cent., and cocoa fifty per cent., are amongst the proofs that emancipation has been a blessing to Trinidad, and opened for her a career of prosperity and profit to which it would be difficult to assign limits; as immense tracts of virgin soil, of the richest character, only await the necessary labour to make them productive of golden harvests.com

Barbadoes has received no immigrants, and has no labour except that of the emancipated Negroes; but the condition of the colony furnishes a complete illustration of the advantages which have resulted from emancipation to all parties concerned. In every part of this lovely isle the visitor finds himself surrounded by evidences of the industry of a numerous and thriving population, and sees before him a country in the highest state of cultivation, only to be paralleled by the richest portions of the agricultural districts of England. Here the annual revenue is more than quadrupled since the abolition of slavery, the imports doubled, and the annual crop of sugar advanced above a hundred per cent. upon the palmiest days of the old slave system. Because of the labour which is available, land is very dear,—about one hundred pounds an acre; and it is not an uncommon thing for a sugar plantation now to sell for considerably more than it was worth, with all its slaves attached to it, before Emancipation. Mr. Hincks, the governor, justly observes:-In this island there can be no doubt whatever that Emancipation has been a boon to all classes.'

In St. Vincent the decline in sugar cultivation is balanced by the increase in the export of arrow-root, which has advanced under freedom from 60,000 lbs. to 1,352,250 lbs., and the exportation of cocoa-nuts is also large,

Concerning Grenada, Mr. Sewell says:

"In 1832, two years prior to Emancipation, the value of Grenadian exports was £153,175, considerably less than it is now. The fact is, that sugar is the only article of export in which the island can be said to have suffered a decline. I do not for a moment deny the importance or significance of that decline; but it should be remembered that, in minor articles, such as cocoa, the island is producing double now what it produced twenty-five years ago. The imports of Grenada also show that its coloured population are not in a worse condition than they were at any period in their past history. In 1857, the imports, of which over one-third were provisions from the United States, amounted to £109,000, against £78,000, £73,000, and £77,000, during the three years immediately preceding Emancipation.'

Tobago, like most of the other islands, has exhibited decided signs of revival during the last few years; while, in St. Lucia, the export of Sugar has been double with free labour, and that

Superior Economy of Free Labour.

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of cocoa nearly trebled; the imports having advanced a hundred per cent. since the year of Emancipation.

Besides Antigua, the head of the Leeward government, there are included in it the islands of Dominica, Nevis, Montserrat, St. Kitts, and the Virgin Islands, the latter of which produce little or no sugar. They are not largely productive, but they compare favourably now with the exports during the slavery system. The sugar exportation, for ten years prior to 1832, averaged 45,420,000 lbs. In 1858, since which they have been steadily increasing, they exported 48,145,000 lbs. The average of imports, during the same ten years prior to 1832, was £298,000. In 1858, the imports amounted to £514,885, showing an excess of sugar production with free labour of 2,725,000 lbs., and excess of imports with free labour of £216,835 sterling.

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Experience demonstrates the superior economy of free over slave labour. Mr. Sewell gives the following illustration, furnished by Mr. Hincks, the Governor of Barbadoes, who has the credit, both with his friends and political opponents, of possessing a more than ordinary degree of talent and acuteness as a financier and as a general man of business:

As to the relative cost of slave and free labour in this colony, I can supply facts on which the most implicit reliance can be placed. They have been furnished to me by the proprietor of an estate containing three hundred acres of land, and situated at a distance of about twelve miles from the shipping port. The estate referred to produced, during slavery, an annual average of 140 hogsheads of sugar of the present weight, and required 230 slaves. It is now worked by ninety free labourers-sixty adults, and thirty under sixteen years of age. Its average product during the last seven years (1858) has been 194 hogsheads. The total cost of labour has been £770 16s., or £3 198. 2d. per hogshead of 1,700 lbs. The average of pounds of sugar to each labourer during slavery was 1,043 lbs., and during freedom, 3,660 lbs. To estimate the cost of slave labour, the value of 230 slaves must be ascertained; and I place them at what would have been a low average £50 sterling each-which would make the entire stock amount to £11,500. This, at six per cent. interest, which, on such property, is much too low an estimate, would give £690. Cost of food, clothing, and medical attendance, I estimate at £3 10s., making £805. Total cost, £1,495, or £10 12s. per hogshead, while the cost of free labour on the same estate is under £4.'

ง

Utterly groundless are the assertions which have been indulged that emancipation has failed, and that it has brought ruin upon the proprietary and peasantry of the West Indies. If insolvent planters, ruined by slavery and their own extrava

gance, have failed to carry on an extensive sugar and coffee cultivation without capital, and have consequently been com pelled to relinquish their estates; if others have not succeeded in the attempt to make free men work without wages, and have thereby injured their own or their employers' interest by driving the labourers from the plantations; and if the British government, by suddenly depriving the colonists of the monopoly of the British market, threw them into competition with other producers, for which they were not prepared, thus bringing to a crisis the ruin which had been in progress for more than half a century,-none of these can, with truth, be classed with the results of Emancipation. They have retarded the success of the great experiment, but it has been successful notwithstanding, even in that economical point of view, in which its opponents have been so eager to pronounce emancipation a failure. The triumphant results which it has already wrought out in nearly the whole of the colonies, and which it is rapidly producing in all the others, prove that it is always wise and safe to do right, and leave the consequences to the All-wise Dispenser of events. The predictions of alarmists have been completely falsified. It would be difficult to conceive a wider contrast between the condition of things as the planters imagined they would be,-the idleness and debauchery, the ruin and desolation, they were sure would follow the emancipation of the slaves,and those features of rural industry and domestic comfort, improving agriculture and growing opulence, awakening intelligence and moral progress, which are exhibited in the emancipated colonies. Slavery was the destroyer; emancipation is the restorer. The one

...

tended invariably through its whole history to impoverishment and ruin; the other has awakened industry and confidence, and laid broad and deep the foundations of lasting prosperity and wealth.

