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 THE CROWN COLONIES 
 
 OF 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO 
 
 THEIR POLITICAL ECONOMY, FISCAL 
 SYSTEMS, AND TRADE. 
 
 C. S. SALMON, 
 
 LATE PRESIDENT OF NEVIS ', FORMERLY COLONIAL SECRETARY AND ADMINISTRATOR 
 
 OF THE GOLD COAST; CHIEF COMMISSIONER SEYCHELLES ISLANDS, ETC. ; 
 
 HONORARY MEMBER COBDEN CLUB. 
 
 C A S S E L L & COMPANY, LIMITED: 
 
 LONDON, PARIS, NE\V YORK cO MELBOURNE.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A SECOND edition of this pamphlet has been found necessary 
 in order to meet a demand, and it will be also useful by 
 appearing almost at the same time as a new pamphlet just 
 issued.* At the end of the West Indian chapter some addi- 
 tional matter affecting those colonies, which appeared in former 
 pamphlets, has been condensed and inserted for convenience 
 of reference. The two pamphlets now contain a complete 
 statement as far as these colonies are concerned. 
 
 A memo, (on the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry), 
 dated 3rd August, 1886, was issued by Sir William Robinson, 
 Governor of Trinidad. In this document the Governor argues 
 in favour of the abolition of the chief export duties and the 
 import duties on food articles. The document is a valuable 
 contribution, and must materially aid in determining the West 
 Indian Administrations to adopt a sound, free trade policy. 
 Sir William says : " Liberating trade from fiscal discouragement 
 means, therefore, without doubt, a considerably larger import 
 trade than we now possess, an improved condition of our 
 people, socially and physically, and a corresponding decrease 
 in certain items of expenditure. Collaterally it means a greater 
 export ^of sugar, asphalt, cocoa, bananas, cocoa-nuts, oranges, 
 ground nuts, tobacco, fibres, and every other production, now 
 cultivated or to be hereafter cultivated, to the United States 
 and England, as all international trade necessarily means an 
 interchange of cargoes." It is satisfactory to have to note 
 such sound views in a quarter where they are so needed. 
 
 * The Crown Colonies of Great Britain, an Inquiry into their Social 
 Condition and Methods of Administration, Parts I and 2, West Indies and 
 Ceylon, by C. S. Salmon, with a chapter on the Condition of the Jamaican 
 Peasantry, by Mr. Haliburton, Q.C. 
 
 2094557
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 i 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 15 
 
 TIIF. WEST INDIES 
 
 CEYI.ON . 
 
 MAURITIUS . 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 5 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 7 2 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 82 
 FIJI 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 86 
 MALTA
 
 Vl11 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 WEST AFRICA 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 HONG KONG 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 FALKLAND ISLANDS, ST. HELENA, GIBRALTAR, BERMUDA 
 
 1 02 
 
 109
 
 THE CROWN COLONIES 
 
 OF 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT is right that the Crown colonies should be investigated 
 from the statistical point of view, and should yield information 
 that will be of use for trade purposes. What are the imports ? 
 What are the exports ? How much revenue is raised ? How 
 stand the public debts ? At what rate are railways being pushed 
 forward ? Does the population rapidly increase ? What are the 
 prospects for a planter, a small agriculturist, an industrious 
 labourer ? Let us know whether it is profitable to invest in the 
 land ? And so on. Yet it is well also to pause sometimes and 
 to inquire about other things : are the people really happy and 
 progressive in those things which make life worthy, pleasant, 
 or even endurable to the labouring poor; and do matters 
 look as if a happy and estimable future lay before all or any 
 of them ? In dealing with Crown colonies people at home are 
 apt, on the whole, to take a very narrow and material view 
 indeed, deliberately or unconsciously. And yet these colonies, 
 even the smaller ones, are countries often as large and as full 
 of people as many a place in Europe which holds a niche of its 
 own in the world's history, and whose movements are watched 
 and recorded by the public press of the world. These latter 
 countries, however small they may be, are deemed important as 
 the homes of a people who are, or have been, factors in the 
 political and social questions of the day. Of imports there 
 may be none beyond those necessary for the civilised wants of 
 a frugal race, and the exports may be equally unnoticeable, 
 because the people are of more importance in the world than
 
 2 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 the productions they have to dispose of. With the Crown 
 colonies it is different ; they are apt to be written and spoken 
 of as if their productions, actual or potential, were of more 
 importance than the inhabitants ; and yet it is a fact that im- 
 ports and exports, and revenue and debts, may all show an 
 increase, and the condition of the people may not be advanced, 
 or may even have retrograded amidst all this show. 
 
 With the above reservations as regards the Crown colonies 
 the value of the other colonies has never been underrated by 
 the people of the United Kingdom ; no party has existed in 
 this country, in recent times, which had not the highest opinion 
 of their practical worth and their commercial importance. 
 Yet there are those who seem to think it to be quite a new and 
 recent movement for the people of Great Britain to be in- 
 terested in colonial questions. It may be so with certain 
 classes whose natural sympathies and interests could have had 
 but little in common with the first struggling communities of 
 settlers in what are now the free parliamentary colonies. But 
 now that these colonies have grown to be rich and powerful, 
 and the fruits of labour, industry, and intelligence are seen to 
 be abundant in them, a sympathy has arisen which before lay 
 dormant. The bulk of the people of the three kingdoms, how- 
 ever, have had connections with the great colonies from their 
 very commencement of such a near and enduring nature that 
 they never required any stimulating agencies to feel their value. 
 Without show or ostentation, and unbeknown even to their 
 rulers, they have always looked on these colonies as practically 
 parts of the United Kingdom, or, at all events, as the inalien- 
 able inheritance of their race. 
 
 The Crown colonies are distinguished at once from the 
 free parliamentary colonies inhabited by European races, in 
 that they are apt to be handed over by the consent of all par- 
 ties in power, and also by the public opinion of the country, 
 to the guidance and even control of those classes and interests 
 which have immediate dealings with them ; and hence the 
 people who inhabit them, outside of these classes, receive less 
 sympathy and consideration from the people of the United 
 Kingdom than they are entitled to. Some few of them have 
 undoubtedly, been given systems of administration they would 
 perhaps have in vain looked for from any other nation in a kind 
 of liberality of government and, in particular instances, even in
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 some power of self-development. But much more is needed, 
 to insure prosperity and comfort to the people. By the side 
 of those forms of government which secure the impartiality 
 of criminal and civil law, and those systems of administration 
 which make its enforcement equal for all, there are certain laws 
 and systems which affect the material welfare of society, and 
 which are more powerful in their operations than any other 
 agencies established among men. The methods of taxation, 
 and the systems regulating and affecting trade, and the laws 
 dealing with the acquisition and the working of land and other 
 property, may be equal for all who come within their scope and 
 operation, and, nevertheless, they may all be so adjusted as to 
 militate against the most elementary principles of right upon 
 which the welfare of a community must be founded in order to 
 thrive. They may work so as to favour monopolies. Burdens, 
 also, may fall on certain classes whilst others are exempted. In 
 fact, the system of government may be a just one, politically 
 and legally, and the most suitable and the best procurable, 
 theoretically, under the circumstances of the colony, and the 
 administration of the existing laws may be admirable and im- 
 partial, and yet many evils may accumulate because the eco- 
 nomic systems in operation contain within themselves elements 
 of evil which are bound to bear evil fruit, 
 
 All this is so obvious to those acquainted with these colonies 
 that it gives rise to a conviction in many minds that the only 
 people fit to judge of internal affairs in any country whatever 
 are the people who inhabit it. On the other hand, the mixed 
 communities of races, with opposite views and often hostile 
 interests, which inhabit some of the Crown colonies, make the 
 full application of such views often impracticable at present, 
 or at least so extremely difficult that administrators prefer to 
 continue the present system with all its evident and admitted 
 evils. It remains only for absolute justice to be dealt out to 
 all classes equally, irrespective of race and interest, until the 
 time arrives when complete local control may be given to the 
 people. 
 
 There is a tendency among all men to form exclusive so- 
 cieties, but the least civilised people are the most exclusive in 
 their views, and they desire to have but little intercourse with 
 other races. Some Englishmen have objected to the extended 
 views of those of their fellow-countrymen who deem the interests
 
 4 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 of other races and countries are allied to their own men whose 
 general opinions have made them almost as much citizens of 
 the world at large as of their own particular land because they 
 feared such views tended to disarm or deaden that feeling of 
 patriotism which is essential to the preservation of the position 
 of their own country. But it is obvious that a great commercial 
 and colonial country must have these cosmopolitan and less 
 exclusive views, or its success and continuance as a centre of 
 enterprise will not be possible. The greater success of Great 
 Britain and Ireland as a colonial and commercial power over 
 other nations has been due mainly to the special aptitudes of 
 the people, but a good deal to the greater respect she has, on 
 the whole, always shown for rights she deems fundamental, 
 and due to all mankind ; and especially for the main rights and 
 welfare of those weaker races which circumstances have placed 
 under her power and control. The greatest force in the world 
 is man, and the more that is learned respecting him, the more 
 it is seen that the several varieties have much in common, and 
 that the differences so well known and so often deplored are 
 not due to anything more than dissimilar physical and moral 
 surroundings working throughout the ages. To deal success- 
 fully with the tropical jungles of Crown colonies, and to culti- 
 vate their heated plains, the races accustomed to the climate 
 and inured to the toil are required, and where these fail nothing 
 can be done. To get due value from these countries, and to 
 develop their wealth in a solid form, the men inhabiting them 
 must be encouraged to bear a willing hand by reaping the just 
 reward of labour ; sufficient inducements must be given them 
 to struggle upwards to a higher standard. Stagnation or a 
 falling away can be generally traced to a state of things which 
 disorganises local industry. The reward of labour must leave 
 some fair margin beyond the scanty necessities of a mere ex- 
 istence, or, in tropical countries at all events, it will be found 
 the inhabitants will abandon regular work and relapse into 
 those primitive conditions from which it is the duty of civilised 
 and orderly Government to make efforts to reclaim them. As 
 far back as 1824 the Report of the Parliamentary Committee 
 on labourers' wages said : " He, whose subsistence is secure 
 without work, and who cannot obtain more than a mere 
 sufficiency by the hardest work, will naturally be an idle and 
 careless labourer." The past economic history and present
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 policy of many of the Crown colonies may be summarised as 
 constant endeavours to struggle against these facts and natural 
 laws in favour of the planting and absentee interests, efforts 
 fruitful of calamities to the colonies and to their inhabitants. 
 
 With respect to the public opinion of the Crown colonies, 
 it is undeniably a power which in recent times is making itself 
 more and more felt. The press in many of them has organs 
 conducted with ability, and in some of them with singular 
 power and conspicuous fairness ; the proprietors and editors 
 are not confined to any one race, and no one could proclaim 
 from internal evidence the nationality of a writer. But the 
 wants and rights of the majority of the people are not always 
 represented in the columns of the public press in a Crown 
 colony, and this makes it the more necessary for the people 
 and Parliament of the United Kingdom to pay some attention 
 to what is passing, for they are undoubtedly responsible for the 
 laws and systems upheld in such dependencies. 
 
 The tariff questions especially are very important, lor it can 
 be proved that the methods pursued which date from the 
 time of protectionist and anti-free-trade policy have been 
 adverse to the best interests of the United Kingdom, and have 
 hampered the development of her trade with the Crown colonies ; 
 while, at the same time, they have been injurious to the wel- 
 fare, the comfort, and the happiness of the colonists themselves. 
 So many anti-free-trade centres of commerce dispersed all over 
 the world under the British flag and under the direct control 
 of the British Government have, beyond all doubt, had a 
 most injurious effect, and have obstructed and hindered the 
 propagation of free trade principles among the nations. Even 
 in those colonies now possessing responsible governments the 
 restrictive tariffs which British merchants and manufacturers so 
 much complain of are no worse than some of those set up in 
 certain Crown colonies to their disadvantage, and, in fact, 
 such tariffs are often, to some extent, the legacy the Parliamen- 
 tary colonies received over from the periods when they were 
 under the direct administration of the Crown. 
 
 In a paper, which received much attention not only from 
 every colonist, but from every person interested in colonial 
 questions, contributed to the "Nineteenth Century Review"* 
 
 * Fchri:arv, 1885.
 
