Baillie & Co., which was dissolved acrimoniously
on 30/04/1800, with the accounts settled at the firm’s counting house at Finsbury Square.9
The second was a partnership with John Jaffray, again trading as Messrs George Baillie &
Co., which was finally declared bankrupt in 1806 after several years of financial instability
from 1803.10
5
The papers at the Museum of London in Docklands are labelled Exchequer Bills for Relief of Persons Trading
with Grenada And St Vincent BA 2182 Box 678, BA 2183 Box 680 and Boxes 679 and 681-682; George
Baillie, Narrative of the Mercantile Transactions of the concerns of George Baillie & Co.’s Houses from the
year 1793 to 1805 inclusive. (Printed by John Booth, London, [1805]); George Baillie, Interesting Letters
addressed to Evan Baillie, Esq., of Bristol merchant and Member of Parliament for that Great City and Colonel
of the Bristol Volunteers (London: J. Gold, [1809]); George Baillie, Interesting Letters addressed to James
Baillie of Bedford Square partner in the House of Baillie, Thornton & Campbell (London: J. Gold, [1809];
George Baillie, Interesting Letters addressed to John Bolton Esq. Of Liverpool, merchant, and Colonel of a
regiment of volunteers (London: J. Gold, [1809]).
6
Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean, pp. 178-180, 199-201. George Baillie’s cousin Evan Baillie and Evan’s
son James Evan Baillie were both West India merchants and together with Evan’s other son Peter were partners
in Bristol Old Bank; Evan, James Evan, Peter and Evan’s brother James of Bedford Square were all MPs.
7
The pamphlets exist of course because of that failure. The higher survival rate of records of financial collapse
tends to push the historiography towards instances of failure rather than success in the slave-economy, e.g. R.B.
Sheridan, ‘The West India Sugar Crisis and British Slave Emancipation, 1830-1833’, Journal of Economic
History 21.4 (December 1961) 539-551; and Checkland, ‘Two Scottish West Indian Liquidations.’ While
George Baillie died a bankrupt, Evan Baillie left £80,000 excluding his Scottish land in 1835 and his son James
Evan Baillie left over £100,000 in personalty plus extensive Scottish estates in 1863.
8
Baillie, Narrative, pp.iii..
9
London Gazette, 15254 05/03/1800 p. 436.
10
London Gazette, 15973 08/11/1806 p. 1471.
What was his business in London? As Baillie said of his first London firm, it did not require
cash, only capital: ‘The nature of our business did not require advance, but a great
responsibility was necessary, it was guaranteeing the sale of African cargoes.’11 He was not a
slave-trader in the sense captured in the Trans-Atlantic Slave-Trade Database, but a slavefactor in the Caribbean and then a financier of the slave-trade in London. This whole nexus of
slave-factoring sits outside the perimeter of the Trans-Atlantic Slave-Trade Database (where
George Baillie is not identified) but was crucial to the structure of the slave-economy and
remains crucial to the Williams’ thesis that credit networks and institutions in Britain gained
from the credit-intensity of the slave-trade.12 Baillie illustrates Jacob Price’s thesis about the
importance of the merchant as a credit-provider in the colonial Atlantic, even at the end of the
18th century.13 As Price pointed out, there were two sets of bills, those issued by the slavefactor to the captain of the slave-trader and drawn on (payable by) the London guarantor; and
the bills issued to the factor by the ‘planters’, the slave-owners who were the purchasers of
the enslaved and sent (consigned) their produce to London to repay directly or indirectly their
own bills as they came due. This form of finance fits with Sheridan’s conception of the
importance of short-term credit as opposed to the mortgage finance Simon D. Smith rightly
reinserted into the picture.14 Both types were necessary: they performed different functions in
the slave-economy. It is also clear in Baillie’s account that banks were growing in importance
behind the merchant firms: the London banking firm of Smith, Payne & Smith looms in
Baillie’s Interesting Letters as a minatory presence.15
Baillie was also a slave-owner, although this appears to have been ancillary to his mercantile
activities. At the time of his bankruptcy, he and John Jaffray owned the Sion Hill, Carapan
and Carriere estates on St Vincent, a moiety of the Inverness estate in Berbice and ‘a certain
portion’ a second estate there, known as the Cannaye Lot: the estates, ‘together with all the
Slaves, Plantation Stores and other Live and Dead Stock’ were auctioned off by the assignees
in bankruptcy in 1807.16
The Exchequer Loans of the 1790s.
