376 TRINIDAD. 



ment of immigrants belonging to savage, or half civilised races, whose 

 unfitnessfor unrestrained liberty is not generally under stood or acknow- 

 ledged in this country." (Earl Grey to Lord Harris, 15th April, 

 1848.) 



Indeed, the suffering of the immigrants are not attributable to 

 the colonists but to the " unrestrained liberty granted to savage 

 and half civilised races." Earl Grey writes again : "It is exceed- 

 ingly painful to me to learn that the Immigration Ordinance, 

 though seconded by your lordship's zealous efforts, and by the 

 order for the prevention of vagrancy, passed by Her Majesty in 

 Council, on the 7th September, 1838, and the proclamation for 

 the preventing 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.) 



Regarding the principle laid down by the minister for the 

 colonies, 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," 

 Lord Harris offers the following very judicious remarks : " I have 

 great doubts whether the coolie and the African are morally or 

 mentally capable of being acted upon by the same motives, in this 

 island, on their first arrival, as labourers are in 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 previous 

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

 found prevailing amongst them, viz., that to be industrious is a duty 

 and a virtue ; that to be independent in circumstances, 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 name of liberated Africans." 





