British Guwianese Progress and Limitations. 351 
policy of self-interest and selfishness? In every sphere in which the 
negroes have been engaged in our colony have they made real progress ; 
on the sugar estates they have furnished such skilled planters as the late 
Pretty Gordon, in the factories they stand supreme, and are sought for 
sugar boiling in far distant Africa as well as in Brazil, and throughout 
the West Indies. As mechanics, as artisans, as building contractors, 
they hold the premier place. In Medicine and Law, they have had and 
still have able representatives. As ministers and teachers they have done 
as well as limitations would allow. In the mercantile arena they are 
without experience, without much opportunity, and they will long 
remain so because of combinations. Conditions are altering, times are 
changing. The colony has had but one enlightened administration— 
the Swettenham-Ashmore—for a brief few years since the change of its 
Constitution. Still there has been progress in Village administration 
and development. The Chairman of the Local Government Board, the 
Honourable Dr. Godfrey, is ably making the Village Law Scheme of Gor- 
manston-Carrington bear abundant good fruit, and is showing the power 
of negroes to administer their own aftairs satisfactorily under proper 
guidance and genuine sympathy. The Board of Agriculture, though far 
behind in this race with its much later start, is doimg good work as a 
complement to self-government in the Villages, and there are healthy signs 
of progress all around. With an able and experienced administrator now 
at the head of our affairs, there is almost human certainty that this colony 
will have a strong peasant proprietary body as its backbone within the 
next decade, for the means of locomotion and transport are receiving 
immediate attention, and undoubtedly we shall early have proper schemes 
of irrigation and drainage, and profitable employment for our masses 
who will thus get the necessary capital to develop lands, and produce from 
them marketable articles for exportation in addition to supplying local 
needs as in the past. Just demonstrate to the West Indies the possi- 
bilities for our labourer to earn wages that will do more than enable him 
to eke out an existence, and we shall get an influx of protitable popula- 
tion from that source. Let a colonisation scheme take the place of the 
present indenture system for East Indians, and we shall get a better 
class of them for the good of the colony. Let the farmer's life become 
alluring in our country, and we shall draw desirable colonists from many 
quarters. Let communication with other countries become easy and 
cheap for our inhabitants, and they will outgrow their narrow prejudices 
which are worse than insular to-day. There is room in this country for 
all, if an enlightened policy be pursued steadily by the Government ; and 
our population should grow by leaps and bounds into millions. The 
British Government cannot afford to neglect its masses, its negroes, now 
that the United States has come so near with quite a different policy as 
regard its coloured citizens. british statesmen must feel their apathy 
whenever they are told of a Booker Washington, whenever they review 
the strides made by Negroes in the United States, and the exalted 
positions they have attained to in its Federal Government. We are a 
moving world, and British Guiana will grow yet to some British greatness, 
