286 AGRICULTUIiE. 



that Barbados could in Cromwell's time send tliree thousand 

 white volunteers, and St. Kitts and Nevis a thousand, to help 

 in the gallant conquest of Jamaica ? Do they know that in 

 1676 Barbados was reported to maintain, as against 80,000 

 black, 70,000 free whites ; while in 1851 the island con- 

 tained more than 120,000 Negros and people of colour, as 

 against only 15,824 whites ? That St. Kitts held, even as 

 late as 1761, 7,000 whites ; but in 1826 before emancipa- 

 tion only 1,600 ? Or that little IMontserrat, which held, 

 about 1648, 1,000 white families, and had a militia of 360 

 effective men, held in 1787 only 1,300 wdiites, in 1828 only 

 315, and in 1851 only 150 ? 



It will be said that this ugly decrease in tlie white popu- 

 lation is owing to the unfitness of the climate. I believe it 

 to have been produced rather by the introduction of sugar 

 cultivation, at wdiicli the white man cannot work. These 

 early settlers had grants of ten acres a]3iece ; at least in Bar- 

 bados. They grew not only provisions enough for themselves, 

 but tobacco, cotton, and indigo products now all but oblite- 

 rated out of the British islands. They made cotton hammocks, 

 and sold them abroad as well as in the island. They might, 

 had they been wisely educated to perceive and use the 

 natural w^ealth around them, have made money out of many 

 other wild products. But the profits of sugar-growing were 

 so enormous, in spite of their uncertainty, that, during the 