 6 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 by the late Right Honourable W. E. Forster, M.P., it is said : 
 " I do not think we can expect newly formed communities to 
 raise their revenue solely by direct taxation, but the abolition 
 of all custom or excise, except upon intoxicating liquors and 
 tobacco, and the general equalisation of these taxes, would 
 make an Imperial Zollverein possible." The necessities of 
 none of the Crown colonies require more than what is 
 succinctly laid down here. Professor J. E. Thorold Rogers, 
 in his work, "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," also 
 says (Vol. I., page 212): "It is always difficult to raise a 
 revenue from direct taxation in a country where industry is 
 mainly agricultural ; " but, of course, the Professor who says 
 elsewhere, " to tax what a man must spend is to destroy 
 industry " means a moderate tax, and on commodities such 
 as Mr. Forster mentions. Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu is an admirer of 
 the colonial capacities of Englishmen ; he says that a customs 
 charge never imposed for protectionist purposes, and never 
 exceeding 5 per cent, ad valorem and land revenues, are the 
 only proper colonial taxes except those on spirits and tobacco, 
 articles which should be charged more heavily. He goes on 
 to say that these are the only taxes universally applied (as he 
 describes them) in the British colonies with no ill result, and 
 giving sufficient revenues. Most Englishmen who know the 
 colonies will admit this statement gives a fair outline of the 
 system that might be followed, but is not. Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu 
 had probably in view, when he wrote the above, a proposition 
 made about that time to put into practice the system he eulogises. 
 The population of the twelve groups of Crown colonies 
 (Gibraltar, Malta, Ceylon, Mauritius, Straits Settlements, Hong 
 Kong, Fiji, Falkland Islands, the West Indian Islands and Main- 
 land, Bermuda, St. Helena, and Western Coast of Africa), at the 
 close of 1883, amounted to about 6,504,200. The revenues raised 
 in 1883 amounted to ,6,577,226. The public debts for the 
 whole equalled ^,"6,000,000. The Straits Settlements especially 
 Singapore Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and Malta, are ports of 
 call and entrepots, whose returns (when given) of total imports 
 and exports have more reference to the trade of neighbouring 
 and distant foreign countries with Great Britain and other 
 nations than to the trade done within such colonies them- 
 selves. Excluding these four colonies, therefore, the total 
 imports of the other eight groups of colonies, in 1883,
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 amounted to ^18,823,278, and their total exports were 
 ^19,430,504 (colonial returns). Of the imports the sum of 
 ,5,822,800 (Board of Trade returns) represents the value of 
 the produce and manufactures of the United Kingdom, or 
 about 31 per cent. The exports from these colonies to the 
 United Kingdom direct were valued (Board of Trade returns) 
 at ;8,6oS,2i2, or about 45^ per cent, of the whole. The 
 total trade of these colonies for the year 1883 amounted to 
 ^38,253, 782 (colonial returns), of which ^14,431,012 (Board 
 of Trade returns) was with the United Kingdom, or nearly 38 
 per cent, of the whole. 
 
 There are no returns whatever to be had respecting imports 
 and exports at the ports of Hong Kong and Gibraltar. The 
 Straits Settlements and Malta between them have ^4 1,5 5 8, 644 
 imports, and ^40,736,029 exports, for the year 1883. The 
 figures for Hong Kong and Gibraltar would probably be as 
 much as this. As a matter of fact, such returns from these ports 
 often only repeat one another ; the same vessel, with the iden- 
 tical cargo on board, will sometimes enter at all of them on a 
 single voyage, and, after coaling and discharging some cargo, 
 clear outwards, and proceed with the remainder. The Board 
 of Trade returns for the year 1883 show exports from the 
 United Kingdom of British goods, for Gibraltar and Malta 
 direct, amounting to i, 7 12, 653, and imports therefrom to 
 the value of 190, 7 89. The great free trade ports of the 
 East the Straits Settlements and Hong Kong took British 
 merchandise valued by Board of Trade returns at ^5,5 15,478, 
 and sent produce valued at ^5,815,002 to the United Kingdom. 
 
 It will be seen that the trade of the Crown colonies is large, 
 but, except with the great free trade Eastern ports, it is 
 not by a long way as large as it might be. The system of 
 tariff's as in the West Indies, Ceylon, Mauritius, Fiji, and 
 Malta and the general policy pursued with regard to the 
 natives as in Western Africa have much hindered material 
 progress, and these colonies do not compare as favourably as 
 they ought to with the colonies of foreign powers, where the 
 policy pursued is not pretended to be entirely if at all in 
 the interest of the inhabitants. Indeed, the position of the 
 people in many of these Crown colonies is unsatisfactory, for 
 reasons that will be shown farther on, when the colonies are 
 separately dealt with. The taxation per head paid by the
 
 8 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 people of a colony is no more a criterion by which to form 
 any judgment respecting it than the exports alone can be taken 
 as a basis on which to build up a theory of the people's wealth, 
 prosperity, and happiness. A man can better afford to save 
 i os. in Australasia than a Singhalese can afford to save 4d. 
 The West Indian colonies export at the rate of ^6 123. per 
 inhabitant (nearly the same rate as for the United Kingdom), 
 and pay Government taxes at the rate of 265. 6d. only; and 
 yet the bulk of the people, as regards food, and the common 
 necessaries of a civilised life, are worse off than the people of 
 almost any country. Can they be compared for an instant 
 with the people of the great colony of the Cape of Good Hope, 
 who export only at the rate of 705. 5d. per head, and yet pay 
 taxes at the rate of 875. id. per head ? or with the savage but 
 vigorous natives of their own Africa ? At the same time, it is 
 a sound criterion to take the exports of a colony, if the wealth 
 raised and exported be really raised and owned by the people. 
 The twenty and a half millions sterling of exports from Canada 
 in 1883 were undoubtedly, nearly all of them, the property of 
 the Canadians themselves, and almost the whole proceeds of 
 profits went to enrich the inhabitants. In the West Indies 
 and other tropical colonies the people, owing to various 
 reasons, have not the capital necessary to accomplish that 
 work which people in more happily formed societies are 
 expected to do for themselves. Extraneous aid from foreign 
 capitalists is sometimes sought by, and sometimes forced on, the 
 people of tropical countries, to assist them to cultivate their 
 lands. Nothing is more certain than that this capital, in 
 whatever form it comes, can, if properly applied, permanently 
 develop the wealth of the several colonies, because, as Pro- 
 fessor Leone Levi says (" History of British Commerce," p. 
 149), "there is 'one unalterable law as regards wages: they 
 depend on capital However fertile the soil, however favour- 
 able the position of the country, however great the extent of 
 territory, unless there be sufficient capital in hand to maintain 
 labour, nothing can be done." But this capital can only do 
 good permanently on condition the other elements employed 
 in the work also receive a fair share of the profits.* The 
 
 * Capital, to speak accurately, means whatever may command money 
 or that may be sold in {exchange for money or any commodity that 
 represents rn^ney.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 wages of labour, in every instance, can be left to be settled 
 between the employer and the employed ; and where there are 
 no inhabitants in an annexed territory, it is legitimate enough 
 to seek for people in other countries to come and inhabit it. 
 But the Government does not stop at this ; and if there is 
 labour to be had on the spot, but the labourer sulks at the 
 terms offered by planters and capitalists, starveling coolies from 
 India are imported for a term of years at the expense of the 
 people, and the wages of labour in that colony are forced down 
 to the lowest limits that admit of a bare existence. Taxation, 
 also, forced from its natural channels by the exigencies of a 
 system which has allowed predominance to absentees and their 
 agents, has fallen almost entirely on the struggling native 
 labourers. In course of time a system, symmetrical in all its 
 parts, has arisen on this basis. It is correct in its law and 
 perfect in its constitutionalism ; but it wants one thing a 
 people able to live contentedly and thrive by the sweat of its 
 brow. Systems are worthless that do not create such men. 
 Capital accumulates among the people in such places with ex- 
 treme difficulty if at all, because there is no margin left for the 
 reward of thrift. 
 
 The keeping of order and the protection of private rights 
 constitute the main work of Government, but the people have 
 other wants with which a Government should have no concern, 
 and when it does enter the lists monopolies and abuses grow 
 up and abound, unless strict watch be kept ; the Government 
 after a time loses control over the instruments it has set up, 
 and opposite results come about from those avowedly intended. 
 The Crown colonies are full of such instances. The intro- 
 duction of coolie labour into colonies where it may have been 
 supposed to be wanted was doubtless at the beginning a well- 
 intentioned act ; the abuses that have since arisen might have 
 been foreseen, but were not. Englishmen should not be behind 
 foreigners in appreciating what is just. This is what Mr. 
 Leroy-Beaulieu says on the subject : " Cette immigration, 
 au point de vue social, quand elle porte sur les Chinois ou sur 
 les Indiens, a les plus deplorables resultats ; ces hommes 
 appartenant, non pas a des socie'tes primitives dont les 
 membres sont prets a se fondre par un instinct naturel dans 
 les societe's plus avancees, mais a des societe"s vieilles et 
 de"cre'pites, conservant avec tenacite leurs habitudes et leurs 
 B
 
 10 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 mceurs." They keep also their language and their religion ; 
 having few females among them, the deplorable results to the 
 places they are sent to are well known and are repugnant to 
 every social sentiment. Again he says : " Au point de vue 
 economique, les consequences ne sont pas moins fatales. 
 C'est la facilite de 1'immigration, qui, en partie, a e"te la cause 
 de 1'abandon definitif des habitations par les noirs ; les planteurs 
 n'ont plus songe a les retenir par de bons traitements et des 
 egards " . . . " le second inconvenient Economique de 
 1'immigration, c'est qu'elle de'tourne les colons des ameliorations 
 ne"cessaires qui, en utilisant mieux le nombre de bras existants, 
 et en perfectionnant les precedes, multiplieraient considerable- 
 ment les quantites produites et le revenu net."* With refer- 
 ence to labour in tropical Crown colonies generally, it is needful 
 to draw public attention to the large employment of woman 
 labour in that most trying of all labour working in a cane 
 field. This class of labour is very cheap, but it is disastrous to 
 the community. In his work, "The State in Relation to 
 Labour," the late Mr. Stanley Jevons said (p. 70), on the 
 employment of mothers: "The great evil which arises from 
 such employment is the separation of the mother from her 
 young children ; in the case of infants who ought to be suckled 
 the result is usually disastrous ... a large proportion 
 succumb, and those who by any fortunate accident of more 
 vigorous constitution, or slightly better treatment, survive, are 
 too often ruined physically and mentally, and grow up into a 
 stunted and sickly generation." He shows how the German 
 Social Science Association and the statistics of the United 
 States Agricultural Bureaus fully support these views. After 
 long fasting on the part of mother and infant, when at last the 
 latter obtains the breast, the mother's body is heated and 
 exhausted, and the worst results follow for the infant. In 
 all the West Indian colonies especially, but particularly and 
 strikingly so in some of them, the enormous proportions of 
 this evil are quite startling. 
 
 A good deal has yet to be done to perfect cultivation 
 in many colonies. Immense advances have been made in 
 
 * There have been rumours that a new coolie colony was to be created 
 in Northern Queensland by the introduction of that form of servile labour 
 known under the name of coolie immigration. It is to be hoped free 
 Australia will keep such a thing from its shores.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 1 1 
 
 Europe in recent years in the cultivation and preparation of 
 beet sugar, and the severe competition that has arisen in the 
 sugar markets has been due more to this than to the bounties. 
 The fall in the price of sugar will not be entirely without com- 
 pensation ; it has caused it to enter into many industries, from 
 which, in the future, it will be inseparable, but the production 
 is, nevertheless, apparently increasing so rapidly that it more 
 than meets the increased demand. The virgin soil of new 
 countries and machinery will make it almost impossible for the 
 old colonies, which have soil more difficult to cultivate, to 
 successfully compete. From time to time, it is to be feared, 
 blights will do more damage to colonial produce than com- 
 petition ; the coffee growers of Ceylon found this to be the 
 case. An acre of land may yield a ton of beetroot sugar in 
 three years. An acre of virgin soil gives i| ton of cane 
 sugar; most of the British sugar colonies give over i ton an 
 acre. They should do better than the beet growers even with 
 their bounties, and they would beat them out of the field were 
 they to follow out logically true free trade principles. Only if 
 all the projects on foot to grow sugar in tropical colonies were 
 to succeed, there would be some difficulty in disposing of the 
 supply. The British sugar colonies would be thriving now 
 if their economical and fiscal systems were not deplorably 
 unsound. It wanted the fall in the price of sugar to demon- 
 strate beyond question this unsoundness, and it is quite certain 
 nothing can place these colonies on the road to prosperity and 
 stability but a commercial and economical system entirely 
 different from that under which they now have to struggle. 
 Free trade in land and in commerce and the tariffs of Mr. 
 Forster quoted above, are the chief remedies wanted, but a 
 more popular and efficient Government at perhaps half the 
 present cost which could be provided for many would 
 greatly aid. 
 
 The colonies take a good deal of merchandise from foreign 
 countries, as much in proportion to their general trade as the 
 United Kingdom does ; they have many wants foreign countries 
 alone can supply. Those who urge a customs union between 
 the colonies and the United Kingdom, on the basis of either 
 party taking the produce of another, with differential tariffs 
 against foreigners, will have many interests to deal with and to 
 consider that are hostile to such proposals. A federation to 
 B 2
 
 12 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 be effective and lasting would do well to leave entirely out of 
 view any fiscal arrangements about tariffs, which would be a 
 certain and dangerous cause of quarrel. No system of tariffs 
 could be framed to be equal for all. The safest and best 
 course would be to allow each sovereign state to make its own 
 tariffs, on condition that no favour should be shown to any. 
 There are some things the colonies produce for which they 
 find advantageous markets abroad, and they are rather anxious 
 to increase this commerce than to diminish it. Those colonies 
 which produce wine will want the people of the United Kingdom 
 to continue to drink it, because it does not sell so readily 
 abroad, but for their part they will take for their own use much 
 of the vintages of the Rhine, Burgundy and Bordeaux, and 
 pay for it, if they can, in their own productions. As in the 
 past, so in the future, those people will do the most trade who 
 give the best and cheapest articles that may be wanted, and 
 success will eventually depend on skill, energy, enterprise, and 
 the highest intelligence. The parliamentary colonies are 
 mostly (for the present) so elated over protection, which they 
 appear rich enough to be able to bear for the present, 
 that any arrangement with the United Kingdom, tending 
 to remove her free trade policy, will probably be pleasing to 
 them, especially if it raises the price of any of their produce 
 in British markets ; if it does not do this they will not care for 
 it, but they will not object to it, it will really matter so very 
 little to them. It is pretty certain they will make no conven- 
 tion which will in any way damage their trade prospects with 
 other countries. The great colonies are in the position to 
 gain, whatever policy Great Britain, or indeed any other 
 country, may follow. 
 