The outlines of the story of the Exchequer loans are already known through the work of
Checkland and Hamilton. Years of significant buoyancy in the slave-economy in Grenada
and St Vincent - in his will proved in 1793, George Baillie’s cousin James Baillie of Bedford
Square said he had ‘sometime since’ paid a barely credible £100,000 for the Bacolet and
Chemin estates on Grenada17 - came to a halt with the outbreak of Fedon’s rebellion on
11
Baillie, Narrative, p. 6.
This thesis has recently been given fresh support, e.g. Pat Hudson ‘Slavery, the slave trade and economic
growth: a contribution to the debate’ in C. Hall, N. Draper, K. McClelland (eds.) Emancipation and the
remaking of the British imperial world (Manchester University Press, 2014), pp. 36-59.
13
Jacob M. Price, ‘What did merchants do? Reflections on British Overseas Trade 1660-1790’, Journal of
Economic History XLIX No. 2 The Tasks of Economic History (June, 1989), pp. 267-284.
14
S. D. Smith, ‘Merchants and planters revisited’, Economic History Review, LV 3 (2002) pp. 434-465.
15
Baillie, Evan Baillie, p. 76.
16
London Gazette 15591 13/01/1807 p. 55.
17
PROB 11/1237/227.
12
Grenada in the context of wider war with Revolutionary France. The disruption of production
halted the flow of produce to Britain and left the metropolitan merchants exposed.
Baillie himself said that ‘after great perseverance, and being three times refused, I succeeded
in my application to Government for a loan, to the extent of one million and a half, for all the
sufferers.’18 Baillie’s own account of the securing of government assistance aid might
reasonably be seen as seeking to maximise his role, but in the (undated) sequence he set out,
he first met with Dundas and got his support for an immediate meeting with Pitt, in which Pitt
said he would ‘take advice.’ Silence followed, so Baillie re-approached Pitt direct through
‘Secretary Mr Smith.’ But Pitt declined to meet - Baillie found that Pitt had taken advice in
the city that ‘was adverse to any pecuniary aid’ and so concluded ‘it therefore seemed
necessary to address him in more formal manner.’ He went to Sir Richard Neave, chairman
of the West India Merchants Committee [but himself a slave-owner in the Leewards rather
than the Windwards], and together the two men met Pitt. Again, Pitt demurred ‘lest it might
become a very dangerous precedent’ and Neave gave up. Baillie however persisted and
convened a meeting of merchants at which Lord Sheffield and Sir William Pulteney attended.
Sheffield and Pulteney then met with Pitt, and got agreement the next day, after which the
leading merchants met with Dundas and Pitt ‘to arrange it.’ ‘The meeting in fact was merely
a matter of form, for Lord Sheffield and Sir William Pulteney had previously settled the point
for us…we had only to procure security for the loan from government.’19
Baillie omitted the Parliamentary dimension of this process. On 11/06/1795 a petition of
merchants trading to St Vincent and Grenada was referred to a committee, and Royal Assent
was given to the bill 27/06/1795, for a total loan of up to £1.5MM.20 A group of
Commissioners were established to administer the scheme, whose Secretary, Thomas
Marsham, submitted his accounts in 1807.21 Under the Act, repayments of advances were to
be made in instalments on 05/01/1797, 10/10/1797 and 05/07/98.
Who got the loans?
In all, there were 62 loans identified by separate Certificate no. made by the commissioners,
totalling £1.367MM.22 Until now, no systematic account of who borrowed under the scheme
has (to my knowledge) been possible. It has been known that the two main beneficiaries of
the loan were George Baillie himself (variously given as £260,000 or £250,000)23 and
Alexander Houstoun & Co. of Glasgow (£240,000). A report of 1800 used by Checkland
gives details of two other borrowers in addition to Houstoun & Co. (Charles Ashwell and
William Johnstone, relatively modest borrowers of £16,000 and £10,000 respectively) 24,
while Hamilton identified Alexander Johnstone, the brother of William Johnstone Pulteney,
as borrowing £10,000 to re-establish the Westerhall estate.25 Two sets of Parliamentary
18
Baillie, Evan Baillie, pp. 23-24.
Baillie, Narrative pp. 8-10.
20
35 Geo III C. 127.
21
The National Archives, AO 1/888/134.
