The Beturn 



as occur, and, as I believe, much of the poverty 

 which exists, arise from the excessive claim of 

 the State to be the arbiter of commercial affairs ; 

 to stimulate one industry to a feverish life, 

 and to throttle another to death ; to decide 

 what commodities shall be bought and sold, 

 and by whom, and to regulate the price. 

 These pretensions produce not only a highly 

 artificial condition of trade, but a strangely 

 resigned habit of mind among natives and 

 foreign residents alike ; you cannot kick against 

 the pricks. There is, indeed, one blessed 

 mitigation of excessive State regulation ; the 

 State seems to expend its energy in making 

 laws, and to shrink from the trouble of 

 enforcing them. 



To the mere sojourner in the island for 

 pleasure and not for profit, these matters will 

 be rather of passing interest than of import- 

 ance. He will find the stringency of rules 

 readily softened in his favour by the politeness 

 of those officials with whom he comes in 

 contact ; and if, accustomed to the rapidity 

 of English methods, he chafes at having to 

 stand in a queue at the post office, he will later 

 come to wonder at the precision with which 



II 



