to the heavy burdens which he was called to bear for the improvement
of our establishments and the benefit of the mass of the population,
it was necessary to persuade him that he had an interest in raising
the standard of education and morals among the peasantry; and this
belief could be imparted only by inspiring a taste for a more
artificial system of husbandry. By the silent operation of such
salutary convictions, prejudices of old standing are removed; the
friends of the Negro and of the proprietary classes find themselves
almost unconsciously acting in concert, and conspiring to complete
that great and holy work of which the emancipation of the slave was
but the commencement.

[Sidenote: The labouring classes.]

On a general survey of the state of the labouring classes, taken after
he had been a little more than a year in the island, he was able to give
a most favourable report of their condition, in all that concerns material
prosperity and comfort of living.

The truth is (he wrote) that our labourers are for the most part in
the position of persons who live habitually within their incomes. They
are generally sober and frugal, and accustomed to a low standard of
living. Their gardens supply them in great measure with the
necessaries of life. The chief part, therefore, of what they receive
in money, whether as wages or as the price of the surplus produce of
their provision grounds, they can lay aside for occasional calls, and,
when they set their minds on an acquisition or an indulgence, they do
not stickle at the cost. I am told that, in the shops at Kingston,
expensive articles of dress are not unusually purchased by members of
the families of black labourers. Whether the ladies are good judges of