mr. Stanley's defence of absenteeism. 83 



greatest of political calamities. Mr. Stanley, upon this 

 topic, writes as follows : — 



" ' The planters are absentees.' Undoubtedly ; and as 

 long as their incomes enable them to reside in England, it 

 is not likely that they will be otherwise. Europeans do 

 not live under a tropical sun, debarred alike from the ex- 

 ercises of country life, and the resources of a great city, 

 injuring their constitutions, weakening their bodily powers, 

 and with the loss of those powers, losing also the energy 

 of mind, which distinguishes them at home, without some 

 valid reason of necessity or of profit. Nor am I dis- 

 posed to deny that in many, perhaps in most cases, their 

 estates would be benefitted by their presence. But can we 

 expect them to become bona fide settlers ? Is it desirable 

 that they should do so ? I doubt it ; and for this reason : 

 Though the traveller in a tropical colony is repeatedly 

 thrown in contact with men who will assure him that the 

 climate is perfectly healthy — that it is nonsense to talk of 

 life being shorter there than in England — that they have 

 never been ill in their lives, &c, (fee, — yet he has to remem- 

 ber that these old residents are the exceptions, and not the 

 rule ; and that while most of those who remain in the coun- 

 try will agree in the same story, he has seen or heard no- 

 thing of the far more numerous class who, having resided 

 a few years, and failed to endure the change, have either 

 found themselves under the necessity of returning to Eng- 

 land, or of taking a still longer and more inevitable journey. 

 Very few Europeans can take up their abode permanently 

 in the West Indies, without at least some intervals of r s 



