chap, xvn.] FEMALE LABOUR. 403 



system can permanently succeed is but doubtful, since it 

 may not be possible to compress the work of ten centuries 

 into one ; but at all events it takes nature as a guide, and 

 is therefore more deserving of success, and more likely to 

 succeed, than ours. 



There is one point connected with this question which I 

 think the Missionaries might take up with great physical 

 and moral results. In this beautiful and healthy country, 

 and with abundance of food and necessaries, the population 

 does not increase as it ought to do. I can only impute 

 this to one cause. Infant mortality, produced by neglect 

 while the mothers are working in the plantations, and by 

 general ignorance of the conditions of health in infants. 

 Women all work, as they have always been accustomed to 

 do. It is no hardship to them, but I believe is often a 

 pleasure and relaxation. They either take their infants 

 with them, in which case they leave them in some shady 

 spot on the ground, going at intervals to give them 

 nourishment, or they leave them at home in the care of 

 other children too young to work. Under neither of these 

 circumstances can infants be properly attended to, and 

 great mortality is the result, keeping down the increase of 

 population far below the rate which the general prosperity 

 of the country and the universality of marriage would lead 

 us to expect. This is a matter in which the Government 

 is directly interested, since it is by the increase of the 



D D 2 