22
A number of loans have several tranches and some borrowers have more than one Certificate number.
23
Baillie himself gives £260,000: ‘Of this loan, my house had £260,000, which has been long since repaid with
interest’, Baillie, Evan Baillie, pp. 23-4.
24
Journals of the House of Commons 55 (1799-1800) 424 (Eighteenth Parliament of Great Britain: fourth
session (24 September 1799 - 29 July 1800)) ‘Report On Mr. McDowall's Petition’, &c. &c.
25
Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean, p. 183.
19
Papers from 1801 and 1802 provide various analyses of the loan by Certificate number,
without identifying the borrowers by name.26
But the recently reviewed papers at Museum of London in Docklands now allow the
identification of 75% of the recipients of the Exchequer loans accounting for some 85% of
the funds.27 The papers include Certificate nos., borrowers and guarantors. It is not clear why
some Certificates are missing from these records. The loan to Alexander Johnstone, identified
by Hamilton, for example, has not been found in the papers.28
The bulk of the money went overwhelmingly to ‘merchants’ rather than ‘planters’
(contemporary classifications that from our perspective are not always so clearly
distinguished). This was already clear from the 1801 analysis, which showed that £1.01MM
went to merchants against £357,000 for ‘planters.’29 To an extent, the picture is coloured by
the size of the two largest loans, accounting for half a million pounds between two merchant
firms. For Grenada alone, £183,333 6s 8d went to recipients characterised as ‘planters’ and
£225,466 13s 4d to ‘merchants’; For St Vincent, £157,800 went to planters, and only £20,000
to merchants. The overall discrepancy in favour of merchants was driven by the weight of the
merchants within the combined Grenada and St Vincent category, where only £16,000 went
to a planter with estates in both islands whereas £765,000 went to merchants trading to both
islands (including George Baillie and Houstoun).
What the data at Museum of London in Docklands giving the names of the borrowers shows
is the extent to which the ‘planters’ were in fact absentees, rather than living in the islands.
Again it is recognised that absentee and resident were malleable categories, status shifting
over time. But among the known recipients, of the planters receiving loans, only three are
identifiable as resident in the colonies (Burrows, Irwin and Ottley who borrowed £20,000
under Certificates nos. 74 and 140; Thomas Fairbairn of St Vincent who borrowed £2000
under Certificate no. 128; and James Campbell ‘of Tobago’ who borrowed £12,000 under
Certificate no. 109). Two were ‘transatlantic’ (Wm Johnstone of Grenada ‘but now in
London’ who borrowed £10,000 under Certificate no. 104 and Drewry Ottley under
Certificate no. 32 who borrowed £4,500). The remainder were absentee owners, living in
Britain and close enough to the process to respond to the opportunities it represented. Among
these absentee owners were: Dundas himself, under Certificate no. 130 borrowing £10,000;
Sir William Young of Hunterscombe under Certificate no. 40 borrowing £10,000, and the
26
PP 1801 (98) Report on the petition of the proprietors estates in the island of Grenada [printed 01/06/1801]
includes as Appendices 27 and 28 [pp.42-45 and 46] different breakdowns of the loan between ‘merchant’ and
‘planter’ and between ‘Grenada’, ‘St Vincent’ and ‘Grenada & St Vincent’; PP. 1801-1802 (43). An Account
of the Loans Advanced, in Exchequer Bills and Cash, to the PLANTERS AND MERCHANTS interested in the
Islands of Grenada and St Vincent’s: Distinguishing, the Date of the several Advances; the Period at which the
same were to be Repaid; with the several Postponements thereof; and, the Amount of the Sums which have been
Repaid, with the respective Dates of such Repayments: Dated the 18 th Day of March 1802.
27
The 15 loans not yet identified carry the Certificate numbers 9, 13, 19, 30, 33, 34, 43, 47, 55, 75, 101a and b,
122, 124, 129 and 138. Nine of these were classified as ’planter’ loans and six as ‘merchant’. Together they
represent £174,600 of the total loans of £1.367MM: £90,500 in Grenada, £49,100 for St Vincent and a single
loan of £35,000 to a currently unknown mercantile recipient for both Grenada and St Vincent.
28
It appears probable that it was Certificate no.43, the only loan of £10,000 for Grenada classified as ‘planter’ or
which the recipient has not already been identified.
