BRITISH GUIANESE PROGRESS AND 
LIMITATIONS. 
By A. A. THORNE, M.A. 
At the request of its worthy Editor, I am again making a contribu- 
tion to the valuable columns of 7imehri, and crave some indulgence from 
readers for my attempt to handle, as a sequel to the article on Education, 
so difficult a subject as ‘“ British Guianese Progress and Limitations.” 
Civilisation through all the ages having had Education as its hand-maid, 
what could be more natural than for any enquirer in our midst, after 
getting the history of local Education, to endeavour to see its effect on 
the lives of our inhabitants? The distant reader must at once be told 
that British Guiana is a century old as a British colony, and that by the 
terms of its surrender by the Dutch it was to retain its laws and constitu- 
tion unless they were altered by its inhabitants. So that British Guiana 
presents to us the picture of the transformation of a Dutch colony into a 
British by the slow process of self-development. Dutch laws and customs 
have permeated the entire social fabric, and it would be unfair for the 
eritic to judge Guianese progress by the saine standard as he would West 
Indian,—of Jamaica, Trinidad, or Barbados,—where British responsibility 
has been greater, and where the policy of /aissez faire could have no 
treaty sanction. Thus then it will be seen that British Guiana with its 
peculiar Dutch constitution, stands quite apart from the various West 
Indian colonies in its methods, and merits distinct treatment. And 
further, its colonial history has to be divided into two separate periods, 
the one ending with the change of its Political Constitution in 1891, and 
the other beginning from that date. 
When British Guiana finally passed from Dutch to British rule in 
1814, what was its condition ? The population consisted of slave-owners 
and slaves, estate proprietors and their human chattels to till those estates. 
The London Missionary Society had begun its humane work of teaching 
Christian landlords in these parts the common brotherhood of man ; it 
was facing with Christian fortitude the severe tests of persecution. It 
was the first beacon light of hope; it first brought consolation to the 
benighted African slaves. According to western ideas therefore, the first 
civilisation carried by Europeans among the Guianese inhabitants in the 
first two decades of the nineteenth century was distinctly religious ; and 
it was productive of much good, for we find that on the East Coast of 
Demerara, where these missionaries began their operations, the emanci- 
pated slaves were thrifty, united, and so God-fearing that in their 
combination to purchase estates for their common holding, they did not 
omit to erect their houses of worship as we see them in their elegant 
simplicity to-day in the villages of Victoria, Beterverwagting, Buxton, Xe. 
And as first impressions are always greatest on the human mind, so the 
