WASTE OF LABOR. 



135 



thy and vice. Of this aid we all personally feel the im- 

 portance, but they unfortunately have had but little of it. 



" The remedy which has hitherto been relied on, and 

 which you still seem to rely on, is the importation of fresh 

 cargoes of Africans. This I say, and do repeat, as I have 

 often done in my place in the House of Assembly, never 

 can afford any permanent remedy. Social evils will be 

 created by it, if persisted in, of a kind and a magnitude 

 that will fill every one with a surprise and dismay, and in 

 the end utterly destroy our prosperity. We have sought 

 to impart a certain quantity of physical power, while we 

 have abundance of it already lying by us, idle and unem- 

 ployed. A clergyman told me the other day that the peo- 

 ple around him were generally idle, with the exception of 

 an hour or two a day on their grounds. Why not try to 

 make the labor we have available ? The moral incubus of 

 ignorance and immorality must soon affect the fresh impor- 

 tation, as they have our own people. The magnitude of 

 the evils I complain of, will soon become palpable to the 

 most inconsiderate ; while to all thoughtful men the pre- 

 sent apprehension of the ultimate consequences to the coun- 

 try must be very serious. 



" I blame very much in the matter, the clergy who are 

 the feed guardians and overseers of the morals and educa- 

 tion of our peasantry, and ought to be the leaders of their 

 opinions. With a few exceptions, however, they do not 

 generally labor amongst them. The stated canonical 

 preaching amounts, as respects results on an ignorant 

 peasantry, to nothing — and the man who can only show 

 that, as his title to his stipend, ought not to receive it. 



