ABOLITION AND PROTECTION.

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tective duty on slave-grown sugar was then withdrawn. The second measure brought down almost to nothing the property of the most industrious as well as that of the most idle of the planters. Except in Barbados, where the nature of the soil made labor compulsory, where the negro could no more be idle and exist than the poor man can do in England, it became impossible to produce sugar with a profit on which the grower could live. It was not only the small men who fell, or they who may be supposed to have been hitherto living on an income raised to an unjustly high pitch. Ask the Gladstone family what proceeds have come from their Jamaica property since the protective duty was abolished. Let Lord Howard de Walden say how he has fared.

Mr. Buxton has drawn a parallel between the state of Ireland at and after the famine and that of the West Indies at and after the fall in the price of sugar, of which I can by no means admit the truth. In the one case, that of Ireland, the blow instantly affected the remedy. A tribe of pauper landlords had grown up by slow degrees who, by their poverty, their numbers, their rapacity, and their idleness, had eaten up and laid waste the fairest parts of the country. Then came the potato rot, bringing after it pestilence, famine, and the Encumbered Estates Court; and lo! in three years the air was cleared, the cloud had passed away, and Ireland was again prosperous. Land bought at fifteen pounds the acre was worth thirty before three crops had been taken from it. The absentees to whom Mr. Buxton alludes were comparatively little affected. They were rich men whose backs were broad enough to bear the burden for a while, and they stood their ground. It is not their property which as a rule has changed hands, but that of the small, grasping, profit-rent landlords whose lives had been passed in

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STATE OF THE COLONIES.

exacting the last farthing of rent from the cottiers. When no farthing of rent could any longer be exacted, they went to the wall at once.

There was nothing like this in the case of the West Indies. Indiscretion and extravagance there may have been. These are vices which will always be more or less found among men living with the thermometer at eighty in the shade. But in these colonies, long and painful efforts were made, year after year, to bear against the weight which had fallen on them. In the West Indies the blow came from man, and it was withstood on the whole manfully. In Ireland the blow came from God, and submission to it was instantaneous.

Mr. Buxton then argues that everything in the West Indies is already righting itself, and that therefore nothing further need be done. The facts of the case exactly refute this allegation. The four chief of these colonies are Barbados, British Guiana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. In Barbados, as has been explained, there was no distress, and of course no relief has been necessary. In British Guiana and Trinidad very special measures have been taken. Immigration of Coolies to a great extent has been brought about to so great an extent that the tide of human beings across the two oceans will now run on in an increasing current. But in Jamaica little or nothing has yet been done. And in Jamaica, the fairest, the most extensive, the most attractive of them all; in Jamaica, of all the islands on God's earth the one most favored by beauty, fertility, and natural gifts; in Jamaica the earth can hardly be made to yield its natural produce.

All this was excellently answered by Sir Edward Eytton, who, whatever may have been his general merits as a Secretary of State, seems at any rate to have understood this matter. He disposed altogether of the absurdly

erroneous allegations which had been made as to the mortality of these immigrants on their passage. As is too usual in such cases arguments had been drawn from one or two specially unhealthy trips. Ninety-nine ships ride safe to port, while the hundredth unfortunately comes to grief. But we cannot on that account afford to dispense with the navigation of the seas. Sir Edward showed that the Coolies themselves-for the Anti-Slavery Society is as anxious to prevent this immigration on behalf of the Coolies, who in their own country can hardly earn twopence a day, as it is on the part of the negroes, who could with ease, though they won't, earn two shillings a dayhe showed that these Coolies, after having lived for a few years on plenty in these colonies, return to their own country with that which is for them great wealth. And he showed also that the present system-present as regards Trinidad, and proposed as regards Jamaica-of indenturing the immigrant on his first arrival is the only one to which we can safely trust for the good usage of the laborer. For the present this is clearly the case. When the Coolies are as numerous in these islands as the negroes-and that time will come-such rules and restrictions will no doubt be withdrawn. And when these different people have learned to mix their blood—which in time will also come-then mankind will hear no more of a lack of labor, and the fertility of these islands will cease to be their greatest curse.

I feel that I owe an apology to my reader for introducing him to an old, forgotten, and perhaps dull debate. In England the question is one not generally of great interest. But here, in the West Indies, it is vital. The negro will never work unless compelled to do so; that is, the negro who can boast of pure unmixed African blood. He is as strong as a bull, hardy as a mule, docile as a dog

when conscious of a master-a salamander as regards heat. He can work without pain and without annoyance. But he will never work as long as he can eat and sleep without it. Place the Coolie or Chinaman alongside of him, and he must work in his own defence. If he do not, he will gradually cease to have an existence.

We are now speaking more especially of Trinidad. It is a large island, great portions of which are but very imperfectly known; of which but comparatively a very small part has been cultivated. During the last eight or ten years, ten or twelve thousand immigrants, chiefly Coolies from Madras and Calcutta, have been brought into Trinidad, forming now above an eighth part of its entire population; and the consequence has been that in two years, from 1855, namely, to 1857, its imports were increased by one-third, and its exports by two-thirds! In other words, it produced, with its Coolies, three hogsheads of sugar, where without them it only produced one. The difference is of course that between absolute distress and absolute prosperity. Such having hitherto been the result of immigration into Trinidad, such also having been the result in British Guiana, it does appear singular that men should congregate in Exeter Hall with the view of preventing similar immigration into Jamaica!

This would be altogether unintelligible were it not that similar causes have produced similar effects in so many other cases. Men cannot have enough of a good thing.

Exactly the same process has taken place with reference to criminals in England. Some few years since we ill used them, stowed them away in unwholesome holes, gave them bad food for their bodies and none for their minds, and did our best to send them devilwards rather than Godwards. Philanthropists have now remedied this, and we are very much obliged to them. But the philanthro

pists will not be content unless they be allowed to pack all their criminals up in lavender. They must be treated not only as men, but much better than men of their own class who are not criminal.

In this matter of the negroes, the good thing is negroprotection, and our friends cannot have enough of that. The negroes in being slaves were ill used; and now it is not enough that they should all be made free, but each should be put upon his own soft couch, with rose-leaves on which to lie. Now your Sybarite negro, when closely looked at, is not a pleasing object. Distance may doubtless lend enchantment to the view.

As my sojourn in Trinidad did not amount to two entire days, I do not feel myself qualified to give a detailed description of the whole island. Very few, I imagine, are so qualified, for much of it is unknown; there is a great want of roads, and a large proportion of it has, I believe, never been properly surveyed.

Immediately round Port of Spain the country is magnificent, and the views from the town itself are very lovely. Exactly behind the town, presuming the sea to be the front, is the Savanah, a large enclosed, park-like piece of common, the race-course and Hyde Park of Trinidad. I was told that the drive round it was three English miles in length; but if it be so much, the little pony which took me that drive in a hired buggy must have been a fast trotter.

On the further side of this lives the Governor of the island, immediately under the hills. When I was there the Governor's real house was being repaired, and the great man was living in a cottage hard by. Were I that great man I should be tempted to wish that my great house might always be under repair, for I never saw a more perfect specimen of a pretty spacious cottage,