290 TIMEHRI. 
of land andclimate, and possibly British Guiana may beable 
to grow everything that can be produced in the tropics. 
‘There is also another produét that is now engaging 
the attention of well-wishers of the colony, that is 
fibre ; it seems strange that a colony like this, where there 
‘are so very many fibre producing plants a€tually growing 
wild, should import ciose on a million bags every year ; 
bags made in India, a country not so very dissimilar to 
British Guiana. The Royal Agricultural and Commercial 
Society have asked the Government to try and incept 
this industry by offering a large premium to any- 
one who produces and places on the Colonial market 
a bale of bags suitable for sugar or rice, which bags must 
be exclusively creole, that is, the material must be from 
plants grown in the colony and the making of the bags, 
from the steeping of the plants to the sewing of the bags, 
must be entirely done in the Colony. 
NAPOLEON the First offered an enormous reward to the 
first person who would put a certain small quantity of 
sugar entirely French on the French market, and that 
small quantity has grown into the enormous beet sugar 
trade of the continent of Europe. 
If we cannot export bags, at all events at present, I 
see no reason why we should import them. ‘The great 
argument against the fibre trade is that we should have 
to compete against India and that fibre is produced so 
excessively cheap there, that it would never pay. 
Labour in India is paid in silver whereas we pay in gold. 
A man getting ten rupees in India’can buy with it nearly 
as much as he could before the rupee was depreciated, 
when ten rupees went to the Pound, therefore the mer- 
chant who buys bags by the rupee and sells them by sterling 
ie >. es 
—_—* 
