British Guianese Progress and Linutations. 379 
England by the Forster Act. We observed in the article on Education 
that there was not much real progress made locally in scholastic matters, 
and that the prevalent spirit of rivalry among the Christian denominations 
did not help on the cause of Education placed in their hands by a short- 
sighted Governinent. Estranged from the sugar estates because of 
unpleasant reminiscences of their slave condition on these plantations, as 
well as through the substitution of indentured labour of the cheaper and 
more similar supply to slave labour, the emancipated negroes lived as 
farmers, and iade their sons artisans and teachers as the next stage 
in their economic evolution. Scientific farming is hardly known 
even now in our colony, so that the men of that generation 
cannot be wholly blamed for not increasing their lands and begetting a 
generation of independent and progressive landed proprietors. The 
physical features of the lowlands on which the freedinen had expended 
all their savings to buy common property had militated against the es- 
tablishment and ownership of numerous small farms by the trained 
overseers of the sugar estates, and with that ever patent fact no un- 
prejudiced observer can harshly criticise the conduct of the negroes in 
not “sticking ” to the soil. Had there been profitable markets for their 
produce, had their lands been insured against flood and drought, had they 
been guided by the Government, the Churches, and the ruling class while 
they possessed sayings, the negroes of this colony would undoubtedly have 
developed into a strong body of peasant proprietors, and the colony 
would have gone far ahead in its dev elopment ere this. ‘That everything 
was inimical to the establishment of profitable small farms in this com- 
munity has been well set out by the West India Royal Commission of 
1898, and needs no labouring here. Lands were only alienated by the 
Crown in parcels of one hundred acres or more, with survey fees 
and conditions attached placing them quite out of the reach of tillers of 
the soil. And these conditions obtained up to 1891, so that the pitiable 
plight of the negroes as agriculturists, their withdrawal when possible 
from that mode of life, have largely been forced upon them by circum- 
stances quite beyond their control. 
Much praise is due to Mr. N. Darnell Davis, C.M.G., who, as a liberal- 
minded Government official, took the initiative in getting the land laws 
modified, so that willing farmers could get less than one hundred acres 
from the Government, and on better conditions than were hitherto 
imposed. But had there not been a change of Constitution through the 
liberal policy of Viscount Gormanston with the able advice of the then 
Attorney General, Dr. (now Sir John) Carrington, the people of this 
colony would not have had direct representation and been able to have in 
the Legislature to carry through such reforms as a change in the land 
laws such useful legislators as the late Honourables E. C. Luard and 
Patrick Dargan, Mr. B. Howell Jones, C.M.G., and Hon. D. M. Hutson, 
K.C., who yet serves on the Executive Council. And if the change of 
Constitution preceded liberalised land laws, as undoubtedly has been the 
case, it would be manifestly unfair to omit the names of those primarily 
