82 Mft. Stanley's defence of absenteeism. 



the proprietor have no other resources, he must mortgage 

 or sell at once. To escape the necessity of choosing be- 

 tween such disheartening alternatives, he is compelled to 

 draw everything from the estate and return nothing. He 

 turns all its produce into money, and ships it home as fast 

 as possible, not leaving it one unnecessary day to circulate in 

 the commerce of the island. None of it is invested in im- 

 provements, in labor-saving machinery, in manuring, or in 

 any other way, for the benefit of the estate, but all goes off 

 to keep down a foreign interest account, to pay off mort- 

 gages or to be expended upon his support elsewhere. 



Of course the estate gradually depreciates in productive- 

 ness and value under such a process of depletion, and the 

 alternatives which the planter seeks to avoid, he has only 

 postponed ; he is finally compelled either to borrow or sell. 

 He usually prefers the former course, and this leads me to 

 notice another of the series of influences which have proved 

 so fatal to the prosperity of Jamaica ; but before doing so, 

 I feel impelled to notice a defence of this absenteeism 

 which has been interposed by Mr. Stanley in his recent 

 communication to Mr. Gladstone, to which I have already 

 referred. As he is the accepted champion of the colonists, 

 both in his literary and in his representative capacity, it is 

 proper that I should notice what are his grounds for 

 defending a practice which his ruined clients, and all who 

 are the victims of it, are accustomed to look upon as the 



