210 Letter XVI, 
miserable losers by the transaction. They sometimes arrive at 
home with literally nothing, save, perhaps, a few shillings-worth 
of goods, as the fruit of their three or four, or even five, years’ 
toil. 
Then some of them come back broken down in health, 
while some never come back at all, but die on the plantation. 
As they are not naturally of a robust constitution, and are un- 
accustomed to steady labour, it tells on them severely, however 
well they may be treated; while those who are treated as 
no better than slaves, cannot be expected to return to their 
homes stronger and healthier men than they were when they 
left. 
But, we are told, this trade improves them mentally—it 
elevates them as no other civilising agency has been able to ac- 
complish 
_ Mr. Trollope, in his work on Queensland, writes :—“‘ The 
islanders who are brought to Queensland all return, and not a 
man of them returns without taking with him lessons of civili- 
zation. On the planters’ grounds in Queensland they leam 
each other’s languages, they have to live as white men live, 
they have to cook, to sow, dig, to plant, to hoe canes, to clothe 
themselves, and to be proud of their clothes—and they learn 
that continued work does produce accumulated property. 
These lessons they take back to the islands, and then they 
send their friends and return themselves, and so they are 
gradually being brought within the pale of civilization.” 
The same author also writes of “ the happy Polynesian, who is 
allowed to escape from the savage slavery of his island to the 
plenty and protected taskwork of a Queensland sugar planta- 
tion.” Mr. Trollope politely refers to the arguments against 
this traffic as “‘ buncombe ;” but if there ever was buncombe, 
itis contained in the paragraphs just quoted from his own 
writings. It sounds well, no doubt, all that about the natives 
taking back the lessons of useful industry to their islands, and 
