82 Timehri. 



are seen already in the returns of births and deaths. In the past no 

 settled colony has been more lavish and reckless in its expenditure 

 of flesh and blood. While East Indians and Barbadians have kept 

 pouring in our population has gone up only some five per cent, 

 in twenty years while Trinidad which has only one forty-fifth 

 of our area has increased fifty per cent, in the same time and 

 has now beaten us ia the race for population. Yet people complain 

 of taxation here which is less than ten dollars per head and raised 

 almost wholly in Customs duties, while in Trinidad it is about 

 sixteen dollars per head and that island has a much larger public 

 debt. The figures of expenditure are £959,000 as against our 

 £588,000. Our public debt on analysis is fouud to be a mere trifle and 

 would be borne as lightly as a flower if it were ten times that amount, 

 provided always that the colony were clearly on the up grade. As regards 

 the money value of human life there is an interesting article in the 

 • Transactions of the Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene' for 

 May by Dr. Thomson in which the subject is dealt with. The capital 

 value of a human life, according to the hygienists, varies according to age 

 depending as it does on the two factors of earning capacity and 

 expectancy of life. How much does a person earn and how long will he 

 live ? The answers will enable us to state how much he is worth. If 

 this estimate of the money value of a human being to his family or to 

 society be applied to any considerable population, says the writer, the 

 figures reach enormous proportions and if we estimate the money loss 

 which results from premature death or disability from disease or accident 

 the amounts are much greater. Expenditure here in preventing the 

 spread of malaria or tuberculosis or typhoid or in stopping the modern 

 massacre of the innocents is not alone retrenchment in its most states- 

 manlike form but is a great work of constructive policy. 



There is another field where this policy of retrenchment can be 

 effectively applied and here I can speak with some technical knowledge 

 and in much of what I say 1 believe I have the much-abused legal 

 profession with me. I refer to the law and the practice of the law. A 

 great deal of intellectual force and a great deal of time and money 

 are wasted in this colony owing to the uncertainties and the 

 mediaeval or cinque cento accompaniments of both the one and 

 the other. Capital will always look askance at a place where the 

 law is uncertain as it has no love of law- suits and English investors 

 at all events shrink aghast when told that a transport is not a document 

 of title in any English sense, and that contract and sale of goods have 

 different meanings in our law from the English conception of them or 

 that nothing but the praiseworthy ingenuity of the local Judges can give 

 them anything like the same significance. Fortunately the Common Law 

 Commission has got through a great part of its labour and has already 

 reached the report stage. 



Although I do not wish to anticipate its findings, as its chairman I 

 may say that the result, if accepted by the Executive and by the Colonial 



