ce. The 'Latifundia perdidere' the
Antilles, as they did Italy of old. The vicious system brought its
own Nemesis. The ruin of the West Indies at the end of the great
French war was principally owing to that exclusive cultivation of
the cane, which forced the planter to depend on a single article of
produce, and left him embarrassed every time prices fell suddenly,
or the canes failed from drought or hurricane. We all know what
would be thought of an European farmer who thus staked his capital
on one venture. 'He is a bad farmer,' says the proverb, 'who does
not stand on four legs, and, if he can, on five.' If his wheat
fails, he has his barley--if his barley, he has his sheep--if his
sheep, he has his fatting oxen. The Provencal, the model farmer,
can retreat on his almonds if his mulberries fail; on his olives, if
his vines fail; on his maize, if his wheat fails. The West Indian
might have had--the Cuban has--his tobacco; his indigo too; his
coffee, or--as in Trinidad--his cacao and his arrowroot; and half a
dozen crops more: indeed, had his intellect--and he had intellect
in plenty--been diverted from the fatal fixed idea of making money
as fast as possible by sugar, he might have ere now discovered in
America, or imported from the East, plants for cultivation far more
valuable than that Bread-fruit tree, of which such high hopes were
once entertained, as a food for the Negro. As it was, his very
green crops were neglected, till, in some islands at least, he could
not feed his cattle and mules with certainty; while the sugar-cane,
to which everything else had been sacrificed, proved sometimes,
indeed, a valuable servant: but too often a tyrannous and
capricious master.

But those days are past; and better ones have dawned, with better
education, and a wider knowledge of the world and of science. What
West Indians have to learn--some of them have learnt it already--is
that if they can compete with other countries only by improved and
more scientific cultivation and manufacture, as they themselves
confess, then they can carry out the new methods only by more
skilful labour. They therefore require now, as they never required
before, to give the labouring classes a practical education; to
quicken their intellect, and to teach them habits of self-dependent
and originative action, which are--as in the case of the Prussian
soldier, and of the English sailor and railway serva