Report of Society's Meetings. 433 



abundantly proved by subsequent events. But both within our own 

 borders, and from the outside in connection with your agricultural and 

 commercial undertakings, there came, as the months sped by, changes 

 in the situation unforeseen at the commencement of the year. The 

 heavy strain of past years began to tell on the community, and a more or 

 less serious financial crisis seemed imminent — and then, out of the com- 

 parative calm of foreign skies, if not out of their blue, there was added a 

 bolt in the shape of a yet heavier handicap on your chief product, an 

 additional weight of advantage to foreign growers, and of disadvantage to 

 those here, against which you are yet manfully but, as I believe not hope- 

 lessly, struggling. And, gentlemen, whilst it may be said that there is a 

 limit to all such uphill battles, I do not think that despondency need 

 now take hold of you, for the news which we have recently received 

 would seem to point clearly to this faft, namely, that your wants if not 

 your woes have been lately attracting the attention of English States- 

 men and English Pressmen, and we have been led to understand that 

 under the auspices of the government of the Mother Country an enquiry 

 is to be held into this important subjeft by specially appointed Com- 

 missioners who are preparing to start upon their voyage to these parts. 

 May their advent, may their labours, find a solution of your difficulties ; 

 find the means of saving an important industry and a large amount of 

 invested capital from ruin and destruftion, and secure to many thou- 

 sands of Her Majesty's loyal subjefts their means of honest and 

 legitimate livelihood. That, gentlemen, is my most earnest hope 

 and, within limitations, my sanguine expeftation. It is my most 

 earnest hope, for I could not but grieve, deeply grieve, to see so important 

 an industry fail. It has been said that the sugar grower has been selfish, 

 has resisted and retarded development, has lived for himself, and has 

 taken the life blood of the Colony's wealth and disbursed it or stored it 

 away from the Colony's shores. I do not hold entirely with that view. 

 The sugar grower for years and years has been the mainstay of this 

 community. His energy and his enterprise has brought hither every 

 modern improvement in the way of machinery and has found the 

 means, assisted albeit by the community as a whole, to supply the 

 meagreness of local labour, by a system of immigration from outside. 

 And I venture to say incidentally here that the course pursued in that 

 connection entitles him, entitles our Colony to consideration, for are we 

 not thereby the means of finding employment under regulations and a 

 system of beneficent care and fostering control for thousands of the 



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