 Every one knows how the value of land has fallen in 
 England ; in France the fall has been 40 per cent, in some 
 places, and a man is deemed lucky who makes 2\ per cent, out 
 of it in that country from corn growing. Neither free trade 
 England, by conventions with Canada and Australasia, nor 
 protectionist France, by high duties, can cause this economical 
 result to be reversed. If the value of land falls in the old 
 countries, it rises in the new ones ; it is only cause and effect 
 In the tropical colonies, also, competition is intense, and, as a 
 virgin soil accessible to labour can produce some crops 30 per 
 cent, cheaper than the wearied soil of older colonies, the latter
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 like England and France, have to turn their hands to producing 
 those other crops which the circumstances of the markets make 
 most profitable for them to raise. 
 
 If any fair trade or reciprocal treaty tariffs are proposed 
 to be imposed in the United Kingdom, it is only right it should 
 be known at once that it will not be in the interests of the 
 colonies that it will be done, but solely in the interests of those 
 at home who desire protection, and whose private interests 
 never allowed them to be really convinced that free trade was 
 beneficial to the United Kingdom. 
 
 The greatest and keenest competition of the future for 
 Great Britain will not be so much from foreign countries as 
 from the great colonies and the United States. While offering 
 a mighty field for British enterprise these will compete in the 
 home markets and elsewhere against those British productions 
 which they also will be able to grow and to manufacture. 
 
 Fair traders are wont to quote Cobden's prophecies that 
 the civilised nations of the world would adopt free trade after 
 they saw its good effects in England, in order to show how 
 mistaken he was. They go so far as to say Cobden himself, 
 were he alive, would now be disillusioned and be an advocate 
 for fair trade, i.e., protection. They take his prophecies to 
 show he advocated free trade on the assumption that England 
 would not for so long stand almost alone. The mistake 
 Cobden made was to prophecy. He underrated and perhaps 
 underestimated the difficulties in the way which will require 
 much time to remove. He had too great a faith in the 
 efficacy of reason, and did not allow enough for the selfishness 
 and stupidity of mankind the selfishness of the few powerful 
 interests in foreign countries who force or cajole the mass of 
 taxpayers to uphold the high tariffs by which the few alone 
 profit, and the stupidity of the populations who permit them- 
 selves to be overreached. It is incontestable that foreign 
 protectionist tariffs injure British trade, because they injure 
 every trade, but it is equally incontestable that they injure far 
 more the people of the countries which adopt them. Free 
 trade is, nevertheless, making as much way as can be expected 
 under the circumstances. It would never have been adopted 
 in Great Britain itself were it not that the representative 
 system of Government allowed the intelligence of the country 
 to rule its destinies as regards the shaping of fiscal policy.
 
 14 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 Had the same interests that have supreme power in foreign 
 countries ruled with the like supremacy in Great Britain, free 
 trade would never have been established in this country. 
 Besides, Cobden's teachings have, unfortunately, only been 
 jarried out in part in Great Britain. No statesman ever lived 
 who judged more accurately of the ill-effects on a people's 
 welfare of high taxation and reckless expenditure, both of 
 which seem now to be the creed or practice of all parties 
 alike. The nation is being burthened with enormously in- 
 creased responsibilities from which extrication seems impos- 
 sible, and which will hereafter entail an expenditure so great 
 that the toughest fibres of the people will be strained to meet it. 
 
 A careful observer will note in the various borrowing 
 countries the steady growth of two kinds of national debts ; one 
 for the building of railways and public works, the other to buy 
 war material and maintain armies for aggressive purposes. 
 The power and resources of one people steadily increases, the 
 other amidst much outward show has its resources expended 
 before a struggle arrives. It behoves great Britain to see that 
 the important strategic positions held by so many of the Crown 
 colonies be properly defended. But the resources of many of 
 these colonies are already strained by a bad system of taxation, 
 and an unduly expensive administration, in which the people 
 have no voice, and over which they have no control a dan- 
 gerous condition of things for the stability of the empire. 
 
 In the United States and the great colonies the enormous 
 prosperity of the people have served to cloak the evils of a 
 fiscal system which, only for that prosperity, they would have 
 felt and repudiated. In the great colonies, also, the taxation 
 is largely put into railways and not into overgrown bureaus as 
 in the Crown colonies.
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 1 5 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 
 
 IN Professor Leone Levi's work ("History of British Commerce"), 
 on comparing the returns for the year 1850 with those for 
 1877, the following results are given. The total general trade 
 of the West Indian Islands had increased in value during that 
 interval by 177 per cent, but their trade with the United 
 Kingdom had diminished in value by 9 per cent. ; in the 
 former year the United Kingdom did 68 per cent, of the trade 
 and only 34 per cent, of it in the latter year. The total trade 
 of British Guiana had increased during the 28 years by 227 per 
 cent., and the trade of the United Kingdom with the colony 
 had increased by 55 per cent, during the same period ; but the 
 percentage of this colony's trade with the United Kingdom had 
 fallen from 78 per cent, of the whole in 1850 to 37 per cent, 
 of the whole in 1877. 
 
 Taking all the West Indian colonies, the total exports for 
 the six years ending 1871 were about 45 millions sterling, of 
 which the United Kingdom received 31^ millions. For the 
 six years ending 1877 there were over 49^ millions exports, of 
 which the United Kingdom received under 34^ millions. For 
 the six years ending 1883 the exports exceeded 55^ millions, 
 of which the United Kingdom received 34^ millions. 
 
 The imports into the West Indian colonies for the six years 
 ending 1871 were about 38 millions sterling, of which the 
 United Kingdom sent 17^- millions. For the six years ending 
 1877 they were about 45 millions, of which the United 
 Kingdom sent a little over zo millions. For the six years 
 ending 1883 they were nearly 51 J millions, of which the 
 United Kingdom sent under 2 1 millions. 
 
 It thus appears that between the years 1871 and 1877 the 
 exports of these colonies had increased by 4^ millions sterling, 
 of which the United Kingdom received 3* millions ; and 
 between the latter year and 1883 there had been a further 
 increase in the value of exports to the amount of 6 millions 
 sterling, of which the United Kingdom received none. In
 
 1 6 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 imports the increase had been 7 millions between the years 
 1871 and 1877, of which the United Kingdom sent 3 millions; 
 and between the latter year and 1883 there had been a further 
 increase in imports to the extent of 6 millions sterling, 
 but the United Kingdom sent only about ^ million of this 
 increase. 
 
 During the 12 years ending 1883, about ^6,632,210 in 
 bullion and specie (included in above figures) was imported 
 into the Island of Trinidad, and of this all but ^1,383,258 
 was re exported.* The imports of bullion and specie into the 
 other West Indian colonies for the above period are incon- 
 siderable. 
 
 The average value .of the exports from the West Indian 
 colonies to the United Kingdom has not varied to any con- 
 siderable extent during the last 18 years, although the quantity 
 has been greater. For the 10 years ending 1875 it averaged 
 ;5, 340,000 a year, the average for the 5 years ending 1880 
 was about ^5,917,000 a year, and for the 3 years ending 1883 
 ^"5,068,719 a year. The fall in the price of sugar partly 
 accounts for the falling off in the value of produce imported 
 into the United Kingdom from these colonies during late 
 years. 
 
 The imports from the United Kingdom into the West 
 Indian colonies (including bullion and specie, and foreign and 
 colonial produce and manufactures) averaged ^3, 135,000 a 
 year for the ten years ending 1875, ^3,445,000 a year for the 
 five years ending 1880, and ^3,786,000 a year for the three 
 years ending 1883. 
 
 The above import values of goods and specie include 
 freight and some charges. 
 
 In the above shipments from the United Kingdom, an 
 average of about ^325,000 a year, for the whole period, will 
 be for colonial and foreign produce and manufactures, the 
 balance being British goods and specie. 
 
 According to Board of Trade returns, the imports into the 
 United Kingdom from the West Indian possessions averaged 
 ^5,935,000 a year for the three years 1881-83, and the 
 
 * Some of the balance was probably taken away by the coolies leaving 
 Trinidad, and would not figure in any returns ; a good deal of the imported 
 coin will have passed through the hands of the people as wages paid and 
 spent, before re-exportation.
 
 THE WEST INDIES. I 1 } 
 
 exports thereto from the United Kingdom for the same period 
 averaged ^3, 500,000 a year. This is about 17 per cent, more 
 for West Indian imports than is given by the colonial returns, 
 and 8J per cent, less for exports to the West Indies than is 
 shown by the colonial returns. On both sides the imports are 
 more highly valued than at the ports whence they were sent. 
 It will be seen farther on that the differences between the 
 colonial and Board of Trade returns in the West Indies are 
 only about a quarter of the differences that are shown to exist 
 in some other colonies. 
 
 In the five years ending 1877 the United States sent 
 47 millions dollars of goods to the British West Indian colonies, 
 and in the five years ending 1882 exactly another 47 millions 
 of dollars' worth (a total for the ten years of ^19,584,000 at 
 45. zd. a dollar), mostly in flour and other provisions. In the 
 five years ending 1877 the United States received 33 millions 
 dollars in produce from the British West Indian colonies, and in 
 the five years ending 1882 the amount was 39-0 millions of 
 dollars' worth (a total of ^15,104,000 for the ten years). 
 During the ten years ending 1882 the United States sent to 
 these colonies 21^ millions dollars (about ^4,479,000) more 
 merchandise than they took in produce and other commodities. 
 This balance was probably paid in cash or bills. In some 
 places, as at Barbados, Americans sell their provisions for cash, 
 and they pay cash for the produce they purchase ; but for con- 
 venience of comparison it will be necessary, in colonial dealings 
 with other countries, as well as with Great Britain, to give com- 
 parative statements, in order to demonstrate the position they 
 hold towards one another as consumers of each other's produce 
 and merchandise ; for in the end trade depends on these 
 results, whatever may have been the medium employed in the 
 exchange of commodities. 
 
 During the same ten years these colonies exported 
 ^"57,300,000 to the United Kingdom, and took 34^ millions 
 in merchandise and specie ; they consequently exported to the 
 United Kingdom ^22,800,000 more in produce and other 
 commodities than they took in merchandise and in money ; so 
 that these colonies took ^14,916,000 more from the United 
 Kingdom than from the United States, and exported 
 ^42,200,000 more to the United Kingdom than to the United 
 States in the ten years (1873-82). The total trade with the
 
 1 8 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 United States for the ten years was 34,688,000, and with the 
 United Kingdom 91,800,000. 
 
 During the same ten years (1873-82) the British West 
 Indies imported from Cuba and the Spanish West Indian 
 possessions about .796,000 in merchandise, and the Spanish 
 possessions took in return only 145,000, so that some other 
 means of paying the balance of 65,000 a year must have 
 been provided by the British colonies. 
 
 From British North America, the four chief colonies 
 Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and British Guiana during the 
 four years ending 1881, took 1,350,000 in merchandise 
 (chiefly provisions), and sent only 1,115,000 in produce and 
 other forms of payment. In the two years 1882-83 they took 
 801,000, and sent 1,176,000. British North America has, 
 therefore, been importing more produce, recently, from the 
 British West Indies. Jamaica, British Guiana, and Trinidad 
 imported to the value of 1,300,000 from India in the three 
 years 1881-83, and as there were only 1,344 exports in 
 return, the amount due was probably paid through London. 
 These are the three colonies that chiefly import Indian coolies. 
 
 Trinidad does a large trade with Venezuela, importing in 
 the ten years 1874-83, 5,099,000, and exporting 2, 629,000. 
 It would appear that some Venezuela exports find their way to 
 European markets vid Trinidad. This is also the only West 
 Indian colony that deals considerably with France. It sent 
 2,076,000 of produce to that country in the five years 
 1879-83, receiving in return only 695,000, the balance 
 (1,381,000) being probably paid in cash, in bills, and through 
 London. The produce sent to France was mostly cocoa. 
 
 The British West Indian colonies do a certain trade 
 amongst themselves, but only to a limited extent ; some 
 ports in Barbados and other places are used as depots, 
 whence American and other stores are distributed among 
 minor colonies. 
 
 On the whole it may be seen that the West Indian colonies, 
 in their dealings with other countries (except France), usually 
 take from them considerably more than they export to them, 
 and that in their dealings with the United Kingdom it is the 
 reverse ; they give her more than they take. The British 
 markets evidently continue to be the best for the sale of pro- 
 duce, and London being the centre of commercial transactions
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 1 9 
 
 to most countries, accounts between foreign countries and other 
 colonies are best settled there. 
 
 The value of apparel, cotton, linen, and woollen goods, the 
 produce and manufacture of the United Kingdom, imported 
 into the West Indian colonies in the five years 1879-83, 
 amounted to ,6,205,000, the total of United Kingdom produce 
 and manufactures of all kinds being ^15, 181,000 in the five 
 years. 
 
