404 FUKTHEK PKOBLEMS OF ECONOMIC BOTANY 



Colonial History. I shall be anxious to know how Chamber- 

 lain will deal with it. I had so much to do with the vege- 

 table industries of the W. Indies when I was at Kew, that I 

 cannot but feel deeply interested. It was very much due 

 to Kew that Jamaica was rescued from bankruptcy, and has 

 now a surplus revenue, and I see nothing for it but the 

 establishment of small cheap Botanical Gardens, confined to 

 economic plants, in the other colonies, and in the meantime 

 we must make both grants and loans, or we shall have bank- 

 ruptcy — and that means inability to return the Indian 

 coolies, or even pay their work ; the throwing thousands of 

 blacks out of employ and — civil war in some of the Islands ! 

 I have no faith in Sir W. Norman's (the ablest of the Com- 

 missioners !) plan of granting bounties on our Colonial sugar, 

 under the idea that we shall thus compel foreign Govern- 

 ments to reduce or abolish theirs ; granted that it did so — 

 the measure would only be a temporary palliation. It is a 

 curious fact, that never struck me before, that sugar is the 

 easiest and cheapest to produce of all articles of diet (except 

 we include salt as such) and this by the beet, not the cane. 

 Curiously enough this state of things in the W. Indies is 

 directly brought about by our two great boasts, the abolition 

 of slavery, and free trade, principally the first. Had we been 

 wise in our method of liberation, and not at the same time 

 hustled the white planter out of the Islands with the mark 

 of Cain on him, the Islands would not have been ruined off 

 hand, and free trade, when it came, would not have hurt 

 them. As it is we must now pay for our two luxuries, and 

 there will be a howl in the Commons. 



* 



To W. E. Darwin 



» March 22, 1898. 



Politics are in a muddle ; the W. Indies interest me most. 

 I can see my way a little there, but not elsewhere. We, by a 

 most iniquitous system of slave catching dumped down 

 a population of Blacks in our W. Indian Islands. After 

 netting several millions by the use of them in manufacturing 

 and growing coffee, sugar, &c, we suddenly give them their 

 liberty, paying their ovmers, and them nothing ! Well, the 

 natural consequence is, that the planters bring their ill- 

 gotten gains to England, thus robbing the Islands of both 



