Note 31 — Chapter V
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The persons to whom these rewards were given, owed their residence in Antigua to the following cause:—To increase the white population, great encouragement was given to persons importing white protestant men-servants into the island, paying to the importer to much per head from the public treasury. These white servants were sold for a certain number of years, and at the end of that time they became free, and were incited to settle, by having small grants of land given to them. Every proprietor was obliged to have one of these white servants to so many slaves; and they were to be furnished with clothes and arms, and to serve in the militia. It was customary to sell them upon hogsheads, which I shall have further occasion to mention when I come to treat of the white inhabitants.