29
1801 (98) Report on the petition pp. 42-45 and 46. Certificate no. 49 for £2000 is shown inconsistently as in
the source as both merchant and planter. It was to Alexander Kenneth Mackenzie of Great Carth Street
Cavendish Square, and has been classified as planter for the numbers above.
sole woman, the Rt Hon. Susanna Louisa Lady St John, under Certificate no. 93a, again
borrowing £10,000.
What happened to repayments?
Under the terms of the 1795 Act, the final repayments were due on 05/07/1798. In fact, the
repayment dates were postponed at least four times, and were ultimately set as March 1804.30
Baillie himself and his partners still had £166,666 13s 4d outstanding under Certificates 1a,
1b 1c and 1d by 18/03/1802, but did eventually repay all the principal and interest. Of the
second largest loan, however, the £240,000 to Houstoun & Co., only £4999 4s 5d had been
repaid of £240,000 under Certificates 2 a, b, c and d by 1802, and this loan went in to ‘special
measures’, along with loans to Charles Ashwell and William Johnstone. The state stepped in
and became the liquidator of the Houstoun & Co. firm. The securities or guarantors of the
Houstoun firm and the other borrowers appear to have been undisturbed by demands to
deliver on the guarantee. Hamilton says that petitions ‘were considered minutely by the
[select] committee], then twice by committee of whole house’ before the state agreed to take
the three loans out of the Commission and deal with them separately as liquidations.31 What
is clear is that House of Commons saw shortcomings in the application of its own rules to
these loans: by the Act, estates in Grenada and St Vincent as security were to have been
valued at no more than 2x purchase (at twice the annual income) but the report commented
that those in St Kitts were valued at 10x purchase at least. In the Ashwell case the only
security was the estate itself and even then the executors proposed to subordinate the state
loan to other creditors, annuitants etc. Overall, by1802, of £1,367,600 advanced, £528,696 4s
4d had been repaid (together with interest of £181,228 9s 4d) and £260,503 15s 8d withdrawn
from the Commissioners and placed in trust.
Commercial and credit networks
Each recipient of an Exchequer Loan was obliged to provide ‘securities’, guarantors in
Britain. There appears to have been some variation in whether the guarantors supported the
principal or the ‘penal sum’ pledged by the borrowers themselves, of twice the amount. The
identity of these guarantors and the amounts pledged are given for a number of the loans in
the papers at the Museum of London in Docklands, and hence allow the reconstruction of
networks for the borrowers concerned. George Baillie himself had characterised his
supporters as his clients among the slave-traders and that appears to be borne out by the
available data for three tranches of the loans to his firm, made to the names of George Baillie,
Nathaniel Snell, Robert Lang, John Turing & Eric Mackay.
30
35 Geo III C. 127 [27/06/1795: repayments to be made 05/01/1797; 10/10/1797; 05/07/98]; 37 Geo III C. 27
[30/12/1796: repayments to be made 05/0/1799; 10/10/1799; 05/07/1800]; 39 Geo III C. 11 [04/01/1799:
repayments to be made 2/10/1799; 25/03/1800; 25/03/1801]; 39 Geo III C. 11 Sess. 2 C13 [12/10/1799:
repayments to be made 05/01/1800; 05/01/1801; 05/01/1802]; 41 Geo III C. 27 [31/12/1800: repayments to be
made 05/03/1802, 05/03/1803, 05/03/1804
31
Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean, p. 185.
Table 1. Securities of George Baillie & Co. for tranche 1B (£180,000 principal)
Tranche Guarantor
Date
1B
1B
1B
Charles Young of Bristol
John Anderson of Bristol
Thomas Deane of Bristol
18/07/1795 Y
18/07/1795 Y
18/07/1795 Y
Bristol
Bristol
Bristol
10,000
40,000
5,000
1B
1B
1B
1B
William Parry the younger
Robert Rolleston
Richard Miles of America Sq.
