ere eminent
lawyers--the legal profession, by the bye, doing well when everything
else was on the verge of ruin--spent all their profits in keeping their
sugar estates from utter abandonment. One of these got so heavily in
debt that at one time he could not pay his house rent, and as the
landlord dared not sue him, he had metaphorically to go on his knees and
beg him to quit.

[Illustration: TRINIDAD COOLIES.]

However, the sturdy English spirit survived in a few, and they set to
work to obtain labourers from other parts of the world. At first they
thought of Africa, but the anti-slavery party would not hear of
immigration from the "dark continent," for fear of abuses. Then India
was tried, with the result that a few coolies were brought over by
private parties, notably to Demerara by John Gladstone. But again the
cry of slavery went forth, due to the managers leaving the new-comers in
the hands of their headmen or sirdars. It was charged against them that
they beat their underlings, and of course the planters had to bear the
responsibility. The result was that East Indian immigration was
prohibited for a time. After a hard struggle on the part of the planters
it was renewed, and in the end prevented Trinidad and British Guiana
from utter abandonment.

Besides Hindoo coolies, Chinese were also imported, as well as Maltese,
Madeirans, and a few Germans. At first the negro thought little of this
competition, but when he gradually dropped into the background, with his
missionary friends, he commenced to protest against it. His friends
said, and it was the truth, that there was enough labour in the colonies
to carry on the estates, but the difficulty was that it could not be
depended upon. Then the wages demanded by the negroes was entirely
beyond the means of the planters--the price of sugar would not admit of
them. It was a case of cheap labour or the alternative of giving up the
struggle, and with the East Indians, British Guiana, and Trinidad
recovered from the brink of ruin to become more flourishing in some
respects than in the years immediately preceding emancipation. Jamaica,
the greatest of the British colonies, suffered the most as she got but
few immigrants, and it is only during the last decade that she has again
begun to hold up her head. Without healthy competition with other races,
the negroes sunk back, until they became even more degraded than those
of British Guiana and Trinidad.

In Barbados, on the