WANT OF THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE. 487 



trouble in schooling his subordinate, to whom, even otherwise, he 

 could impart but very little information. If the youth be active, 

 intelligent, and honest, he turns out to be a tolerable manager, 

 after some three or four years of apprenticeship. But he, like 

 his former master, must depend upon his ignorant boilerman for 

 the quality of his sugar, and in the entire process of manufacture, 

 since that branch of plantership the most difficult and the most 

 important does not form a part of the practical instruction of the 

 planter, but is entirely left to the blind routine of a man who 

 knows nothing of the composition of the juice of the cane, or of 

 the effects of those agents he daily employs to extract therefrom 

 a saccharine compound. No wonder, then, if we send to the 

 home market the filthy produce commonly called muscovado, 

 with an immense per centage of uncrystalised sweets in the form 

 of molasses. We have strong motives to complain of a scarcity of 

 labour, but our opponents have also some reasons for asserting 

 that we do not know how to make available the labour we already 

 do, or can, command. So long as we hoped for protection, such 

 language might have been deemed treasonable to our own 

 interests ; but at the present crisis, it is only true, and ought to 

 have the influence of truth. Skill and science are, indeed, the 

 grand desiderata ; but, if science and practical instruction be not 

 placed within the reach of the planters, they certainly cannot be 

 expected to improve by mere desire or intuition. 



This, however, is not all. If we bring ourselves to inquire 

 and scrutinise, we may discover further difficulties arising either 

 from absenteeism, or from that reluctance to agricultural pursuits 

 which is characteristic of the emancipated population. 



More than one half of the sugar-estates of the colony has 

 become the property of merchants at home a natural conse- 

 quence of the exorbitant rates of interest paid to those capitalists 

 for loans of money, supplies, and other charges, a result, also, 

 greatly encouraged and hastened by the extravagant tactics, 

 and the laisser-aller (almost allied to fatalism) of the planters. 

 Those merchants who have by force become proprietors, find 

 themselves in nearly the same predicament as the former owners 

 a want of good managers, whilst attorneys unable efficiently 

 to superintend or control the general management of their pro- 

 perties are active agents in their ruin. It is therefore to be 

 anticipated that the absentee proprietors, labouring under the 