Edmund Higginson
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
Y
Y
Y
Y
London
London
London
London
5,000
10,000
10,000
8,000
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
Thomas Earle of Liverpool
William Earle of Liverpool
John Bolton of Liverpool
Joseph Birch of Liverpool
Christopher Butler, Francis Ingram,
James Rigby of Liverpool
Thomas Staniforth, Thomas Parke,
John Houghton of Liverpool
Jonathan Ratcliffe, Wm Thompson,
George Hewitt of Liverpool
John Gregson, George Case, John
Bridge Aspinall, James Aspinall,
William Gregson
George Case, Wm. Gregson, John
Gregson, Wm. Gregson the younger,
Thomas Morland, J.B. Aspinall,
James Aspinall
Clayton Tarleton, William Rigg of
Liverpool
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
18/07/1795
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Liverpool 1,100
Liverpool 6,400
Liverpool 10,000
Liverpool 10,000
Liverpool 25,000
Edward Vaux of London and
Edward Vaux the younger, insurance
brokers
John Sime master mariner Mile End
Thomas Morton of Clapton Terrace
Jacob Wilkinson of City of London
merchant
Benjamin Hopkinson of Russell Pl.
John Wilson of Charlotte St.
William Lyttleton of Mansell St.
Joseph Partridge
Edmund Reynolds of Bath
Archibald Alves of Springfield
John McConnell of Monmouth
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
1B
Slaver? If so, city
Amount
£
13/07/1795 Y
Liverpool
4,000
13/07/1795 Y
Liverpool
2,400
13/07/1795 Y
Liverpool 18,600
13/07/1795 Y
Liverpool 12,400
13/07/1795 Y
Liverpool 11,000
13/07/1795 N
10,000
13/07/1795 N
13/07/1795 N
13/07/1795 N
400
14,800
10,000
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
13/07/1795
20,000
10,000
16,000
14,800
20,000
10,000
10,000
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
Table 2. Securities of George Baillie & Co. for tranche 1C (£6,000 principal) and identified
securities of George Baillie & Co. for tranche 1D (£26,500 principal)
Tranche Guarantor
Date
Slaver? If so,
city
1C
Duncan Davidson, Henry Davidson
21/07/1795 N
1D
1D
1D
1D
1D
Peter Gurley of Earls Court
James Harvey of Bristol
John Backhouse of Liverpool
John Hodgson of Liverpool
John Mangles of Wapping ships
chandler
30/07/1795
30/07/1795
30/07/1795
30/07/1795
30/07/1795
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
Amount
£
12,000
Bristol
L’pool
L’pool
London
5,600
5,000
2,800
2,400
6,800
Of the £324,900 identified of securities for the largest tranche 1B under 29 separate
guarantees, £188,900 was provided by 18 slave-traders or firms of slave-traders in Bristol,
London and Liverpool. Of the £136,000 from those 11 guarantors not identified as slavetraders, two are known to have been slave-owners (Edmund Reynolds of Bath, whose will
shows he held enslaved people in Grenada, and Benjamin Hopkinson of Russell Place, who
was a major slave-owner in what became British Guiana).
Similar networks can (and will be created) for other recipients of the Exchequer loans. The
second largest borrower, Alexander Houstoun & co. in the names of William McDowall,
James McDowall, Andrew Houstoun and Robert Houstoun Rae, drew on a primarily Scottish
network of guarantors. Borrowers also appeared as guarantors: the firm of Duncan Davidson
which guaranteed Tranche 1C for George Baillie itself borrowed £50,000 on 6th March
1797.32 Guarantors doubled up, acting as securities for more than one borrower: John
Gregson and James Gregson, and John Bridge Aspinall and James Aspinall, pledged £8500
and £4250 respectively in support of the £15,000 loan to Edmund Thornton, James Baillie,
Duncan Campbell and John Orr five days after similar pledges in support of George Baillie.
Conclusion: what does the episode say about the state and slavery?
The issue of Exchequer loans for Grenada and St Vincent has been treated as a relatively
prosaic action by the state. Checkland saw the 1800 Act for the Houston liquidation as ‘a
unique example of official aid to a particular house’ but was less struck by the Exchequer
loans themselves, saying: ‘In 1793 the state had learned to support general credit in the face
of short-term disturbance; in 1795 it served a particular group exposed to calamity - the
32
Box 679 Certificate no. 105.
Grenada and St Vincent men; in 1799 it supported the Liverpool and Lancaster West India
traders (the bank looked after the rest); in 1800 the range of possibilities were completed with
the Act covering the case of Houston and Co.’33 Hamilton said of the loans ‘[T]he acquisition
of public money appeared to be the only solution.’
