306 TIMEHRI. 
done until Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton in 1834 conceived that the 
interest of the money might be legitimately applied to the Christian 
instruction of the children of West Indians, a purpese equally as chari- 
table as that for which the money was originally left. 
The revenue of the Mico Charity, amounting to over 
£3,000 annually, was so largely supplemented by parlia- 
mentary grants that the trustees were able to spend 
about £20,000 yearly upon education in the West Indies 
and Mauritius. In or about 1840, there were six Mico 
Schools in British Guiana open to the children of parents 
of all religious denominations, the parents being ex-. 
pe€ted to contribute something if their circumstances 
permitted. But on account of the withdrawal of the 
Parliamentary grant for negro education, the Mico trus- 
tees were soon cumpelled to curtail their educational 
operations, and to abandon their work in Demerara in 
the end of 1841,—the Colonial Government, influenced 
by the advice of Dean LuGAR, having properly declined 
to support schools not subjeét to Colonial control. The 
school buildings for the most part passed into the hands 
of the London Missionary Society. 
Whatever difficulties may have hitherto prevented the 
education of the great mass of the people were to a 
large extent removed by the abolition of slavery in 1838. 
The Blue Book of 1840 reports that ‘a strong desire 
prevails among the labouring classes to have their 
children taught to read and write, of which it is politick to 
take advantage.’ That this was the opinion of the plan- 
ters generally is proved from the faét that as early as 1840, 
evening schools were kept on many of the principal plan- 
tations throughout the colony at the proprietors’ expense. — 
Nearly all the religious denominations had taken up 
the work of education in good earnest, with this result 
” 
* 
