Burnard also suggests that Jamaica was very different from the Colony of Virginia where the political offices such as vestrymen and justices of the peace tended to be dominated by wealthier planters. Jamaica did not have as many wealthy whites to fill such offices and thus had to draw on the services of white men with average wealth like Thistlewood. Because of the relative scarcity of whites, says Burnard, Jamaica experienced a greater spirit of white independence, white pride, and white egalitarianism than existed in much of colonial British America. Working-class white men behaved as if they were the equal of the wealthiest white planters, in stark contrast with the class system entrenched in Britain.