nt--perfectly
compatible with strict discipline. Let them take warning from the
English manufacturing system, which condemns a human intellect to
waste itself in perpetually heading pins, or opening and shutting
trap-doors, and punishes itself by producing a class of workpeople
who alternate between reckless comfort and moody discontent. Let
them be sure that they will help rather than injure the labour-
market of the colony, by making the labourer also a small free-
holding peasant. He will learn more in his own provision ground--
properly tilled--than he will in the cane-piece: and he will take
to the cane-piece and use for his employer the self-helpfulness
which he has learnt in the provision ground. It is so in England.
Our best agricultural day-labourers are, without exception, those
who cultivate some scrap of ground, or follow some petty occupation,
which prevents their depending entirely on wage-labour. And so I
believe it will be in the West Indies. Let the land-policy of the
late Governor be followed up. Let squatting be rigidly forbidden.
Let no man hold possession of land without having earned, or
inherited, money enough to purchase it, as a guarantee of his
ability and respectability, or--as in the case of Coolies past their
indenture's--as a commutation for rights which he has earned in
likewise. But let the coloured man of every race be encouraged to
become a landholder and a producer in his own small way. He will
thus, not only by what he produces, but by what he consumes, add
largely to the wealth of the colony; while his increased wants, and
those of his children, till they too can purchase land, will draw
him and his sons and daughters to the sugar-estates, as intelligent
and helpful day-labourers.

So it may be: and I cannot but trust, from what I have seen of the
temper of the gentlemen of Trinidad, that so it will be.

CHAPTER XVII (AND LAST): HOMEWARD BOUND

At last we were homeward bound. We had been seven weeks in the
island. We had promised to be back in England, if possible, within
the three months; and we had a certain pride in keeping our promise,
not only for its own sake, but for the sake of the dear West Indies.
We wished to show those at home how easy it was to get there; how
easy to get home again. Moreover, though going to sea in the
Shannon was not quite the same 'as going to sea in a sieve,' our
stay-at-home friends were o