i2 4 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



advancement of these people has been rightly considered by 

 the Governor and his advisers as among their most pressing 

 and important duties. 



Mr. Thurston demonstrated the serious responsibility which 

 the guardians of a native race like the Fijians incurred, and 

 went on to prove that the substitution of a tax in kind for 

 payment in money would result in the Fijians becoming 

 planters and producers, instead of being merely collectors for 

 the white men. These are his words : 



' I have already said that the system of demanding the native 

 tax in money, which has so many advocates, can lead to no 

 permanent good to the colony, and I will endeavour to explain 

 why, as it is one of the strongest reasons for this measure. 

 The reason is that the native does not produce anything. I 

 use the words the produce and the producer in their highest, 

 and not in their lower or more restricted sense. I do not call 

 the man Avho catches fish, or who searches the woods for gum- 

 resins or dye-woods, a producer. He is a mere collector, a 

 poacher upon nature's preserves. I call that man a producer 

 who, by his personal exertion and industry, causes two blades 

 of grass to grow where only one grew before, or who replaces 

 rank grasses by fields of waving wheat. It is to produce in 

 this sense that I should like to see the Fijian instructed. It 

 is upon certain, and not upon uncertain, industry I submit 

 that the revenues of this colony should depend. 



' The Fijian, then, does not produce anything beyond a few 

 yams and taro for the use of himself and family. The Fijian 

 simply sells to the trader so much of the natural productions 

 of his forests or seas as he can with some little labour collect. 

 Of these productions, even when collected, he is by no means 

 careful, and he takes no measures to increase or even maintain 

 the strength of these natural reserves. They have a limit, 