 It is as well to draw attention to the fact that the foreign 
 West Indian colonies, that is to say, the Danish, Dutch, French 
 and Spanish West Indies, and Haiti and San Domingo (total 
 population of all about 3,500,000) import between them, from 
 the United Kingdom, merchandise of the yearly value, taking 
 an average of five years, 1879-83, of nearly ^3, 750,000, all of 
 which, with the exception of about ^"600.000 a year in rice 
 for the possessions of Spain principally from India and Bur- 
 mah were nearly exclusively British goods. This is over 
 ^368,000 a year more than the British West Indies took 
 during the same period. The total average yearly exports to 
 England from these foreign West Indies, for the same period, 
 was ^2,189,000. They took, in the five years, ^18,722,000 
 in merchandise from the United Kingdom, and sent exports 
 valued at ^10,945,000. It thus appears that these countries 
 take from the United Kingdom about ;i, 555,000 a year more 
 in imports than they send her in exports. It has been seen that 
 the United Kingdom trade with the British West Indies lies 
 quite the other way. During the same period of five years they 
 took only ;i 6,909,000 imports (including specie and foreign 
 and colonial produce and manufactures) from the United 
 Kingdom, sending her ^31, 860,000 of their exports. 
 
 The total tonnage entered and cleared from all the .ports 
 of the British West Indies in the four years, 1880-83, was 
 12,006,047 tons for steamers, and 7,838,915 tons for sailing 
 vessels, 15,115,795 of the whole tonnage being British. 
 Most steamers call at every port of importance on a voyage, 
 and many sailing vessels call at more than one port. 
 
 The following are the chief tariffs on articles imported into 
 the West Indies. The highest are paid by the people of 
 Jamaica. They pay 8s. for every 196 Ib. of flour, or one 
 halfpenny per Ib. duty ! It is not to be wondered at that the 
 labouring population consume of this luxury only about four
 
 20 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 ounces a week per head. Most of the other West Indian 
 colonies charge about one farthing per Ib. duty, and consume a 
 trifle more of the article. Flour foods are perishable com- 
 modities in tropical climates ; they soon deteriorate in value, 
 and are easily crowded with weevils. Money, also, commands 
 a much higher interest in these places than in the United 
 Kingdom (the lowest rate charged for good paper is 6 per cent, 
 at the chief ports). A tradesman, who has to pay the duties on 
 flour always in cash, while the flour itself is often paid for in 
 produce or in bills, will expect a return equal to double the 
 amount advanced, in order to cover a possible loss by waste 
 and deterioration. A flour duty (especially a high one) is the 
 worst form of tax that could be imposed in the tropics ; it 
 increases the amount of the risk of the importer to such an 
 extent that he has to charge much more in proportion for the 
 article than is represented by the extra cost to him, and it 
 helps to induce him to import only such quantities as he is 
 certain to find a ready market for. The average duty on 
 wheat en flour in the West Indies is equal to about 26 per cent, 
 on its first cost (flour at i6s. a barrel of 196 Ib., at port of 
 shipment or on board) at present prices of low grade flour. 
 For the reason given above this will make it cost 39 per cent 
 more to the purchaser than would be the case if it were free of 
 duty. In Jamaica, where the duty on flour is about 50 per 
 cent, on its first cost, the effects will proportionately be more 
 severe, and the difference to the retail purchaser will be 
 formidable indeed. The ordinary labourer cannot afford flour 
 food as a usual diet, if at all, on these conditions. The average 
 cost of a pound of bread made of a low-grade flour, and more 
 or less adulterated with the flour of manioc and other inferior 
 and lower-priced substances, is 3d. in the West Indies. 
 The duty on flour is only 10 per cent, ad valorem at Hon- 
 duras, and about 22 per cent. (35. 4d. a barrel of 196 Ib.) at 
 Trinidad. 
 
 Corn meal is moderately used, and by the labouring popula- 
 tion only. In Jamaica it pays a quarter the amount of duty 
 charged on flour entering that colony ; in the other colonies 
 it pays about half the duty flour pays the average is 16 per 
 cent, on first cost. In Barbados and British Guiana the 
 duties are less about 7 per cent, to 8 per cent, on first cost 
 Flour is permitted to enter the little island of Montserrat free.
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 21 
 
 Rice is more generally consumed in the coolie colonies of 
 Trinidad and British Guiana, but it is also moderately used 
 in the other colonies. The low-priced Rangoon qualities arc- 
 usually imported. Jamaica duty figures highest at 33. per 
 100 lb., equal to about 41 per cent, on first cost, at 8s. per 
 cwt. on board. Trinidad charges about 27 per cent., and 
 British Guiana about 13 per cent. ; Barbados charges only 
 6 per cent. ; the other colonies charge from 10 per cent, to 
 20 per cent, duty on first cost (on board). 
 
 The duties on biscuits, grain, peas, beans, and farinaceous 
 substances not specially referred to, are all somewhat in the 
 same proportion to value as those above given. These are all 
 staple articles of food, and, it is not too much to say, the more 
 they are employed by the people, the better for all classes. 
 A superior diet, for which a man will have to labour regularly, 
 will improve his physical powers and increase his self-respect, 
 and add stability to industry. It will be seen, however, that 
 some of the tariffs are almost, if not quite, prohibitory, and 
 others are so high as to be unjust. For those who study 
 Blue Books, it may be well to mention that the returns they 
 embody are often on these subjects incorrect and delusive. 
 An article in one colony will be valued at 243., and at another 
 colony not fifty miles distant the same class of article will be 
 valued, at the same time, at 385. ; at one place a thing will be 
 valued at 55., and thirty miles off they will place it at 125. 
 Some of these figures must be incorrect. The articles so 
 valued are often imported by the same vessel and shipped from 
 the same port at the same time. In dealing with prices, the 
 cost on board or at the port of shipment should be taken, which, 
 of course, is liable to vary, and does vary, but it varies equally 
 tor all. The prices in local markets of limited extent may 
 vary largely on the spot, for local reasons, within a few months 
 or weeks, and it would be misleading to endeavour to follow 
 them. Besides, the prices may be put down from the two or 
 three parcels of a high class imported for special use, and not 
 from the average quality with which the public get supplied. 
 It is probable, also, that in some instances not only freight and 
 charges are added, but even prospective profits. This would 
 naturally cause a specific duty to look less. In dealing with 
 ad valorem duties the merchant will be certain to be strict, 
 and not to overvalue his goods to the customs authorities.
 
 22 THE CROWN COLONIES Of GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 Ad valorem duties are charged on the prices of articles at port 
 of shipment, or nearly so. Goods paying specific duties should 
 be valued similarly. 
 
 Fish, dry- and wet-salted, is an article of diet a good deal 
 too much employed, perhaps, by the people, for the quality is 
 often of the worst. Here the Blue Books are evidently mis- 
 leading, for the invoice prices of the same article vary sometimes 
 100 per cent, in ports almost within sight of one another. It is 
 remarkable, also, that where the duties are highest there the 
 prices are put very high, and when the duties are comparatively 
 low the prices are less in proportion. Now this cannot be the 
 case in business ; the greater duty will enhance the price after, 
 not before, its payment. In Barbados these duties are com- 
 paratively low, in the other colonies they are far too high, 
 notably in Jamaica, where the customs charges are 33. 6d. 
 per 100 Ib. of dry fish, equal to i8| per cent, and is. 2d. 
 to 2S. 3d. per 100 Ib. wet fish, equal to 20 per cent, to 
 30 per cent, ad valorem. The other colonies vary from 
 is. to 2S. for same weight. Trinidad allows these articles to 
 enter free. 
 
 Salt meat is charged 8s., ios., 123. 6d. up to 153. on a 
 barrel of 200 Ib. The first cost value will vary between 403. 
 and 6os., according to the nature and quality. The duty on 
 this article therefore varies from 13^ per cent, to 37 1 per cent. 
 ad valorem, according to the port it enters at. Trinidad charges 
 no duty on salt meat. 
 
 The duties charged on articles of secondary importance for 
 food are usually so high that they must have the effect of 
 restricting their importation and lessening the revenue that 
 might be derived from them ; these duties, on the whole, are 
 sometimes higher even than those imposed by the deliberately 
 restrictive tariffs of the neighbouring colonies of foreign 
 powers, and are equal to those imposed by protectionist 
 countries, who desire the articles to be shut out from their 
 markets. Jamaica charges 2d. per Ib. on cheese, butter, bacon, 
 sausages, and hams. These articles are mainly imported from 
 the United States, and the duty will average from 1 8 per cent. 
 or 20 per cent, on butter and ham, to 40 per cent, on cheese 
 and sausages, and 33 per cent, on bacon, on the first cost. 
 The effect of such a heavy charge will fall on the consumer, 
 who will have to pay about double this duty by the time the
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 23 
 
 article leaves the retailer's hands. The charges in the other 
 West Indian colonies on these articles average about half those 
 of Jamaica. 
 
 There are duties on lard, soap, candles, salt, and other 
 household articles too many to enumerate; but the amount 
 imposed is sufficient to seriously enhance the cost of all of 
 them to the people. There is a duty on coffee, which is 
 probably protective, as the people may often grow their own 
 supplies. The duty on raw sugar varies from 100 per cent, or 
 more on its present value in some colonies through almost 
 every stage of duty ; but on the whole it acts, as probably it 
 was intended to act, as a prohibition to importation. The case 
 of refined sugar is different ; this is a British manufacture, and 
 the sugar-growing colonies, who are anxious that the United 
 Kingdom should buy their raw sugar, put a prohibitive duty on 
 its return in a refined condition. The average duty is from 
 fd. to i^d. per lb., which will have the effect of restricting the 
 supply, and more than doubling the cost to the consumer. 
 Sugar imported into the Bahamas for preserving and packing 
 fruits is exempted from duty. The duty on tea is comparatively 
 moderate in the West Indies, except in Jamaica and Bahamas, 
 where they charge is. per lb. ; but it is an article not exten- 
 sively used by the people. 
 
 Rum and gin are the only spirituous liquors much employed 
 by the people. The duties on these vary in every colony. It 
 may be said to be tolerably high in some of them ; considering 
 the intrinsic value of the article, in many it is evidently too low. 
 It is i os. a gallon at Jamaica, 8s. 4d. ($2-50) at British Guiana, 
 6s. to 8s. at Trinidad, 45. to 6s. at Barbados, 73. at the Wind- 
 ward Islands, and from is. to 45. 2d. in the Leeward Islands, 
 33. to 93. at Bahamas, and $2-11 at Honduras. If these duties 
 are imposed on any determined principle, the variations in 
 amount of duty charged will show that they have not been 
 made clear. The duties on beer average from 6d. to is. per 
 doz. quarts, and in wood from 2d. to is. the gallon. The duty 
 on wines differ in each colony. Some charge 15 per cent, 
 others 20 per cent., others 25 per cent, ad valorem, and others 
 is. 6d. to 43. (80-36 to Si'oo), or 23. to 8s., or 43. to 8s. 
 per dozen bottles specific duty, according to quality and 
 strength ; the duty on wine in the wood varies from 1 5 per 
 cent, to 25 per cent, ad valorem, and from is., 23. 6d., or 43.
 
 24 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 per gallon specific duty. In Jamaica the duty is 23. 6d. the 
 gallon, whether in bulk or in bottle. 
 
 Tobacco may be regarded as a necessary, at least the 
 people so regard it. The amount of duty charged varies 
 much, and it is difficult to find a sufficient reason for this ; 
 unmanufactured tobacco pays 6d. per Ib. at Jamaica and 
 is. per Ib. at Barbados, it pays $0-30 to 0*45 at British 
 Guiana, and gd. at Trinidad. At Honduras, St. Christopher, 
 and Nevis, it is 2^d. per Ib., i^d. at Bahamas, and 3d. to is. 
 elsewhere. 3d. per Ib. would not be an unfair duty ; it would 
 be equal to about 40 per cent, on the first cost value on board. 
 The unmanufactured leaf is the form of tobacco used by the 
 people, and a duty of from 80 to 140 per cent, on its value 
 seems too much ; manufactured tobacco pays at Barbados 
 is. 6d. per Ib., at Trinidad is. per Ib., at Jamaica is. per Ib., 
 and the Windward Islands about 35 per cent, on its value ; at 
 British Guiana 0-45 per Ib., and in the Leeward Islands, 
 Antigua charges 5d. per Ib., Montserrat icd. per Ib., St. Kitts 
 and Nevis 405. per 100 Ibs., Dominica 20 per cent. The duty 
 on cigars is 55. per Ib. at Jamaica, $1*20 at British Guiana, 
 2S. at Trinidad, it sometimes rises to 30 per cent, in other 
 colonies, it is sometimes only 15 per cent, or less on the value. 
 In some of these colonies the people can grow their own 
 tobacco, and the duty on the unmanufactured article will 
 be protective, as an excise would be impracticable. Perhaps 
 the majority of the tariffs were so intended. A lesser, and 
 uniform, duty on common leaf tobacco would probably be 
 more remunerative than the present tariffs. 
 
 The duties on articles of ordinary merchandise, yarns, 
 woven fabrics, leather goods, haberdashery, millinery, earthen- 
 ware, glass and iron ware, are sometimes as high as, and 
 approximate closely to, similar tariffs in those foreign ports 
 where they are imposed expressly for protection purposes. 
 There are considerable variations, for apparently no reasons, 
 between the tariffs of the several colonies, which must be very 
 bewildering to merchants and shippers. The Bahama Islands 
 demand 20 per cent, Jamaica 12^ per cent., St. Lucia 20 per 
 cent., Dominica and St. Vincent 10 per cent, Grenada 5 per 
 cent, Tobago, Montserrat and Virgin Islands 7^ per cent., 
 Antigua 6 per cent, British Guiana 7 per cent, St Kitts and 
 Nevis 8 per cent., Barbados 8 per cent, Honduras 10 per
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 25 
 
 cent., Trinidad ask only 4 per cent., which is about the duty 
 that ought to prevail. 
 
