86 



mr. Stanley's defence of absenteeism. 



owing to absenteeism. Nay, he does not leave his readers 

 merely to infer his sentiments upon this point ; for in the 

 paragraph which follows the extract above quoted, he adds : 



" But another line of attack is sometimes taken. It is 

 not so much the absence of landowners from their proper- 

 ties, we are told, as the waste that takes place upon them 

 ■ — which prevents their attaining their proper value in the 

 market. It is difficult to reconcile these two charges with 

 one another; still more difficult to understand how the 

 latter should ever have been received ? In what is this re- 

 puted extravagance to show itself ? It would be a difficult 

 matter for an agent or overseer living on an estate in the 

 country, isolated from his neighbors, occupied with the 

 practical details of superintendence, and probably at a 

 considerable distance from the capital of the colony, to live 

 expensively if he wished it. The land supplies him with 

 almost all that he requires ; he obtains the necessaries of 

 life without paying for them, and the luxuries he would not 

 find it easy to obtain at all. This, however, is a simple 

 matter of observation and of fact ; and I will only say, 

 that during a journey which occupied several weeks in 

 Jamaica, and in which I visited a large proportion of the 

 best cultivated estates in the island, I never saw any of 

 these signs of lavish or careless expenditure by agents or 

 overseers — which having possibly occurred to a certain ex- 

 tent in days long previous to emancipation, have now been 

 revived as a subject of attack against a class whose reduced 

 means alone suffice to vindicate their character in this 

 respect." 



