on; an intelligent and
high-minded populace, who can and will think for themselves upon
religious questions; and who have, moreover, a thirst for truth and
knowledge of every kind. With such a populace, secular and
religious education can be safely parted. But can they be safely
parted in the case of a populace either degraded or still savage;
given up to the 'lusts of the flesh'; with no desire for
improvement, and ignorant of that 'moral ideal,' without the
influence of which, as my friend Professor Huxley well says, there
can be no true education? It is well if such a people can be made
to submit to one system of education. Is it wise to try to burden
them with two at once? But if one system is to give way to the
other, which is the more important: to teach them the elements of
reading, writing, and arithmetic; or the elements of duty and
morals? And how these latter can be taught without religion is a
problem as yet unsolved.

So argued some of the Protestant and the whole of the Roman Catholic
clergy of Trinidad, and withdrew their support from the Government
schools, to such an extent that at least three-fourths of the
children, I understand, went to no school at all.

The Roman Catholic clergy had, certainly, much to urge on their own
behalf. The great majority of the coloured population of the
island, besides a large proportion of the white, belonged to their
creed. Their influence was the chief (I had almost said the only)
civilising and Christianising influence at work on the lower orders
of their own coloured people. They knew, none so well, how much the
Negro required, not merely to be instructed, but to be reclaimed
from gross and ruinous vices. It was not a question in Port of
Spain, any more than it is in Martinique, of whether the Negroes
should be able to read and write, but of whether they should exist
on the earth at all for a few generations longer. I say this openly
and deliberately; and clergymen and police magistrates know but too
well what I mean. The priesthood were, and are, doing their best to
save the Negro; and they naturally wished to do their work, on
behalf of society and of the colony, in their own way; and to
subordinate all teaching to that of religion, which includes, with
them, morality and decency. They therefore opposed the Government
schools; because they tended, it was thought, to withdraw the Negro
from his priest's influence