ing and denouncing the excesses of plantation slavery in the British West
Indies, and businessmen who suffered from competition from the products
ofthe slaveestates joined in the attacks. In response, the British government
tried to gain leverage over the behavior of slaveowners and to eliminate
their worst abuses of power. In 1823 it ordered Governor Somerset to
apply to the Cape Colony a law it had imposed on Trinidad, prescribing
minimum standards of food and clothing and maximum hours of work
and punishments. Somerset grudgingly consented; sympathizing as he did
with the slave-owning class, however, he turned a blind eyewhen the local
administrators-landdrosts,
heemraden, and veldkornets, composed al-
most to a man of slave owners-gave
no more than token enforcement of
the law. Faced with similar obstruction in the Caribbean, the British gov-
ernment tightened the requirements and devised effective reporting pro-
cedures in successiveorders to the governors of the Cape Colony as well as
the British West Indies.5 3
Bythe late 1820S, laws limited the right of owners to punish their slaves
and ordered them to record punishments in special books for inspection by
local officials. There was also a Guardian of Slaves (renamed Protector of