 Some of the islands have special additions to all customs 
 duties, for the purpose of meeting special losses from hurri- 
 canes, bad crops, or depression in trade ; Dominica makes a 
 surcharge of 15 per cent, and Antigua i2\ per cent. 
 
 There is no charge on coal entering Jamaica, Trinidad, 
 Bahamas, Honduras, or St. Lucia, but all the other colonies 
 make a charge ; at St. Vincent it is 10 per cent., Tobago and 
 Virgin Island 7 * per cent., St. Kitts and Nevis 8 per cent, on 
 cost price. Barbados demands 23. 6cl., Antigua 2S. id., Dominica 
 43. 2d., Montserrat 25., and British Guiana $0*48 per ton. 
 Salt is allowed to enter Barbados and British Guiana free. 
 There is a protective tariff at the Bahamas of 20 per cent., and 
 at Turk's Island of ro per cent, ad valorem; in the other 
 colonies the duty at entry varies between 5 per cent, and 
 10 per cent, ad valorem. The duties on mineral and other oils 
 are unusually heavy, but vary much. St. Christopher and 
 Nevis charge only 8 per cent., Barbados demands 2^d. a gallon 
 or about 35 per cent, on petroleum, and 4 per cent, only on 
 other oils. Jamaica charges gd. a gallon, the Bahamas 4d. 
 on kerosine, and gd. to is. on other oils, British Guiana 
 So'2o per gallon on petroleum (about 100 per cent), Trinidad 
 charges 6d. a gallon on cocoa-nut oil, and is. a gallon on 
 other oils, which will be 150 per cent, on petroleum. The 
 evenings are not long in the tropics, but the duty on this article 
 of universal use by the people should not be so enormous in 
 proportion to its value. 
 
 It is to be observed that except at Barbados, where the 
 duty is 8 per cent, Tobago, Virgin Islands, and Montserrat, 
 where it is 7^ per cent., and Grenada, which charges 5 per cent. 
 machinery, and some metals and metal work, and all 
 articles employed by planters in cultivation and in the manu- 
 facture; of sugar, rum, and other produce, are free of duty; also 
 all manures. Of course, it is said these exemptions are for 
 the purpose of encouraging planting enterprise. It is good that 
 it should be encouraged, but the poor man pays on everything, 
 whether imported for his trade or not. It is satisfactory to 
 have to note that fresh meat, poultry, turtle, fresh fish, green 
 fruit, and vegetables are usually free of duty. 
 
 On the whole, it will be seen that taxatipn is so adjusted 
 c
 
 26 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 that it falls almost entirely on the labouring population, and 
 the system of tariffs is not only altogether opposed to free 
 trade principles in the abstract, but must act injuriously 
 on the welfare of the population under any theory of taxa- 
 tion. 
 
 The West Indian colonies, with the exception of Barbados, 
 British Guiana, and Honduras, levy export duties. In Jamaica 
 it is 53. pd. on a hogshead of sugar, 45. 6d. on a puncheon of 
 rum, 6s. on a tierce of coffee, and is. a ton on dye woods. 
 Antigua charges 55. on a hogshead of sugar. St. Christopher 
 and Nevis make export charges on sugar, rum, molasses, arrow- 
 root, cotton, potatoes, and salt. St. Vincent on sugar, rum, 
 molasses, arrowroot, cotton, and cocoa. Grenada on sugar, 
 rum, molasses, cocoa, and spices. Dominica and Montserrat 
 tax everything they export. The Bahamas tax guano and cave- 
 earth 2S. a ton, and i^ per cent, ad valorem on everything 
 exported that has not already paid an import duty. The 
 Virgin Islands tax the cattle, provisions, firewood, charcoal, 
 and lime they export to the neighbouring port of St. Thomas, 
 and 7 1 per cent, on wrecked goods. 
 
 Export duties are almost universally condemned as a system 
 for providing revenue, even when the exporting countries can 
 claim a monopoly of the article exported. There may be local 
 circumstances, nevertheless, which would make such a form of 
 tax one of the least objectionable in some colonies. Where the 
 only alternatives are duties on imports (places where no other 
 form of tax can be levied) it may be desirable to apply 
 both. 
 
 In the West Indian colonies there are taxes on dogs, horses, 
 cattle, mules, vehicles. It is usual to require licences for many 
 things besides the selling of spirits, tobacco, and stamps ; 
 but every colony has a system and tariff of its own on all these 
 matters. Antigua demands IDS. a year for permission to sell 
 bread. Dominica thinks the butcher and blacksmith the right 
 men to pay, and charges them 205. each. St. Lucia demands 
 6os. a year from the petroleum dealer, and Grenada 503. a year 
 from the retailer of charcoal. Boatmen, porters, hawkers, and 
 others are usually licensed by the year by paying certain 
 sums. 
 
 There is a poll-tax at St. Lucia, Tobago and Grenada, 
 Dominica, Montserrat, and Virgin Islands, where each male
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 2f 
 
 inhabitant up to a certain age is to give so many days' work in each 
 year or pay a stated fine. This is a tax usually in connection 
 with the repair of roads. Roads are of equal use to everybody, 
 and it is of the first necessity that they should be kept up. 
 Some other form of assessment would be fairer to all, and more 
 legitimate. The present tax is unequal ; the man who earns 
 2 os. a day pays the same fine as the man who earns 6d. There 
 are taxes on houses and lands, but the latter tax is extremely 
 light. Cane pays 2 dollars an acre in British Guiana, and 
 when empoldered, but not under cane, 2 cents an acre ; in the 
 other colonies it varies from 6d. to is. 6d. an acre for cane, 
 and i|d. to 6d. an acre for other land. But in some colonies 
 there is no land-tax of any kind. With respect to houses the 
 taxation varies greatly, but is nowhere heavy. 
 
 The Jamaica tax on stock, is. a head, seems to act in- 
 juriously on the rearing of cattle, for which some parts of the 
 island are suitable, and the import duty of IDS. each on horses 
 and cattle would be better suppressed. There seems no 
 reason why the rearer of cattle should be specially taxed more 
 than the raisers of any other form of produce. 
 
 A tax may be bad, but its removal may nevertheless be 
 impracticable all at once. A principle demonstrably right 
 when once departed from cannot always be restored without 
 some straining. If the principles of free trade had been 
 really kept in view by the authorities responsible for the tariffs 
 in Crown colonies, say for the last ten or fifteen years, and if 
 they had really wished to see the system that had been adopted 
 by the people of the United Kingdom adopted also in the 
 colonies under Crown government, as far as circumstances 
 made it practicable, there would be little now left to complain 
 of, because it is certain the present system would have been 
 gradually remodelled. On the contrary, it is evident that 
 high, and even restrictive, and, therefore, impolitic, tariffs on 
 imports have tended to increase, and the policy of free trade 
 has not been supported in the colonies in places where it 
 easily might have been followed with advantage to themselves 
 and to the trade of the United Kingdom. 
 
 In the present condition of these colonies it is easy to put 
 
 the finger on taxes whose removal would be a vast benefit. 
 
 It is not so easy to suggest others to replace those removed. 
 
 But it can be demonstrated that the revenue, as a whole, is 
 
 c 2
 
 28 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 unnecessarily large. In every country the revenue must be 
 somewhat in proportion to that amount which the people can 
 afford to pay. If the present taxes are demonstrably too 
 heavy, and are draining the vitality of the people, they should 
 be reduced. The expenses of administration must be made 
 to fit in with the necessities of the position. 
 
 Those who advocate protective duties in the United 
 Kingdom, because of their almost universal application on the 
 continent of Europe, overlook the intense misery, low position, 
 inadequate wages, and dangerous discontent of the populations 
 who have to labour and suffer and submit to the tremendous 
 tariffs of France. Italy, Germany, and Russia. It is easy also 
 to point to Canada, to the United States, and to the Australian 
 colonies, where free trade does not exist, for it matters very 
 little at present to the people who inhabit these countries what 
 freaks are played with their enormous natural resources. The 
 absurdity of comparisons of this nature are best shown by 
 figures. Were the United Kingdom to pay Government taxes 
 at the same rate per head as the people of Australasia, the 
 revenue to be raised would be about 240 millions sterling a 
 year. Notwithstanding this taxation voluntarily imposed and 
 but slightly felt, which would crush the life out of any 
 European State in two or three years when these Australian 
 Governments want to borrow money every one is desirous to 
 lend, and the loans reach a premium which the most powerful 
 monarchies in Europe (so sadly in want of money) could never 
 hope to obtain for their best guaranteed stock. None of the 
 Crown colonies are any way near the pre-eminent position of 
 actual and prospective wealth attained by these rich and really 
 powerful communities ; for, in fact, the people of most Crown 
 colonies are less able to bear burdens than the poorest and 
 most backward nations in Europe. It is curious to note how 
 little accumulated wealth exists in any of these Crown colonies. 
 The trumpery sums paraded in the savings' banks are almost 
 all the accumulated savings possessed by the industrious 
 classes, in the face of comparatively enormous exports ex- 
 tending over years. But the fact is that the trade and wealth 
 of a country must be measured by what it receives and retains 
 as well as by what it gives. If the people had some money 
 over after buying food, almost always heavily taxed, they 
 would spend more in British and other manufactures, in
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 2Q 
 
 household furniture and other commodities, and be able to 
 save besides. The larger amount of wages distributed of late 
 years in some of these Crown colonies, among a larger number 
 of labourers for raising a larger quantity of produce, has most 
 of it gone to buy enormously taxed food. There was little 
 or no surplus over for a larger purchase of British or any other 
 goods, or for putting by. 
 
 High duties on imports, in order that all other forms of 
 taxation may be avoided, and the introduction of a low class 
 labour to compete with native labour where such exists, and 
 beat it down to their conditions, may suit planters and 
 absentees and those who look to the raising of produce for 
 export as the end and aim of all colonial policy, but it does 
 not and cannot advantage the colony as a whole, and it is, at 
 the same time, undoubtedly detrimental to the interests of 
 British manufacturers and British working men, the best and 
 most natural markets for whose goods are thereby restricted. 
 A free trade policy would lessen the cost of food and, by 
 leaving a balance over after the primary necessaries of life 
 had been supplied, lead to a larger consumption of, and 
 consequently to a larger demand for, British merchandise. 
 The United Kingdom cannot expect to do a larger or more 
 profitable trade with a pauper community. The tropical 
 Crown colonies will never manufacture certain goods ; the 
 better off the people become the more they will take of such 
 goods from the United Kingdom. 
 
 The consequences of this fiscal system of high tariffs in the 
 West Indian colonies has resulted in a demand for what may 
 be called their commercial annexation to the United States. 
 The United States show no unwillingness to annex all the trade 
 and commerce of these colonies, but is adverse to assuming 
 the responsibilities and probable annoyances of a political 
 union. The upshot of the question is that the British Govern- 
 ment was requested to make a treaty with the United States, 
 which ultimately came to nothing. The terms of this treaty 
 were varied by the plenipotentiaries during the negotiations. 
 Differential tariffs were at one time proposed against Great 
 Britain herself. The final demands of the United States and 
 the West Indian Committee did not go so far as this, but they 
 were hostile to free trade principles. They included differential 
 duties against foreign countries. The West Indian Committee,
 
 30 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 who are protectionists, would have been glad to have intro- 
 duced the thin edge of the wedge of protection, by an obscure 
 transaction, into the fiscal policy of Great Britain. 
 
 It is clear that the remedy in the condition of the West 
 Indian colonies expected to be brought about by this treaty 
 would, under any circumstances, be only temporary, and would 
 certainly before very long prove entirely delusive. Reasons 
 for this view are not wanting. The sugar produced within 
 the States themselves is every year increasing in quantity very 
 considerably. The United States have entered already into 
 conventions with most of the sugar-producing countries in 
 Central America, and, before long, they will have concluded 
 similar arrangements with Haiti and San Domingo, and the 
 Spanish West Indies, and others. Under these circumstances 
 British West Indian sugar will certainly find a no better market 
 at New York than at London, the best market of the world. 
 
 A recent United States Consular Report from Jamaica 
 recommends this reciprocity treaty between the United States 
 and the West Indies. The consul was dissatisfied with the 
 course of trade, for although the island took from the United 
 States, in 1883, imports valued at ^"423,412, only about 
 ;i 0,000 consisted of dry goods and clothing, the remainder 
 being food stuffs ; while, during the same year, out of a total of 
 imports amounting to ^941,758 from the United Kingdom, 
 ^490,000 was the value of dry goods and clothing. A reci- 
 procity treaty would, the consul thinks, reverse the course of 
 trade. It is not quite so certain that it would do so to the 
 complete satisfaction of the consul unless, indeed, the West 
 Indies put a high duty on British imports and permitted 
 free access to United States merchandise. This is, indeed, 
 what was one time aimed at, if not proposed, for the only and 
 declared object of the United States was to shut out United 
 Kingdom dry goods in favour of their own ; they would have 
 little or nothing to gain otherwise by the treaty. Had the 
 treaty been concluded on the lines at one time proposed by 
 the United States and supported by the West Indian Committee 
 the mouthpiece of the absentee interest the United King- 
 dom would have been, to a considerable extent, at all events, 
 placed at a disadvantage as regards her general commercial 
 policy, and markets worth some three millions a year for her 
 goods would have been weakened. The West Indian Committee
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 3! 
 
 of London is apparently not interested in the production of 
 British manufactures, but their own clients will be the chief 
 sufferers hereafter should the necessities of the position make 
 a treaty necessary, giving the United States a preference over 
 foreign countries and to some extent over Great Britain herself 
 in her own colonies. 
 