But the state did not respond to all, or even most, calls for crisis relief from commercial and
propertied interests. Addington later refused George Baillie’s attempt at a general loan for
merchants in 1804.34 Earlier, in 1797, in the context of the St Domingue revolution, the
London merchant John Turnbull had written unsuccessfully to Henry Dundas to set out the
exposure of Turnbull Forbes to Cardinal Rohan’s family, and to seek not money but grants of
land to settle their connected house of Bertrand Littledale, from Port-au-Prince to Demerara
or Trinidad.35
Hoppit has stressed the local component of the state’s role in the economy: ‘parliament’s
supreme legislative power was vigorously used by many thousands of small and scattered
property interests’ as opposed to national policies.36 Parliament was in his phrase ‘a use right
for propertied society’, a relatively cheap means to reconfigure significant aspects of
economic life.37 But the loans were not a permissive action or even necessarily cheap: they
incurred direct and substantial risk for the British state. It was a government measure, not a
private one. This was surely the equivalent of rent-seeking by a group that could overcome
Pitt’s clear reluctance. On this issue, a fragment of the West India lobby prevailed over the
Prime Minister’s instincts, and some parliamentary opposition, for opposition there was. On
March 13 1802, when the Committee of the whole House debated the report of the
Committee on the petition of Grenada and St Vincent planters, William Lushington, the agent
for Grenada and himself a beneficiary of the Exchequer loan, said that it had met its
objectives with the successful resettling of two colonies. ‘But though the advantage thus
reaped by the public had been great, the individuals had gained but little.’ It was normal, he
said, to grant more time, and he was seconded by Sir Wm Young, another beneficiary. But
reflecting the clear mercantile character of the loan, ‘Sir R. Buxton and Mr Jones thought that
in measures of this kind the landed interest was sacrificed’, while Wilberforce protested
vigorously against an extension, saying he opposed it not on the basis of subsidising slavery
but of subsidising West Indians ‘by the property of the people of England’ when there was
‘no prospect of repayment.’ 38
Part of the explanation for the government’s ultimate willingness to put up risk capital must
lie in the background to the upheaval in Grenada. As early as 1793, when Carriacou was cut
off, the slave-owners in Grenada had warned of danger externally and from within, and these
Checkland, ‘Two West India Liquidations’ p. 132; Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean p. 182.
Checkland, ‘Two West India Liquidations’ p. 142;
35
Carl Ludwig Lokke, ‘London Merchant Interest in the St. Domingue Plantations of The Émigrés, 1793-1798’,
The American Historical Review, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Jul., 1938), pp. 795-802, and ‘New Light on London Merchant
Investments in St. Domingue’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Nov., 1942), pp. 670676.
36
Julian Hoppit, ‘Political power and British economic life,1650-1870’ in R. Floud, J. Humphries, P. Johnson
(eds.) The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, Vol. 1: 1700-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014) pp. 344-367, at p. 345.
37
Ibid. p. 365.
38
William Woodfall, An Impartial Report of the Debates that Occur in the Two Houses of Parliament in the
Course of the second Session of the First Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Vol.
II (London 1802) pp. 89-90.
33
34
warning certainly circulated in London.39 The government’s perceived neglect was later the
subject of a Parliamentary inquiry.40
The second factor must have been the power of the individuals conscripted and their direct
interest in the matter. The beneficiaries included undistinguished MPs such as Sir John
Trevleyan of Nettlecombe, and John Trevanion, but also Dundas himself and the brother of
William Johnstone Pulteney. As Hamilton notes, Pulteney, who acted as one of the
commissioners in Exchequer loan Office, himself owned Port Royal estate in Grenada and
after 1799 Bon Accord in Tobago, while the 1803 committee on St Vincent and Grenada was
chaired by Evan Baillie.41 The Exchequer Loan process, in contrast to the 1830s
compensation payments, appears to have been characterised by very traditional forms of
patronage. When John Peter Hankey’s loan got stuck in 1798, he asked Sir William Curtis to
intervene for him with Pitt personally, which Curtis did, although not by seeing him as
Hankey had asked but by writing: ‘I entreat you if possible to give some speedy relief.’42
The third explanation of government intervention, the argument of systemic risk, appears to
have been applied more over the Houstoun liquidation of 1800 than the original loans of
1795. The Glasgow financial institutions certainly leant in to support an orderly run-down of
Houstoun and Co. as ‘a measure of public utility’, as the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce
argued. The cashier of Royal Bank of Scotland and the treasurer of the Bank of Scotland
endorsed the ‘too big to fail’ argument.
