ir fellows, and also
to push their children forwards in the same career. Where labour is so
scarce as it is here, it is undoubtedly a great object to be able to
effect at a cheaper rate by machinery, what you now attempt to execute
very unsatisfactorily by the hand of man. But it seems to me to be a
still more important object to awaken this honourable ambition in the
breast of the peasant, and I do not see how this can be effected by
any other means. So long as labour means nothing more than digging
cane holes, or carrying loads on the head, physical strength is the
only thing required, no moral or intellectual quality comes into play.
But, in dealing with mechanical appliances, the case is different;
knowledge, acuteness, steadiness are at a premium. The Negro will soon
appreciate the worth of these qualities, when they give him position
among his own class. An indirect value will thus attach to education.

Every successful effort made by enterprising and intelligent
individuals to substitute skilled for unskilled labour; every premium
awarded by societies in acknowledgment of superior honesty,
carefulness, or ability, has a tendency to afford a remedy the most
salutary and effectual which can be devised for the evil here set
forth.

[Sidenote: Agriculture.]

With the view of awakening an interest in the subject of agricultural
improvements, Lord Elgin himself offered a premium of 100_l_. for the
best practical treatise on the cultivation of the cane, with a special
reference to the adoption of mechanical aids and appliances in aid or in
lieu of mechanical labour. In forwarding to Lord Stanley printed copies of
eight of the essays which competed for the prize, he wrote as follows:--

Much, I believe, is involved in the issue of this and similar experiments.
So long as the planter despairs,--so long as he assumes that the cane can
be cultivated and sugar manufactured at profit only on the system adopted
during slavery,--so long as he looks to external aids (among which I class
immigration) as his sole hope of salvation from ruin--with what feelings
must he contemplate all earnest efforts to civilise the mass of the
population? Is education necessary to qualify the peasantry to carry on
the rude field operations of slavery? May not some persons even entertain
the apprehension, that it will indispose them to such pursuits? But let
him, on the