 There is a danger, not apparently foreseen by those who 
 will mostly suffer from it, in endeavouring to force trade from 
 its natural channels and outlets by conventions such as those 
 proposed between the United States and the West Indies. The 
 West Indies receive from certain other foreign countries about 
 ;i, 000,000 a year in the aggregate above the amount they ex- 
 port to these countries direct, and this has to be paid for. The 
 paths of commerce are devious and complicated, and the best 
 and most profitable methods, when nothing interferes, are sure 
 to be found and developed ; at present, the United Kingdom 
 is the large receptacle of produce, and the balances due to 
 other countries are easily paid through her. Even the United 
 States take from the West Indies nearly ^500,000 a year less 
 than they send. If the West Indies receive no more British 
 goods, can the London market continue to absorb their 
 produce ? Will the course of trade that sets in with the United 
 States be 'such as to enable the valuable foreign commerce of 
 these colonies, which is not balanced by remittances of produce 
 of them, to be carried on as effectively as it is now ? Will the 
 United States be able to absorb the five or six millions sterling 
 of produce now annually shipped to the United Kingdom for 
 home consumption and distribution, if they send no equivalent 
 in return, or only the equivalent the United Kingdom now sends? 
 
 These colonies should undoubtedly do an immensely larger 
 trade with the United States taking food stuffs in exchange 
 but their commerce should also increase with other countries. 
 A mere shifting of the whole of their present trade to the 
 United States would bring no greater prosperity to anyone. 
 
 The theory has for a long time been abandoned with 
 respect to the West Indies that they should be ruled and 
 governed for the benefit of absentee interests, but in practice 
 they are nearly a's much so now as in any previous period. 
 Education has made sound beginnings, and the administration 
 in all its parts and details is honourable and impartial ; the 
 ordinary civil and criminal laws are equal for all classes and
 
 32 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 colours, and they are administered with an impartiality and 
 intelligence found nowhere outside of British rule. Yet the 
 people are poor and degraded because the industries by which 
 they live are weighed down and overborne by special systems 
 which, to say the least, are opposed to every fundamental 
 principle of right and justice known to Englishmen. So certain 
 is it that the economical systems in force in any country are 
 those which have most effect on a people's welfare. When a 
 country is ruled by the most highly educated and intelligent 
 classes, it is a grand thing to see the general welfare alone 
 cared for and ably administered; but it is a sorry and de- 
 grading sight to see these privileges misused for personal 
 ends. The inhabitants of the West Indies, by whose efforts 
 alone the absentee interests can claim to be wealthy, are 
 unjustly overburdened by a policy by which these interests 
 alone profit. In the West Indies, with a few exceptions, the 
 economical systems are framed entirely in the interests of this 
 class, which, through its agents, has, by the very use and 
 enjoyment of special privileges extending over many years, 
 accumulated enormous power in the various islands, and it can 
 now use this power and influence, and the power and influence 
 its position and wealth gives it at home, to hinder the enact- 
 ment of those just measures the position of these colonies so 
 urgently need. 
 
 The late Royal Commission made proposals of a rose-water 
 character, which, if adopted, would only consolidate for a 
 further period the stern evils under which the West 
 Indian people labour. How can it benefit a poor ill-fed 
 labourer that food should be made unprocurable by him 
 owing to a 20 per cent, tax on its value instead of being 
 unprocurable at a 35 per cent, tax ? Can it benefit him to any 
 extent worth naming if a governor gets ^1,000 a year less pay, 
 or a colonial secretary has henceforth to do work some one 
 else is now doing, if the taxes do not decrease, and the 
 paltry savings proposed are only to result, as was recom- 
 mended, in a further inroad of coolies for the benefit of 
 absentee planters, destroying and lowering still more completely 
 the value of his labour, and taking from him the last chances of 
 providing for his starving children ? Are the English people 
 really aware of the condition of the West Indies ? Is it not 
 true that among all those islands noted for the value of their
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 33 
 
 exported produce the inhabitants of not one of them could 
 exist without imported food ? And how is it there is a growing 
 desire among the people, even of those islands renowned of 
 old for their loyalty, to be severed from the British Empire, 
 and to take refuge and shelter under the flag of the United 
 States, if things are as they should be ? Is it not the un- 
 endurable ills they are made to bear that forces them ? And 
 now that the evil is accomplished, and the ruin can no longer 
 be altogether averted, what is proposed even in England? 
 An anti-free-trade convention with the United States ! What 
 is this convention to be ? Anything that can really benefit 
 the people should be done even at a national loss. Every 
 country in the end, the same as every individual, will have 
 to pay the penalty of injustice and wrong ; and if the people 
 of the United Kingdom lose much or all of the trade of these 
 islands, they will then be able to appreciate the advantages 
 of having abandoned the concerns of a whole people to be 
 dealt with by a selfish monopoly. There is another remedy, 
 not to the evil for much ruin, misery, starvation, disease, and 
 death will ensue whatever be done but to ward off further and 
 yet greater evils, perhaps insurrection and bloodshed, for it 
 must not be expected the people will starve quietly and that 
 remedy is to sweep away unconditionally all these food duties, 
 and to reduce the cost of administration. A fewer number of 
 high judicial and other officials, and a lesser number of 
 governors, should suffice in these days of steam and telegraphs.* 
 The population of the West Indian colonies, at the close of 
 1883, was about 1,537,250. In the coolie colonies of Trinidad 
 and British Guiana, the males outnumbered the females by 22 
 per cent., in the remaining colonies the females exceeded the 
 males by 18 percent. Taking all the colonies, each inhabitant 
 paid 135. 7d. customs duties, chiefly on food stuffs, in 1883. 
 The labouring classes pay as much of these taxes as any one 
 else, if not more. A man and wife and three children would 
 pay 675. i id. in customs charges in the year, even on the 
 insufficient diet they could procure. If a family do not eat the 
 flour and other food actually taxed, but only the roots procur- 
 able in the market, they pay the taxes nevertheless, because the 
 
 * A large reduction in the number of officials could be effected without 
 loss o( efficiency.
 
 34 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 prices of these articles accommodate themselves to the prices 
 of the flour and other taxed foods and rice, there not being 
 over a tenth enough of such root crops for the people's con- 
 sumption anywhere, sometimes not one-twentieth. 
 
 Wages will be as follows, on an average, for an able-bodied 
 man : 200 days at 20 cents. (iod.), 50 days at 28 cents. 
 (is. 2d.), 50 days at 32 cents, (is. 4d.), total for 300 days in the 
 year, ^14 us. 8d. Let it be assumed the man has a wife and 
 three children ; the woman, by the custom of the country, will 
 work at field labour, and will earn a third as much as the 
 man, or ^4 175. 2^d; the three children, on an average, and 
 before they work on their own account, will earn half as much 
 as the woman, or 2 8s. 7d. Total for the family 2 1 1 73. 5^-d. 
 in the year. This would be a strictly fortunate and hard-working 
 family ; it assumes no one will be sick, or incapable of work, 
 and that they will all be able to find remunerative work for 300 
 days in the year. Taking the whole of the West Indian 
 colonies, the taxation per head in 1883 was a little over 
 i 6s. 6d. For the family of five this will be 6 123. 6d., or 
 over 30 per cent, of their total possible earnings ; in Great 
 Britain the proportion is 1 1 '88 (but if the average earnings of 
 agricultural labourers only were considered, it would, perhaps, 
 be more) ; in the United States it is 9-21 ; in Brazil and South 
 America it is 19*25; in all Europe it is 15-3 percent. The 
 family, after paying these taxes, will have ^15 43. i i^d. to live on 
 for the year. The following details are founded on the latest in- 
 formation from reliable sources. Provisions may be purchased 
 at the prices quoted below in the largest ports, where they are 
 cheapest: Sweet potatoes, 60 to 100 Ib. for 45. ad. ; yams, 50 
 to 60 Ib. for 43. 2d. ; eddoes, 40 Ib. for 43. ad. ; rice (inferior 
 quality), 3 pints for 5d. ; corn meal z\ Ib. for 5d. ; wheaten 
 flour (low grade), 2 Ib. for 5d. ;' butter, i Ib. for 23. ; salt pork 
 and beef, i Ib. for gd. ; mutton (very rare), i Ib. for is. ; beef 
 (poor quality), i Ib., 6d. ; fish, i Ib., 3d. to 6d. Food has been 
 scarce recently, and is likely to become more so ; the above 
 prices will be much increased (30 to 50 per cent.) in 
 country districts and minor ports, and in some places all of the 
 above provisions will not be obtainable at any price. This 
 industrious and comparatively well-to-do family of five, after 
 paying taxes, will have iod. per day to live on. Deductions 
 will have to be made for clothing, 55. per head a year, 253. ;
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 35 
 
 house (and taxes for same, not included in Government taxes), 
 303. per year ; 53. a year for cooking materials, furniture, and 
 fuel. This will leave about 8d. a day for food for the five 
 persons. Let them buy and eat the lowest-priced articles 
 procurable, and they must pass a life of semi-starvation, and 
 without common decencies, and this for people who have to 
 work hard every working day in the year, and are all able 
 to do so. 
 
 With just enough to subsist on, a man and wife and two 
 children will want is. 8 id. a day for food, as follows : Rice, 
 4^ Ibs. at 2|d. = n|d. [other articles such as corn-meal, sub- 
 stituted for rice, will cost about as much], three rations of salt 
 fish or meat at 2d. = 6d. ; lard or other fat for the family per 
 day, id. ; tea, sugar, milk, condiments, and vegetables each 
 day, 2^d. Sweet potatoes make a good diet when in quantity 
 and assisted by other articles, but it is a very dry food; they are 
 only to be had during a portion of the year, as they will not 
 keep in hot climates.* 
 
 It is not easy to arouse public attention and interest in 
 England on behalf of the West Indian Islands. In^the now 
 olden time after the Napoleonic wars, and before the rise 
 of the great colonies, they were commercially more prosperous 
 than any other colonies ever had been, and the land was better 
 cultivated ; they were thought much of in consequence. A 
 country that has never been opened up may have a future of 
 value, but it is a serious misfortune when a once prosperous 
 community becomes relatively poor. While the latter is sus- 
 piciously regarded by the colonist, the speculator, and the 
 investor, the former may attract all these. It is so much better 
 to have a character to establish than to have acquired a doubt- 
 ful reputation, even if it be acknowledged to be undeserved. 
 
 The abolition of the " Consignees Lien " of the West 
 Indian Encumbered Estates Court has been recently effected 
 by the British Parliament. This "lien" was one of the main 
 causes of the ruin of these colonies. It was a commercial 
 servitude, a monstrous monopoly, which practically handed 
 over the whole planting interest of these colonies to the few 
 British merchants who had dealings with them. The freedom 
 
 * A% r erage prison diet for adult, West Indies : 2 oz. yam, 2 oz. fish, 
 breakfast ; 12 oz. corn-meal, 2 oz. fish, dinner ; sometimes i oz. more fish, 
 or 2 oz. fresh beef, 4 oz. dumpling, or 2 Ibs. cooked rice, and 3 oz. fish.
 
 36 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 of labour and the freedom of food have yet to be obtained. 
 The prejudices of Englishmen against the West Indian labourer 
 have to be overcome. These prejudices have been sedulously 
 fostered by foolish, ignorant, or designing people ever since 
 emancipation, and have done more than anything else to 
 restrain capitalists and settlers from seeking these colonies. 
 Who would care to live in a place where the bulk of the people 
 had the character usually given to the West Indians? The 
 praedial larceny of which they have been so much accused has 
 been enormously exaggerated. Any market gardener in 
 Middlesex will be able to tell how his labourers are given to 
 occasional larcenies of vegetables and fruit. There is evidence 
 to show that such larcenies are quite as numerous as in the 
 West Indies. In neither country, however, are they of 
 sufficient moment to warrant any outcry, such as one so often 
 hears. The average West Indian labourer is as honest, as 
 hard-working, as intelligent, and as trustworthy as can be had 
 anywhere, if all decent inducements be not denied him. 
 
 With regard to the West Indian Islands, as a whole, they 
 are near to the greatest markets of the world, and they have 
 good harbours. Their soil and climate are so rich and varied 
 that every form of produce can be abundantly cultivated. 
 Differing from the majority of tropical countries, the existing 
 population would suffice to raise more than double the produce 
 now taken from the land. Under circumstances, which it is not 
 unreasonable to assume could be brought to act effectively, the 
 population should steadily increase in number and, what is still 
 more essential, in strength of body and in material and moral 
 well-being. It is known that in tropical countries every acre 
 of land, to be properly cultivated, requires in many cases the 
 labour of a man, and that the produce raised on this acre will 
 be sufficient to amply repay the labour and capital employed ; 
 it is therefore certain that the West Indian labourer should not 
 only be a prosperous man, but there is room for three times the 
 number of present inhabitants at fairly remunerative wages. 
 But the development into this sound stage from the present 
 condition will be gradual, because nearly all the requisite con- 
 ditions of soundness will have to be built up. 
 