Finally, however, the Exchequer loans appear to say something about the salience of slavery
in the 1790s. Eric Williams was surely right to focus on Pitt’s apparent shift under the
pressures of war towards being persuaded that the Caribbean slave-economies were one of
the key battlegrounds with France. The Exchequer loans are consistent with that controversial
analysis. The state and slavery in the 1790s were still in the perceived symbiotic relationship
that had characterised them before the rise of abolitionism.43 And that could not have
changed by 1806-7. In other words, the abolition of the slave-trade needs to be seen more in
light of Williams and David Beck Ryden as a means of shoring up the slave-system than as a
deliberate blow against it.
39
Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/127 Pt 2 End 204. Letter from William Curtis at Old South Sea House 17 th
October 1793 to Pitt, forwarding as matter of duty a letter from ‘my correspondent the Honourable Thos.
Campbell of Grenada…I have likewise sent one to the Earl of Chatham.’
40
PP 1801 (98) Report on the petition of the proprietors estates in the island of Grenada [printed 01/06/1801].
Appendix 26, p. 41 includes Resolutions of 09/01/1793 Meeting of Gentlemen Planters and Merchants of the
Island of Grenada [seeking to make slaves available for defence work]; it was signed by 27 people (and 2 firms:
Simond & Hankey and Lushington & Law) including John Julius Angerstein, and James Baillie as Agent, and
Wm Curtis.
41
Hamilton, p. 183.
42
Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/127 Pt 2 End 215 .
43
Julian Hoppit, ‘Bounties, the Economy and the state in Britain, 1689-1800’ in Regulating the British Economy
1660-1850 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011) pp. 139-160.
Conclusion
‘There was never any loan granted by government more necessary than the Grenada and St
Vincent loan; it has been the saving of these islands, and many of the planters and merchants
connected with them, from real distress: the revenue has benefited considerably by the estates
being made productive, and government will soon be paid the last farthing, with interest; on
the whole, therefore, it has done a wonderful deal of good, beside proving, in every respect,
highly creditable to the minister.’44
This was Baillie’s verdict on the loan scheme, which was in reality primarily a mercantile
bail-out. Resident planters in the islands received relatively. Proximity to the metropolitan
government appears to have been critical.
The Exchequer loans form part of a continuous story of responsiveness by the British state to
calls for direct relief from merchants and slave-owners in the British Caribbean, from
hurricane relief in 178045, through the St Vincent Volcano 181146 to the combined relief of
1831-3247 and the compensation payments to slave-owners for Emancipation of the 1830s.
What was the nature of the state’s intervention? Smith saw the ex-post relief as taking the
place of insurance or itself representing ex-post insurance.48 But ex-post insurance is
insurance when the loss has already been incurred; no premia were ever paid; the state in
each case was making a highly-targeted transfer payment to the merchants and slave-owners.
Less than 4% of the 1831-1832 lending was ever repaid.49
Few other groups appear to have benefitted so frequently over so long a period from state aid
as the slave-owners and merchants. The continuity and regularity of British state reflexes in
the face of such requests for assistance needs to be factored into the assessment both of the
British state’s role in slavery of slavery’s role in the British state.
44
Baillie, Narrative, p. 12.
Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and society in the British Greater Caribbean 1624-1783 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2005).
46
PP. 1812-13 (182) Report from committee on petition of persons interested in estates in the island of Saint
Vincent; S.D. Smith, ‘Volcanic hazard in a slave society: the 1812 eruption of Mt Soufriere in St Vincent’
Journal of Historical Geography, January 2011 37.1 pp. 55-67. The signatories of London petition were Simon
Fraser, Houston; Brooke Struth and Rose; John Robley & Co; Jos. Marryat; D.H & J.A. Rucker; Rich. Tho
Neave; Lang Chauncy and Lucas; and George Blackman.
47
PP. 1831-32 (627) 3 Will. IV.--Sess. 1831-2. A bill for enabling His Majesty to direct the issue of exchequer
bills, to a limited amount, for the purposes and in the manner therein mentioned; S.D. Smith, ‘Storm Hazard and
Slavery: The Impact of the 1831 Great Caribbean Hurricane on St Vincent’, Environment and History, Vol. 18
No. 1 (Feb 2012), pp. 97-123.
48
Smith, ‘Volcanic hazard’ p.66; Smith, ‘Storm hazard’, p. 123.
49
Smith, ‘Storm hazard’, p. 102, sourced to PP 1854–55 (159 & 470), p.24.
45