eings.

The following extracts from private letters, written at the time to the
Secretary of State, contain the freshest and best expression of his views
on these and similar questions of island politics:--

In some quarters I am informed, that less desire for education is
shown now by the Negroes than during the apprenticeship; and the
reason assigned is, that it was then supposed that certain social and
political advantages would accrue to those who were able to read, but
that now, when all is gained, and all are on a par in these respects,
the same zeal for learning no longer prevails. It has been suggested
that a great impulse might be given in this direction, by working on
the feeling which existed formerly; confining the franchise for
instance to qualified persons who could read, or by some other
expedient of the same nature. This being an important constitutional
question, I have not thought it right to give the notion any
encouragement; but I submit it as coming from persons who are, I
believe, sincere well-wishers to the Negro. It is not very easy to
keep children steadily at school, or to enforce a very rigid
discipline on them when they are there. Parents who have never been
themselves educated, cannot be expected to attach a very high value to
education. The system of Slavery was not calculated to strengthen the
family ties; and parents do not, I apprehend, exercise generally a
very steady and consistent control in their families. The consequence
is, that children are pretty generally at liberty to attend school or
not as they please. If the rising generation, however, are not
educated, what is to become of this island? That they have withdrawn
themselves to a considerable extent from field labour is, I think,
generally admitted. It is therefore undoubtedly desirable that all
legitimate inducements should be held out, both to parents and
children, to encourage the latter to attend school.

In urging the adoption of machinery in aid of manual labour, one main
object I have had in view has ever been the creation of an aristocracy
among the labourers themselves; the substitution of a given amount of
skilled labour for a larger amount of unskilled. My hope is, that we
may thus engender a healthy emulation among the labourers, a desire to
obtain situations of eminence and mark among the