 In every country where the employer is of a different race 
 from the labourer there are many difficulties to be overcome 
 that do not exist in communities where all grades of the
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 37 
 
 population are of one stock. In the latter case the distinctions, 
 not of wealth only but also of social condition, are usually 
 graduated and are softened down by a community of feeling 
 which causes a sympathy to exist between the very lowest and 
 the highest in the land. In the West Indies the tiller of the 
 soil often works for a man born in the same country, some- 
 times, but usually of a different race, and there is an absence 
 of that feeling founded on both having much in common 
 which is seen to operate in producing harmony in countries 
 where similar disparities of fortune exist but where master and 
 man are, after all, of one blood and might lay claim to a 
 common ancestor. For these reasons the rights of the people 
 who, nevertheless, pay the taxes are frequently overlooked in 
 the West Indies, and not only has this been the case, but the 
 people have been unjustly and foolishly held accountable 
 when the condition of the planting interest was unsatis- 
 factory. 
 
 The African races imported into these colonies were well 
 adapted to laborious pursuits, and they made the islands the 
 richest spots on the earth and the planters the most opulent of 
 landowners. When the English people became adverse to 
 slave labour in any form in the colonies it was decreed that 
 these African slaves were entitled to freedom, and it was given 
 them in the year 1833. The planters who had realised great 
 wealth by servile labour were paid several millions of money as 
 compensation for its loss. Thirty years had hardly elapsed 
 from this epoch in the history of the islands when a new 
 planting interest, that had arisen meanwhile, appeared, power- 
 fully represented before the British Legislature and Govern- 
 ment, and asked to be permitted to introduce a new and 
 foreign labour. The aborigines had been replaced by Africans, 
 the new interest wanted to replace these Africans by East 
 Indians. The immense wealth of the islands had not alto- 
 gether disappeared, but it had been largely reduced, and the 
 economic position and business prospects of the various settle- 
 ments were stagnant. Although the descendants of the Africans, 
 who had created the old wealth, lived on the old land and had 
 multiplied in number, their labour was not made effective. 
 Why was this ? The answer usually given, and generally 
 accepted, has been that the liberated slaves and their descend- 
 ants refused to labour, and nothing is more curious in the
 
 38 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 whole history of this important question than the facility with 
 which this untruth has been adopted by all classes of society, 
 including the administrative authorities and legislatures at 
 home. The consequence of the acceptance of this wrong 
 view has been a series of legislative enactments for the islands, 
 not only contrary to all the principles of that economy 
 deemed necessary for the welfare of our own people at home, 
 but contrary to the accepted principles of modern civilisation 
 everywhere. 
 
 The West Indian African never forgot he was no hered- 
 itary bondsman ; he was not a slave to the white man by any 
 so-called natural law the result of a social organisation, nor was 
 he one by war or by conquest. He was born of free parents in 
 what was to him a free country, and his bondage, far away from 
 his home, was due to corruption, to kidnapping, and to deep 
 wrongs too great to be ever wholly forgiven. There un- 
 doubtedly, and in consequence, existed a latent hostility 
 between the negro slave and his white master. Under the cir- 
 cumstances it was inevitable such should be the case. Dis- 
 tinctions of race so wide would, in themselves, lead to many 
 social disagreements, without the tremendous barrier which 
 separates an owner from a race forced into servitude being 
 added. This dangerous feeling between the slave and his 
 owner, ready at any moment to break out into a servile war, 
 was replaced after emancipation by a coldness and want of 
 sympathy. This new sentiment was due to the planters not 
 viewing the change brought about by emancipation in its true 
 business and commercial light ; they did not act fairly and 
 generously to the newly emancipated men. There were 
 exceptions to the rule, but they were so rare that hardly any 
 of the rights incidental to and inseparable from free labour 
 were admitted by the planting community, or they were given 
 grudgingly. In the Encyclopedia Britannica for 1854 a 
 writer, speaking of a West Indian island (Nevis), said : " It 
 has been gradually declining because the proprietors, from 
 their aversion to emancipation, have endeavoured to preserve 
 as much as possible of the old system which had ceased to be 
 applicable or beneficial to the present state of society ; instead 
 of adopting a system suitable to the changed state of affairs, 
 the acquisition of wealth by the negroes is still discouraged by 
 their employers." What was said of this island was applicable
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 39 
 
 to the others, and it continued to be more or less applicable to 
 all of them up to a recent date. 
 
 It can be t shown that the people have not been offered 
 an adequate payment to meet the mere cost of the bare sub- 
 sistence of themselves and their families. There has been a 
 jealousy on the part of proprietors acting in opposition to the 
 wish of the labourers to get a plot of ground and a cottage of 
 their own. The native labourers having been thus discouraged, 
 physically by want of sufficient wages to buy food and socially 
 and morally by want of a home, consequently worked irregularly 
 and lived partially a vagabond life as untitled squatters. 
 
 It is also sometimes said of a labourer in the West Indies, 
 when doing task work even when he does it well see how 
 he completes his task before the day be half over ; this proves 
 he does not get too much work for the money he earns ! 
 People who reason thus forget that any man who puts all his 
 energy into a job in hand (and the African is apt to do this for 
 the sake of the subsequent leisure) can do it in a certain time, 
 but that it does not follow he has strength left for a second job 
 the same day. An English labourer can do more work in eight 
 hours than some Continental peasants in sixteen hours, and he 
 also does it better because he is better paid and better fed. 
 The Continental peasant feeds himself nearly as badly as the 
 West Indian is fed, but he works, nevertheless, rather more 
 than the West Indian, because his labour is for himself; he 
 would not labour on the same conditions for anyone else. 
 
 The general impression about the industries followed by 
 the people of our West Indian colonies is not a correct one. 
 The popular notion is that the work to be done is purely 
 agricultural and that it is exceedingly easy for a human being to 
 exist comfortably out there by doing little work and earning 
 little money ; that, in fact, food can be almost picked up by 
 the way-side and the struggle for existence is reduced to a 
 minimum. As a matter of fact the industries pursued are 
 often quite half manufacturing industries. The making of 
 sugar or rum from the cane, as it ought to be made, and as it 
 must now be made to command a market, is not a less 
 elaborate process than that which is followed in many of our 
 factories. In fact the preparation of almost any produce for 
 the great markets, that cannot be sent in its raw state, is daily 
 becoming a process depending more and more on skill and
 
 40 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 machinery, and is a very different affair indeed from the 
 growing of corn and digging of potatoes. The ideal notion we 
 mostly have of how the black man lives is also equally far from 
 the stern reality. Nature is great everywhere, and her great- 
 ness and potential riches are perhaps more abundantly 
 observable under tropical suns than in temperate climates. 
 There is clearly more foliage if fewer flowers. Fruits and some 
 natural productions, that man may eat but cannot subsist on, 
 may be occasionally more abundant and richer to the sight ; 
 but it is open to doubt whether they are, on the whole, more 
 substantial than what may be picked up in our English woods. 
 At any rate, the clearing away of ancient forests from the 
 proximity of his abode, and the ownership of most of the good 
 land by individuals, as well as the necessities of civilisation, 
 have made it as impracticable for the negro of our West Indies 
 to count on nature to help him in the way of food as for the 
 modern Englishman to look to acorns and nuts as a sup- 
 plementary diet. It is necessary to say this because of the 
 false impression abroad due to statements made by people who 
 know better, but who seemingly cannot avoid saying again how 
 easy it is to live in the tropics, simply because it has been 
 always said. 
 
 The food of the people of our West Indian colonies has to 
 be imported from foreign countries in a far larger proportion 
 than is the case even with England, and there would be 
 starvation in the islands of the West Indies within a very short 
 time were the supply to be cut off by untoward circumstances. 
 In some of the islands, however, a portion of the population 
 undoubtedly does subsist almost wholly on roots of their own 
 growth and on salted fish. The appearance and physique of these 
 people is inferior. Anaemia is largely and widely prevalent 
 among them, they are physically unfitted for a severe remunera- 
 tive labour, and diseases and leprosy are prevalent. These facts, 
 so well known to careful observers, were reported by Com- 
 missioners some years ago, and the last Royal Commissioners 
 also stated : " Medical evidence is strong on the subject of 
 signs of decreasing vitality in the negro race." (Jamaica 
 Report, page 63.) Some people seem to imagine the negro so 
 made by nature that he can be treated differently to men of 
 other races, and that heavy and reliable labour can be got out 
 of him without the expense of getting him the same food other
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 4! 
 
 men want. But nature is inexorable and her laws are not to 
 be thus trifled with ; she has already done much for the black 
 labourer in enabling him to work in tropical heat and under 
 burning suns ; but this is very wasting work for the frame, even 
 of a black man. It is not necessary to study the question 
 profoundly to see that the only cause of the loss of vitality 
 complained of in the negro race (which must and will always 
 continue to be the chief labouring population of the West 
 Indian Islands) is the want of a sufficiency of proper 
 food. It is practicable enough, no doubt, to exist in the 
 tropics on little food, as may be done elsewhere, but the 
 labour a man can give will be exactly proportioned to the 
 sufficient or insufficient quality and quantity of his food. For 
 manual labour a low-class food means a low-class energy. To 
 this cause may be distinctly traced the want of energy and the 
 listlessness so much complained of among some of the 
 labouring population of the West Indies. Even in Europe, 
 where the incentives to labour are as powerful as they can be 
 made among communities of men, the working classes, where 
 they find the necessaries of an adequate and decent subsistence 
 are almost beyond the reach of ordinary labour, are liable to 
 fall away in energy, intelligence, and general aptitude for work. 
 All life, movement, spirit of progress, and love of work dis- 
 appear, and the people, and perhaps the race, are held culpable 
 for a condition of things which Englishmen themselves would 
 succumb to under similar circumstances. 
 
 The negro is a powerful man by nature. It is, indeed, 
 doubtful whether 'races can be found anywhere of greater 
 physical strength than those to be met with in Africa. This 
 characteristic has been built up by generations of men whose 
 surroundings were favourable to physical development. It was 
 doubtless due to this that the African race was so sought after 
 as slaves, and they fetched higher prices as slave labourers 
 than any other people ever did before. They transformed the 
 West Indies into gardens, and made millionnaires of their 
 owners. 
 
 The same race now peoples the West Indies in larger 
 numbers than ever, and yet the condition of the islands is un- 
 satisfactory ; their industries are not well-sustained, and the 
 position of all classes is precarious. Why is this ? How comes 
 it that islands by their position within easy reach of the best 
 D
 
 42 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 markets in the world, having the most suitable soil and climate 
 for the raising of every description of valuable produce, 
 inhabited by a labouring population of unsurpassed qualities, 
 and with England behind them as the mother country, should 
 be verging on bankruptcy and ruin ? 
 
 The answer is simple enough. By artificial means food is 
 made so scarce and dear, and the inflow of capital is so 
 restricted, that both the money necessary to support the 
 people's industries and the food the labourer should live on 
 are placed out of reach ; the local planter cannot keep up his 
 cultivation to its proper standard for want of capital, and the 
 local labourer cannot live decently because of the%igh customs 
 tariffs. The market prices of most tropical commodities pro- 
 duced for export are now so low that the grower and manu- 
 facturer find it difficult to place them at a profit, at the same 
 time these commodities supply scarcely any nourishment 
 to the labouring population, while customs duties make bread- 
 stuffs and other imported food artificially dear. 
 
 The charges on bread-stuffs in the West Indies on im- 
 portation make them 40 per cent, dearer, as a rule, than they 
 would be were there no customs charges. The revenues 
 raised throughout these islands have trebled during the present 
 generation. As about a quarter of these revenues are raised on 
 imported food, the charges on the labouring classes have largely 
 increased. Wages, meanwhile, have remained stationary where 
 they have not declined. Mr. McLeod, a Jamaica planter, 
 stated to the Royal Commissioners (Jamaica Report) : 
 
 " The greatest want of the country is cheap living. I have seen men 
 after two or three hours' labour in a complete state of exhaustion and 
 staggering from weakness. I attribute this to the want of proper food. I 
 am speaking of the class who really labour, but from the dearness of im- 
 ported articles cannot procure for themselves, and those dependent on 
 them, the necessaries of life." 
 
