476 MERTON COLLEGE AND CANADA, 



" Every successful effort made by enterprising and intelligent indi- 

 viduals to svibstitute skilled for unskilled labour ; every premiura 

 awarded by societies in acknowledgment of superior honesty, careful- 

 ness, or ability, has a tendency to afford a remedy the most salutary 

 and effectual which can be devised for the evil here set forth." 



And again he says in a desj)atch home, " So long as the j)lanter 

 despairs — so long as he assumes that the cane can be cultivated and 

 sugar manufactured to profit only on the system adopted during 

 slavery — so long as he looks to external aids (among which I class 

 emigration,) as his sole hope of salvation from ruin — with what feel- 

 ings must he contemplate all earnest efforts to civilize the mass of 

 the population 1 Is education necessary to qualify the peasantry to 

 carry, on the rude field operations of slavery 1 May not some persons 

 even entertain the apprehension, that it will indispose them to such 

 pursuits? But let him, on the other hand, believe that by the sub- 

 stitution of more artificial methods for those hitherto employed, he 

 may materially abridge the expense of raising his produce, and he 

 cannot fail to perceive that an intelligent, well-educated labourer, 

 . with something of a character to lose, and a reasonable ambition to 

 stimulate him to execution, is likely to prove an instrument more 

 apt for his purposes than the ignorant drudge who differs from the 

 slave only in being no longer amenable to personal restraint." 



" It is impossible," observes the biographer of Lord Elgin, in a 

 note on the above, " not to be struck wdth the applicability of these 

 remarks to the condition of the agricultural poor in some parts of 

 England, and the question of extending among them the benefits of 

 education." 



The same remarks might be pondered also advantageously by those 

 who entertain the fear that a good educational training, for which 

 such facilities exist amongst us, and for which in the future even 

 greater will exist, will render men disinclined to, and in fact incapaci- 

 tated for, the work which mu.st be done on Canadian farms, if a home 

 supply of food and clothing material for the population of the country 

 is to be maintained. The probability, on tlie contrary, is that, gradu- 

 ally hereafter, the effect of a tiniversal educational training, of a judi- 

 cious kind, and not pushed beyond the point indicated by common 

 sense, will be to render agricultural work in the highest degree 

 inviting to a due proportion of the community ; and light in numerous, 

 respects where now it is heavy and most weary to the bodily powers- 



