OURS PEOPLE. 
(By Mr. J. E. Hewicx, late Senior Puisne Judge.) 
The noblest study of mankind is man. What a study it is indeed in this 
colony, mixed as is the population! First and foremost in point of numbers 
are the black race in whose welfare anyone long resident here must take an 
interest because undoubtedly they should be the backbone of British Guiana 
and also because under the freedom of British rule they should expand and 
flourish. But alas! statistics show the reverse of progress either in the way of 
natural increase or in the upward march in condition. 
Whatis the reason for, if nota retrograde movement, something very like it ? 
In the ordinary course of events the black population of the colony ought to 
have been at least double the number they are at present and the hinterland 
ought to be teeming with populous and thriving villages. As a matter of fact, 
the land occupied is still in reality only the fringe of the colony bordering on the 
sea—not as much even as was under cultivation at freedom time some seventy 
years ago. It is true that there are many men employed in rubber and 
balata-bleeding and in gold-mining, but there is nosuch thing as a real settle- 
ment in the interior and until there is, the colony of British Guiana may drift 
from bad to worse. The only safety for the future is the opening up of the 
country, and its population by a people who will devote themselves to the cul- 
tivation of the land, to cattle raising, and kindred pursuits. 
Itis easy to understand when the abolition of slavery became an accom- 
plished fact that the newly-made freedmen were somewhat obsessed by their 
novel condition. But at the same time it is difficult to believe that years of 
work, even if under bondage, would not leave an impress on the character of the 
people and make work a necessity. If one takes the trouble to study the past 
history it will be found that in most cases the former slaves combined and 
bought the estates on which they had been born and which to them was home. 
The division gave to each family a fairly large portion of land quite sufficient 
for its support for years to come, not possibly as exporters of cotton or sugar 
but certainly as growers of coffee, arrowroot, coconuts, arnatto, and such like 
for foreign markets, while the land could easily supply all that was needed for 
home consumption. No doubt for a time the freedmen managed to live in 
comfort but as the children grew up and the old hands died off there very soon 
came into being a different order of things. Little by little the lands were 
abandoned and after a time their reclamation, for it was that which became 
necessary, was too much to be undertaken. The sugar estates in the hands of 
the proprietors were at their zenith and it was far easier for a black man to 
earn a living wage on them and participate in the joys of a real village commu- 
nity than to labour on his own land. East Indians were introduced later on but 
the work of cane-cutting and trench-digging with carpenter’s, mason’s, and 
blacksmith’s work remained for the blacks. The ordinary labour was done by 
the“ coolie.”’ Physically the superior of the immigrant the negro easily held his 
own and lorded it over the mild Hindu to his heart’s content. But the Asiatic 
after a time begun to encroach on the province of the negro and from his thrifty 