None but dreaming enthusiasts could expect that Emancipation would all at once, as if by miracle, restore the wasted substance of the planters, and advance the down-trodden Negroes-debased and embruted by life-long slavery, and excluded from mental and moral culture-to a high degree of intelligence, civilization, and virtue, such as can be found only among those who have been favoured through life with educational advantages, and civil and religious liberty. All that could be reasonably hoped for has been realized. The nation has been freed from the sin and shame of sanctioning and perpetuating what the conscience of the people felt to be a system of oppression and crime, which reflected dark dishonour upon a Christian people and government. The dread of insurrection and servile

The Revised Educational Code.

1

583 war, which day and night haunted the colonists whilst slavery existed, has given place to a sense of perfect security; so that, instead of a considerable military force, supported by a formidable and expensive militia embodiment, to keep the slaves in awe, a few native police, appointed chiefly from amongst the peasantry themselves, are found sufficient for the maintenance of peace and good order. The progress of depopulation under slavery, which threatened to leave the islands without inhabitants, has been checked, and the native Creoles are rapidly increasing in number. An improved cultivation has been adopted, and machinery introduced to an extent never dreamed of under the old system, which, while it gives profit to the grower, enables him to supply the British public with sugar at about half the price it bore under slavery and protection. The practical atheism with which slavery overspread the colonies has given place to the benign and hallowing influences and institutions of religion. The Bible, to the slave a sealed book, is now open and free to the emancipated Negro; the Sabbath, of which he was plundered, and which, throughout the slave islands, was desecrated as the market-day, has been restored, and is now kept holy; while the Divine institution of marriage, then disregarded and superseded by universal concubinage, is now generally honoured. The revenues of all the islands have been nearly doubled. A more profitable market has been opened for the employment of British shipping, and the consumption of British manufactures; while hordes of wretched, discontented slaves, robbed of all human rights, ground to the dust by oppression and cruelty, and rapidly wasting away, have been transformed into a satisfied, industrious, and improving peasantry, acquiring property for themselves, and grateful for the advantages which the philanthropy and the religion of the nation have conferred upon them.

ART. X.-1. Minute of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, establishing a Revised Code of Regulations. 1861. 2. Recent Measures for the Promotion of Education in England. Fifteenth Edition. Ridgway. 1839.

3. The School, in its Relations to the State, the Church, and the Congregation; being an Explanation of the Minutes of the Committee of the Council on Education, in August and December, 1846. Murray. 1847.

4. Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State of Popular Education in England. Vols. I.-VI. 1861.

5. Report of the Committee of Council on Education. 1860-61. 6. Suggestions on Popular Education. By NASSAU W. SENIOR, One of the Commissioners, &c. Murray. 1861.

7. A Letter to N. W. Senior, Esq., &c. By EDWIN CHADWICK, Esq., C.B. [Government Blue Book.] 1861.

8. The Education of the People. A Letter to the Right Hon. Sir John Coleridge. With an Appendix. By the REV. DERWENT COLERIDGE, Principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea, and Prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral. Rivingtons. 1861. 9. A Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Granville, K.G., &c. By C. H. BROMBY, M.A. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.

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10. The New Education Code: What shall we do with It? By the REV. C. R. ALFORD, M.A. Seeleys.

11. The New Education Code. Grouping by Age, and Paying for Results. Two Letters, By JOHN MENET, M.A., Chaplain

of the Hockerill Training School. Longmans.

12. Public Education. Why is a new Code wanted? By OMEGA. Bell and Daldy.

13. Memorial of the Committee of the Rochester Diocesan Train ing Institution, at Hockerill, to the Right Hon. Earl Granville; K.G., &c.

14. Letter of the Wesleyan Committee of Education to the Right Hon. the Earl Granville, K.G., on the Revised Educational Code.

15. The Revised Code dispassionately considered. VAUGHAN, D.D., &c. Macmillans.

16. Letter to Earl Granville, K.G., on the By SIR J. P. KAY SHUTTLEWORTH, BART. and Co.

1861.

By C. J.

Revised Code?
Smith, Elder,

Six months ago the Report of the Royal Commissioners on Education was reviewed in this journal. In that article it was stated, as an undeniable fact, that the contents of the Report had excited 'universal dissatisfaction. Little could it have been anticipated, that within three months from that time, the whole country would be thrown into confusion and controversy, and educationists in general filled with alarm, by the action of the Committee of Privy Council, in issuing a new Educational Code, which,-while it certainly avoids the impracticable proposals of the Commissioners as to county-rates and boards, and while it contravenes, without scruple, at other points, their decisive recommendations, especially where these sustain the principles of the existing system of education, has embodied without counterbalance or qualification some of the least defensible suggestions contained in their Report, or volunteered by