The Free Rural Population. 285 
akin to this work, is to dwell upon three things, and to 
focus, as it were, attention upon them : — 
istly. As to how far the rural population in this 
colony is cared for, from a medical point of view. 
2ndly. What might be done for it. 
3rdly. What should not be done for it. 
The first of these three questions is one so peculiarly 
enveloped in personal feelings, being as it is one touch- 
ing upon an actual and present condition, that I do not 
approach it without a grave sense of the responsibility 
that any analysis of the question undoubtedly incurs ; 
such however must be faced in any appraisement of the 
question. In our rural community two great systems 
touch each other, the indentured and the free. It 
were indeed as if in the words of LONGFELLOW, " The 
Past and Present here unite, Beneath Time's flowing 
Tide/' for somewhat of the old feudal system lingers with 
us in the bound man protected with all the enlightenment 
of advanced civilisation, and the free man — free indeed to 
the enjoyment of his own inclinations, but free also to the 
assailment of all the ills that flesh is heir to, and in such 
troubles much unadvised and practically unaided. The 
first kind of freedom he appreciates : the other he often 
deplores and remonstrates against. The public press of 
the colony frequently and justly opens its columns to such 
remonstrance from the poor and the free. It has been 
asserted that we have no poor amongst us, and that in 
this colony, where " there is bread and work for all," the 
poor man's cry is an exaggerated one. Poverty and riches 
are but relative terms ; and it is true that there is no pover- 
ty here such as is known in more crowded localities in 
countries in temperate climates, where if great riches 
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