OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 485 



would thus be enabled to turn its attention to the cultivation of 

 ground-provisions, tobacco, and oleaginous plants, the growth of 

 which could be encouraged by the sale of crown-lands to such 

 natives and immigrants as might be disposed to devote labour or 

 capital to that species of culture. 



The committee should be appointed, primarily, by the governor 

 the vacancies to be afterwards filled from a list of candidates 

 prepared by the committee, the qualifications for the distinction 

 being of a peculiar description. 



I beg, in continuation, to offer a few remarks on the model 

 farms. 



It is to be expected that any scheme for the formation of 

 model farms in Trinidad, will meet, if not with disparaging 

 criticism, or even opposition, at least with perfect indifference. 

 The capital to be invested in the purchase and improvement of 

 the farm, will be considered as so much cash abstracted from the 

 public purse, to gratify a chimerical project. Partly to invalidate 

 this objection, I consider that the formation of the " Central 

 Committee" ought to precede the establishment of the farm. 

 The control exercised by the former, would be a sort of guarantee 

 to the public of success in the latter. 



We have already had superabundant proofs that it is difficult 

 to rouse the planters even to a sense of their best interests. If, 

 on the one hand, we find reasons for this in their ignorance of 

 agricultural science and the art of husbandry, on the other, 

 we may also trace this apathetic unconcern to the following 

 cause : 



Perceiving, in the midst of their distress brought on either 

 by the present commercial crisis, or the glut of their staple, which 

 has been thrown into, and still remains in the market that the 

 British government have abandoned their former policy with 

 regard to slave-produce, the colonists are induced to believe that 

 the mother-country is determined to allow them to die a lingering 

 death, rather than to afford them support by protection. Strongly 

 impressed with that conviction, they regard the new policy of the 

 government as the chief, nay, the sole cause of their present 

 grievances, and they are still under the impression, that no 

 remedy will alleviate their distress, but the one coupled with 

 measures of relief from the home government. The consequence 

 is, that very little has been attempted in the improvement of 



