346 TRINIDAD. 





liberty is not generally understood or acknowledged in this 

 country."" (Earl Grey to Lord Harris, 15th April, 1848.) 



Earl Grey writes again : — " It is exceedingly painful to 

 me to learn that the immigration ordinance, though seconded 

 by your lordship's zealous efforts, and by the order for the pre- 

 vention of vagrancy, passed by her Majesty in council on the 

 7th of September, 1838, and the proclamation for the prevention 

 of squatting, issued by you on 22nd June, 1847, has been 

 ineffectual, and has not succeeded in preventing the Coolies from 

 falling into fatal and dissolute ways of life ; so that great 

 numbers of them have ended by dying in the public hospitals, 

 and not a few by the waysides and in the woods." (Earl Grey 

 to Lord Harris, 15th April, 1848.) 



The Secretary of State had laid down the principle that it 

 should be sought "to place the immigrants in a situation in 

 which they might be acted upon by the same motives by which 

 men are compelled to labour in industrious countries."" In 

 answer, Lord Harris offers the following very judicious remarks : — 



" I have great doubts whether the Coolie and African are 

 morally or mentally capable of being acted upon by the sai 

 motives in this island, on their first arrival, as labourers are 

 more civilised countries 



" The only independence which they would desire is idleness, 

 according to their different tastes in the enjoyment of it ; and 

 then the higher motives which actuate the European labourer 

 (and we must remember the vast difference there is even in 

 Europe with respect to the industry of various races), which are 

 above and beyond circumstances, irrespective of mere self- 

 interest, which he has received as his patrimony from pre- 

 vious generations, and which, I believe, even in this age, are still 

 to be found prevailing amongst them — viz., that to be indus- 

 trious is a duty and a virtue ; that to be independent in circum- 

 stances, whatever his station, raises a man in the moral scale 

 amongst his race ; and that his ability to perform his duties as a 

 citizen, and, we may add, as a Christian, is increased by it. 

 These, and such motives as these, are unknown to the fatalist 

 worshippers of Mahomet and Brahma, and to the savages who 

 go by the names of Liberated Africans." 



The immigration ordinance of 1849 has been since amended 

 on several occasions, and, though still amendable in some minor 



are 



