NEED OF SKILLED L ABOVE. 289 



sacrificed, proved sonietiiues, indeed, a valuable servant : but 

 too often a tyrannous and capricious master. 



But those days are past ; and better ones have dawned, 

 with better education, and a wider knowledge of the world 

 and of science. AYhat West Indians have to learn 

 some of them have learnt it already is that if they can 

 compete withi other countries only by improved and more 

 scientific cidtivation and manufacture, as they themselves 

 confess, then they can carry out the new methods only by 

 more skilful labour. They therefore require now, as they 

 never required before, to give the labouring classes a prac- 

 tical education ; to quicken their intellect, and to teach them 

 habits of self-dependent and originative action, which are as 

 in the case of the Prussian soldier, and of the English sailor 

 and railway servant perfectly compatible with strict disci- 

 pline. Let them take warning from the English manufacturing 

 system, which condemns a human intellect to waste itself in 

 perpetually heading pins, or opening and shutting trap-doors, 

 and punishes itself by producing a class of workpeople w^ho 

 alternate between reckless comfort and moody discontent. 

 Let them be sure that they w^ill help rather than injure the 

 labour-market of the colony, by making the labourer also a 

 small free-holding peasant. He will learn more ui his own 

 provision ground properly tilled than he will in the cane- 

 piece : and he will take to the cane-piece and use for his 



VOL. II. U 



