22 . Timehri. 
from whom better is reasonably expected. The tendency in the tropics amongst 
all races—except the wily East Indian whose objective is to return with all 
his earnings to India,—is towards extravagant living. It is no libel to say that 
most people here live bevond their means, as the unpaid accounts in all the 
business-houses show. Every merchant in the colony will admit that he is 
only able to continue his business by reason of the cash paid to him across 
the counter—and this is principally done by the negro population to whom 
credit is usually not given. This, however, is a slight digression. With the 
evil examples of their so-called betters, and the constant inculcation by their 
teachers since Emancipation of the doctrine that ‘‘ Godliness with content- 
ment is great gain *—omitting to teach them also that great gain is quite con- 
sistent with if not almost ‘necessary to true godliness or that they should 
“ make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness *’ it is remarkable that 
these “ children of former slaves ” have attained to so much since their libera- 
tion. Personally, I have no doubt that Mr. Hewick’s strictures are intended 
to stimulate them to even higher attainments ; but the object might certainly 
have been accomplished without so much negation and with less ambiguity. 
The larger question of what calling should be pursued by the generality of 
negro people has been barely touched upon by Mr. Hewick. Sufficient indica- 
tion has nevertheless been given by him that his opinion is they should be 
encouraged by education and every influence “to work on the land.’? Iam 
in thorough agreement with him, if “ working on the land ”’ is not restricted 
to purely agricultural pursuits. In my judgment, the balata-bleeder and the 
gold-digger are workers onthe land equally with the rice or cane-farmer. And 
herein lies the point of difference, if not of opposition, between Mr. Hewick’s 
conclusion and my own regarding the alleged failure of the colony’s primary 
education as it affects the negro. It is so often repeated that the negro is 
an unreliable labourer and is not willing ‘to work on the land,” that most 
unthinking colonists regard it as a truism. Mr. Hewick only partially states 
the true historical facts. At first the Hast Indians were introduced to do the 
ordinary labour whilst the work of cane-cutting and trench-digging with 
“ carpenters, masons and blacksmiths work, remained for the blacks. .... . 
“ But the Asiatic after a time began to encroach on the province of the negro, 
“and from his thrifty habits (penurious they might be called) and the small- 
“ness of his wants, it was not long before holdings were transferred and the 
“negro was displaced. As sugar growing and manufacture became of neces- 
“sity, owing to low prices, more scientific, the less eager the black man was 
*‘to work on the estates. The discovery of gold and the rush for balata opened 
* a wide field more suited to his tastes.” The reader should not be left to 
infer that the low prices of sugar, coupled with this same penuriousness and 
‘smallness of his wants,” made the free and indentured coolie a cheaper 
and therefore more desirable labourer for the sugar planter. The labour 
market was so flooded with these cheap labourers that the black labourer 
was hardly needed on the plantations except on extraordinary occasions. A 
further hardship was, and is, that the blacks—nearly two-thirds of the 
population—are taxed to maintain the importation of this competing labour 
from India. It wes no question of taste or of less eagerness to work at all, 
