Benjamin Hume, c.1697-1773

BENJAMIN HUME (c.1697-1773)

Benjamin Hume, merchant, plantation- and slave-owner, and public officer, occupies a small, inglorious niche in Jamaica’s colonial history. Nothing is known of his early years but he was sufficiently well established in Jamaica by 1735 to be elected Member of the Assembly for Port Royal. In about 1738 he married Elizabeth Hals, the widow of a wealthy Jamaican landowner, Thomas Hals (died 1737), but the marriage did not last for long: they separated in 1740.[1] Nevertheless, with the help of her money he rose steadily in rank, gaining appointments as Commissioner of Forts and Fortifications (1743), Custos for Port Royal, member of the Privy Council (1745), and finally deputy Receiver-General (1746), with responsibility for receiving and disbursing public funds and keeping treasury accounts. [2] The receiver-generalship, described by Bryan Edwards as one of the “great lucrative offices” in Jamaica, was a Crown appointment, held on letters patent by the deputy in Jamaica who shared the profits with the named holder in Britain.[3]

Hume’s public career came to an ignominious end in October 1753, when he was forced to resign after the discovery that he had borrowed £20,000 from the public funds which he was unable to repay. The governor Charles Knowles, condemning “embezzlement of the public money” as a “crime of a very high nature”, suspended Hume from his seat on the Council, with directions that a “writ of extent” (a measure enabling recovery of debts to the crown by seizure of the land, goods, and person of the debtor) should be issued against him. [4] No criminal charges were brought against him, however, and his friends in the Jamaican ruling class (prominent among whom was Zachary Bayly) remained loyal. In a formal petition to the Assembly, Hume expressed his humble contrition but pleaded for some extenuation on the grounds that his “misfortune” (as he termed it) was “more owing to neglect and bad management in the administration of his private affairs, than any wicked intent of defrauding the public.”[5] His plea did not fall on deaf ears: a joint committee of the Assembly and Council rejected the governor’s proposal to issue a writ of extent, resolving that it would be “more for the public benefit, and a more easy, expeditious, and effectual method” of recovering the money, to require Hume to hand over his real estate, his slaves, and all his personal estate to trustees empowered to raise sufficient money thereby to pay off the debt. [6] Hume at that time owned or part-owned three plantations, a pen, and other property, valued at more than £50,000. Four trustees, one of whom was Zachary Bayly, were appointed and the debt was gradually repaid. Ten years later Caleb Dickinson of Bristol (a business associate and friend of both Hume and Bayly) wrote to congratulate Hume on “the Repossession of your Estates, in dispite of all Adversarys”, and sent some bottles of liquor as a token.[7]

Hume owed the recovery of his property mainly to substantial loans from Zachary Bayly. These were still outstanding in 1769 when Bayly made his will, in which he expressed the wish that his nephew Bryan Edwards should not distress Benjamin Hume on account of “the large Sum or Sums of Money due or that may be due to me … at the time of my decease but give reasonable time for the payment and Contribute as much as in his power to render the remainder of my said worthy Friends Life Comfortable and Happy in all respects.” [8] It is unlikely that Bayly’s kindness was entirely disinterested; he had probably made the loans conditional on a promise by Hume to bequeath a substantial portion of his estate to Bryan Edwards. If there was such an agreement, Hume kept his side of it unreservedly: in his own will he left two plantations and a pen, together with “all my Negro and other Slaves”, to Edwards, together with “all the Rest Residue and Remainder of my Estate Real and personal whatsoever and wheresoever”, and appointed Edwards as his sole executor.[9] He died in Jamaica in September 1773, aged 76.[10]

Hume’s offence doubtless was, as he claimed, the result of mismanagement rather than criminal intent; nevertheless, the apparent complaisance of the Jamaican ruling class towards such grave misconduct cannot be explained simply in terms of personal loyalty or the triumph of commercial morality over the public interest. Viewed in historical context it becomes obvious that the motives of the joint committee were above all political, not personal. The Hume affair erupted out of a long-running conflict between colonial government and metropolitan authority (represented by the Governor) over constitutional issues which was particularly intense in the period from 1748 to 1766.[11] The casus belli in the first few years was the settlers’ persistent attempt to gain control over public finances. The campaign began during Edward Trelawny’s governorship, when the Assembly passed a bill in April 1749 to appoint a commissioner of their own for “settling the public accounts and better collecting the public debts and taxes”.[12] Since these were the responsibility of the Crown’s receiver-general, Trelawny refused his assent, in compliance with instructions from his masters, the Board of Trade in London. But the Assembly returned to the fray in the next session in October 1749 by passing three money bills, to which they attached a provision “that the honourable Benjamin Hume, esquire, in his private capacity, be appointed commissioner for the receiving and issuing all the monies to arise by the said several bills”. Governor Trelawny again withheld his assent at first, reminding members of the need to make their bills “agreeable to his majesty’s instructions”, but was finally forced to yield when told it was the unanimous opinion of the Council that it was in his majesty’s interest that he should do so.[13] The bill passed into law as an “Act to empower the present receiver-general, to retain in his hands, as commissioner, the surplusage of several funds, those arising by the revenue only excepted.”[14] Trelawny was reprimanded by the Board of Trade for allowing passage of the act, and when Knowles succeeded him as governor in 1752 he was strictly warned not to give his assent to any legislation of that kind. It was the proposal of a similar bill in October 1753 that led to inspection of the cash held by Hume as receiver-general and discovery of the gaping hole in the coffers.

[1] Vere Langford Oliver, Pedigree of Hals of Jamaica Oliver, Caribbeana 5 (1919), 276-7; Petition of Elizabeth Hume, Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, 28 Sept 1756; 4.610.

[2] W.A. Feurtado, Official and Other Personages of Jamaica from 1655 to 1790 (1896); Frank Cundall, The Governors of Jamaica in the first half of the eighteenth century (1937), 187.

[3] Edwards, History (1793), 1.221.

[4] JAJ, 25-29 Oct. 1753; 4.426-431.                                                                                                            

[5] JAJ, 27 Oct 1753; 4.429.

[6] JAJ, 29 Oct 1753; 4.430.

[7] Letters from Caleb Dickinson to Zachary Bayly (22 June 1763) and Benjamin Hume (24 June 1763): Dickinson Mss, Somerset Heritage Centre, DD\DN 4/1/28/17-19.

[8] Will of Zachary Bayly, 1769 (proved 1771), NA, Prob 11/968/87

[9] Will of Benjamin Hume, 1770 (proved 1773), NA, C 107/68

[10] Gentleman’s Magazine 43 (September, 1773), 470.

[11] See George Metcalf, Royal Government and Political Conflict in Jamaica (1965), 80-166; Jack P. Greene, “Of Liberty and the Colonies”, in Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century, ed. David Womersley (2006), 21-102.

[12] JAJ, 28 Apr 1749; 4.165.

[13] JAJ, 24 Oct 1749; 4.191. Trelawny’s correspondence with the Board of Trade quoted by Greene (2006), 30-31.

[14] JAJ, 3 Dec 1749; 4.228; The Laws of Jamaica, (2nd edn., 1802), 1. 355.