TIIE IMMIGRATION ORDINANCE. . 371 



bour and reported forty immigrants, the captain immediately 

 received the specified bounty upon forty persons; but, of these, 

 ten, perhaps, went to the cane fields, whilst thirty became street- 

 walkers, wharf-loiterers, or midnight marauders. Vast sums were 

 spent, and yet the distressing embarrassments of the planters were 

 not in any way relieved. Now the simple enactment of some 

 simple contract-law binding the immigrant to a stated period 

 of service, might have obviated the evil ; but neither here nor 

 with the home government was it considered an easy affair. Such 

 a law might certainly have diminished the number of immi- 

 grants, but the industrious labourer who sought to improve his 

 circumstances in this colony, would certainly not have hesitated 

 in engaging to perform what was to secure the aim and end of 

 his expatriation. 



Emigrants came also from Havre, Madeira, and the United 

 States. Those from France were engaged either as house-servants 

 or field-labourers; the former, after their term of service had 

 expired, preferred a livelihood as shopkeepers, carters, or petty 

 traffickers only a few remain at present in the colony : the latter 

 were carried off by fever. The immigrants from the States, an 

 industrious and moral class, did not succeed much better, inas- 

 much as being, generally, carpenters, bricklayers, &c., they had to 

 compete with the same class of tradesmen, already too numerous 

 in the island. Emigrants from Madeira were more successful, 

 and a few only have left the colony for the United States. The 

 two sources, however, from which we have received the largest 

 accession of labourers, are Africa and Hindostan. The home 

 government had decided that the Africans, liberated from the 

 captured slavers, should be sent to the West India colonies ; and 

 of these Trinidad received a large share. A few hundred volun- 

 tary emigrants came also from the Kroo-coast. It soon, however, 

 became evident that we could not depend for any length of time 

 on a supply of labourers from this source, and it was decided to 

 follow the example of the Mauritius, and to introduce coolies from 

 Hindostan. Accordingly the " Fattel Rosack " anchored in the 

 harbour of Port- of- Spain, on the 30th of May, 1845, with the 

 first cargo of coolies from Calcutta. The pressure must have been 

 great indeed, to compel the colonists to seek labour from the far 

 east; and such a determination certainly argues much in favour 

 of the energy of the Trinidad planters. Other vessels followed 



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