becoming English, more than mere
numbers. Had it continued Spanish, it would probably be, like Cuba,
a slave-holding and slave-trading island, now wealthy, luxurious,
profligate; and Port of Spain would be such another wen upon the
face of God's earth as that magnificent abomination, the city of
Havanna. Or, as an almost more ugly alternative, it might have
played its part in that great triumph of Bliss by Act of Parliament,
which set mankind to rights for ever, when Mr. Canning did the
universe the honour of 'calling the new world into existence to
redress the balance of the old.' It might have been--probably would
have been--conquered by a band of 'sympathisers' from the
neighbouring Republic of Venezuela, and have been 'called into
existence' by the massacre of the respectable folk, the expulsion of
capital, and the establishment (with a pronunciamento and a
revolution every few years) of a Republic such as those of Spanish
America, combining every vice of civilisation with every vice of
savagery. From that fate, as every honest man in Trinidad knows
well, England has saved the island; and therefore every honest man
in Trinidad is loyal (with occasional grumblings, of course, as is
the right of free-born Britons, at home and abroad) to the British
flag.

CHAPTER IV: PORT OF SPAIN

The first thing notable, on landing in Port of Spain at the low quay
which has been just reclaimed from the mud of the gulf, is the
multitude of people who are doing nothing. It is not that they have
taken an hour's holiday to see the packet come in. You will find
them, or their brown duplicates, in the same places to-morrow and
next day. They stand idle in the marketplace, not because they have
not been hired, but because they do not want to be hired; being able
to live like the Lazzaroni of Naples, on 'Midshipman's half-pay--
nothing a day, and find yourself.' You are told that there are 8000
human beings in Port of Spain alone without visible means of
subsistence, and you congratulate Port of Spain on being such an
Elysium that people can live there--not without eating, for every
child and most women you pass are eating something or other all day
long--but without working. The fact is, that though they will eat
as much and more than a European, if they can get it, they can do
well without food; and feed, as do the Lazzaroni, on mere heat and
light. The best substitute for a dinner