 The returns show that the amount of rice consumed per 
 head of general population in Trinidad is 123 Ib. a year, and 
 in British Guiana 182 Ib. These are the colonies where the 
 estates are largely worked by Indian coolies imported to labour 
 under indenture, and these people live mostly on rice. The 
 average for the labouring population will be about 100 Ib. of rice 
 per head a year in Trinidad, and 150 Ib. in British Guiana. In 
 Barbados the average is 54lb. ahead for the general population,
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 43 
 
 and somewhat less for the labouring portion ; in Jamaica 
 it is only 1 7 Ib. a head. In Trinidad the general population 
 consume 105 Ib. of wh eaten flour per head, but the share of the 
 labouring population is estimated to be only 33 Ib. per head ; 
 and in the Island of St. Christopher, where the average per 
 head is 104 Ib., the labouring population has only 26 Ib. In 
 Jamaica, where the average is 41 Ib. of wheaten flour, the 
 labouring population only gets 14 Ib. ; and in Barbados, where 
 the average is 49 Ib., the labourer gets 12 Ib. of wheaten flour 
 only in one year. Antigua and Barbados consume the most 
 corn-meal, and this is only an average per head of 52 Ib. to 
 54 Ib. a year. In Jamaica and Trinidad it is 12 Ib. per head a 
 year. In Jamaica the labouring population consume therefore 
 28 Ib. of bread-stuffs and 17 Ib. of rice per head a year. The 
 average in Barbados is 91 Ib. of bread-stuffs and 54 Ib. of rice, 
 and in Trinidad 57 Ib. of bread-stuffs and 100 Ib. of rice. 
 These are three typical settlements from which the condition of 
 the others may be somewhat fairly judged, but there are others 
 worse off. If we compare these returns with those from other 
 countries we shall find that the average grade of living, after 
 making every allowance for root-crops, is a very low one for 
 the labouring class, and manifestly insufficient for genuine 
 labour. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether the amount 
 of roots, fruit, and vegetables eaten by the labouring population 
 in the islands is much larger in quantity per head than that 
 which is consumed by the people of the United Kingdom and 
 of the United States, who are supposed to live mainly on bread 
 and meat. In Great Britain the average consumption of rice 
 is quite 13 Ib. a head; and potatoes alone come to over 27 Ib. 
 a head; and the people consume bread at the rate of over 
 450 Ib. a head per annum. The population of the United 
 States consume per head about 8 bushels of grain a year, and 
 they have more vegetables and fruit than the people of the 
 West Indies. Bread in the West Indies, to speak fairly, 
 averages 3d. the Ib. 
 
 In Africa the black man has manioc, yams, green corn, as 
 well as sweet potatoes, and other roots and vegetables. He 
 has bananas, plantains and fruit, but he has also a good deal 
 of rice and Indian corn, and large quantities of palm-oil. He 
 has the chase. It is astonishing what a quantity of food a 
 powerful full-grown African will consume. But the question, 
 D 2
 
 44 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 as regards the West Indies, also involves the further point 
 whether there is a sufficient and constant supply of roots and 
 fruits at low prices to meet the wants of the labourer, assuming 
 that he can thrive on them alone while working on an estate. 
 This is where the whole evidence in favour of a root diet 
 breaks down. It is abundantly evident that the quantity of 
 root crops locally grown is, in most localities, wholly insufficient 
 for the wants of the population, notwithstanding the complaints 
 of planters that the negro spends much of his time in raising 
 such crops for his wants, and thereby denudes the planter's 
 labour market of its proper supply of hands, and makes labour 
 irregular and sometimes scarce at critical periods. People 
 also seem to forget that economic laws work the same in the 
 West Indies as in other parts of the world : where bread and 
 corn are dear other food articles, more or less, even if it be 
 some distance off, keep a proportion to them in value ; for the 
 West Indian labourer, after all has been said, does eat bread 
 when he can afford to get it. But the difficulty of getting 
 bread forces him to seek the other food, and thereby renders 
 it more generally sought after and more costly to him than it 
 would be were bread-stuffs available. Sometimes root pro- 
 visions are exported from an island where the people would be 
 glad for them to remain, to another island where there is a 
 higher market for them. The evidence from tropical labour 
 generally overwhelmingly proves that the severer forms of such 
 labour cannot be accomplished persistently and satisfactorily 
 on a root diet ; that is to say, the kind of labour now wanted 
 by a planter who hopes to sell the produce he raises at a profit. 
 The people of the Southern States, where the labour is 
 chiefly performed by the African race, do not admit that roots, 
 and some salt fish, with a limited supply of corn-flour, suffice to 
 make a labourer efficient. The dietary there is chiefly bread 
 and butter, fresh and salt pork, fried or boiled beef once or 
 twice a week, baked or boiled potatoes and other vegetables, 
 and a pint of coffee, and milk ; this last without limit, and given 
 three times a day. The efficiency of a man for hard work 
 depends much on how he lives, and there is nothing in the 
 climate of a warm or tropical country which will enable a man 
 to work hard on a low diet. If the experience of the Southern 
 States, where the people are comparatively prosperous, goes to 
 prove that a liberal diet is necessary, the experience of the
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 45 
 
 West Indies, where the people are not prosperous, is a proof 
 that the inferior diet and lower standard of living make labour 
 bad, or at all events so unreliable as to be inefficient. 
 
 Food is dear in the West Indies, and difficult to obtain 
 by the labourer, and in the Southern States it is cheap and 
 abundant The wages paid to coloured labourers in the 
 Southern States* are $12-10 a month in South Carolina, 
 0i8'2o in Louisiana, 0i2'86 in Georgia and North Carolina, 
 $13-96 in Virginia, and 816-40 in Florida an average of quite 
 2S. a day. In crop time this is doubled. With these figures 
 it is easy to see that in the future it will be difficult for the 
 West Indies to compete with these fertile districts where pro- 
 duce-growing is skilfully and energetically conducted and gives 
 good profits. They will be beaten hereafter in the markets of 
 the United States unless the complexion of things be altered ; 
 unless the people get cheap food to put them somewhat on a 
 level with others, to enable them to work better and earn more 
 wages. 
 
 It matters very little practically, although in principle it 
 has its value, to say that in the United States the tariffs are, 
 in the main, imposed for purposes of protection, and in the 
 West Indies for revenue purposes only. But it is said -the 
 food tariffs in the West Indies did favour the growth of home 
 provisions, by raising their selling price at all events, and the 
 late Royal Commission alluded to the fact, and gave the 
 opinion that a tax on land instead of on imported food would 
 shift taxation from bread-stuffs to yams and plantains. If no 
 corn, practically speaking, were grown in England, and a high 
 duty on foreign flour made bread unprocurable by the people, 
 would not a tax on land instead of on flour make potatoes and 
 vegetables so dear that the fiscal change would be injurious to 
 the labourer? This is one of the arguments employed in 
 favour of keeping up the food tariffs. Another argument is 
 that the labourer pays no other taxes, and that it is the only 
 way to get at him. A further reason, which destroys any value 
 there may be in the previous one, but which, nevertheless, is 
 often used almost in one breath by the same people, is that the 
 tax does not affect the labourer, as he practically makes little 
 use of bread-stuffs. The Commissioners also say that food 
 
 * Encyclopedia Americana for 1883, article "Agriculture,"
 
 46 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 taxes in the West Indies cannot be looked on in the same 
 light as in the United Kingdom, because the soil of the former 
 can produce all the food necessary for double the present 
 population, while in England at least one-half has to be im- 
 ported. But this argument fails because at present there are 
 practically no bread-stuffs or rice grown in the West Indies, 
 and it would be folly to grow them instead of sugar and other 
 produce more suitable to the soil and climate ; for these food- 
 stuffs can be had from the States at perhaps half or quarter 
 the cost it would take to raise them in the islands. And there 
 are not enough root crops grown for one-twentieth of the popu- 
 lation. Raising produce for export pays better than growing 
 yams and root foods, except occasionally, and in a small way. 
 But these duties are protective in one sense : they protect the 
 large landed proprietor and others who might fairly bear more 
 of the public burdens, and they shift too large a portion of the 
 taxation on to the already heavily-laden shoulders of the toiler. 
 Those who can best bear it almost escape taxation, while 
 they reap the most benefits from settled and orderly govern- 
 ment. It is now proposed to tax land at is. per acre up to 
 100 acres, 6d. an acre from 100 to 500 acres, and i^d. an acre 
 for every acre over 500 acres the peasant proprietor, the 
 owner and cultivator of a small holding, being thus the most 
 heavily taxed, and the large proprietor being less taxed. The 
 reason given for this favouritism, as it must be called, is that 
 the large owner will have much of his land in wood and 
 pasturage, which is held not to be so valuable as cultivated 
 ground. This can hardly be deemed a sound and valid 
 reason. It is a direct tax on industry and enterprise in favour 
 of the man who may choose to keep land for his pleasure, or 
 for speculative purposes, or because he prefers keeping it in his 
 own hands to letting others make a better use of it. Pasturage 
 is valuable, and so are properly managed forests. 
 
 The freeing of bread-stuffs, fish and meat, in fact, what is 
 or ought to be the food of the people, from any customs 
 charges, will, of course, cause a serious loss of revenue. The 
 difficulty is no doubt great, but it has been exaggerated. There 
 are forms of taxation available that are now untouched. The 
 facility of raising revenue by customs tariffs in the West Indies, 
 where there was no educated public opinion strong enough to 
 curb the fatal tendency, and no local government on the spot
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 47 
 
 to restrain it, has resulted in an unusually large proportion of 
 revenue being thus raised. Free-trade principles are dominant 
 in Great Britain, and are practised there because the people so 
 will it, and are well-informed enough to see the advantages 
 and necessity of applying them. The influences that prevail 
 in the West Indian Administrations are sectional ; the power 
 is practically in the hands of classes whicb, in England, would 
 not hesitate to re-establish protection, had they a like influence 
 and control and deemed it in their own interest to do so. The 
 public mind of the Islands is also ignorant of what is really 
 wanted : the people feel the pressure but do not know of the 
 remedies. ^ 
 
 Fewer customs charges will cause a diminution of the ex- 
 penditure of collection, and the force of events would, in the 
 course of time, lead to a less public expenditure by a needful 
 concentration of offices. The various governments in the 
 West Indies were founded when communication was difficult, 
 and each island had therefore its own complete staff of officials. 
 Recent federations have not altogether broken through long- 
 established usage. With the aid of steam and the telegraph, 
 administration might be made cheaper by concentration and the 
 employment of fewer hands. 
 
 Taxes on real and personal property could be made to con- 
 tribute a far larger share of revenue if they were imposed in 
 the manner adopted by most civilised countries. A tax on 
 food falls ultimately on the proprietor and cultivator, through 
 his available labour being made inefficient. Customs charges 
 are mostly unobserved in their immediate effects by the ignorant, 
 who feel the pinch but do not trace whence it comes, and the 
 well-to-do are directly little affected by them. The indirect 
 consequences are those which are most mischievous. In their 
 present low condition any direct taxes on the people would be 
 exceedingly unpopular, and perhaps be resented ; they would 
 deem them fresh charges, and look upon any promised relief 
 from other quarters as delusive. They see the cost of govern- 
 ment increasing every decade, while the prosperity of the 
 Islands shows no stable advance in any direction, and often a 
 falling away. On the whole no conclusive reason has been 
 shown why land should not pay more of the public revenue. 
 If a choice of evils has to be made, there can be no doubt 
 the food taxes do irreparable and far-reaching injury. While
 
 48 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 the Islands were undergoing the transformation into free trade 
 centres of industry, by the abolition of these tariffs, it may be 
 that an Imperial loan would be required to aid the administra- 
 tion. But the prosperity that would certainly follow on the 
 adoption of our fiscal system in the West Indies would enable 
 them before long to repay the aid given. 
 
 The West Indies are very anxious to have sure and re- 
 munerative markets for their produce in the United States 
 and elsewhere, but it will be in vain to expect to have this boon 
 permanently anywhere unless they can also take something 
 equal in value in return. No one owes the West Indies any- 
 thing, and they cannot expect to be favoured above other 
 people by selling what they produce at a profit and not taking 
 a full equivalent. The West Indian food tariffs, as it happens, 
 interfere with industries quite as much as protective tariffs and 
 bounties do in other countries, but with more fatal results, for, in 
 the case of the West Indian Islands, these tariffs lessen the power 
 and influence they would undoubtedly otherwise command in 
 the markets of the United States and elsewhere as consumers. 
 The entire abolition of vexatious and injurious tariffs long ago 
 would have been the means of establishing a much larger trade 
 with the States in necessary bread-stuffs, which it would have 
 been the interest of everyone to keep up, and sugar and other 
 produce would have naturally gone in payment. The West 
 Indian Islands may be sure of {this, that no compact or treaty 
 or arrangement with any Government will establish trade per- 
 manently on a sound basis unless it be the interest of the 
 several dealers to carry it on. They can make it the interest 
 not only of the dealers in the United States but of those of the 
 world generally to do business with them by adopting free 
 trade principles, and abolishing tariffs that keep out commodi- 
 ties necessary for the people's welfare. They have now to buy 
 their food dear, while they must sell their produce low, and 
 they are consequently more heavily weighted than others in the 
 competition. But can they expect permanently to establish a 
 sound basis of prosperity by dealing with the question super- 
 ficially, by the application of palliatives and by special treaties 
 with one State ? If they set to work on sound principles of free 
 trade with every country, they will not have to depend on any one 
 market for their existence ; they will be sure of themselves and 
 of the products of their industry finding buyers in every market.
 
 THE WEST INDIES. 49 
 
 The tariffs on food not only interfere with and hinder the 
 natural flow of supply and demand and the interchange of 
 commodities, and therefore check trade and intercourse, but 
 they lower the value of labour by lessening the purchasing 
 power of wages, on which its physical strength depends. Mr. 
 Mundella said in Parliament on the 3ist of October, 1884 : 
 11 They must make Englishmen the most intelligent, the most 
 thrifty, and the most competent workmen in the world, and 
 then they would have nothing to fear from foreign competition." 
 If the West Indies overlook the interests of the labourer so 
 completely as they do now, they must not expect to succeed in 
 competition with other countries which work on different lines. 
 
 Vital statistics are to some extent a gauge of the condition 
 of a people. The West Indian climate being remarkably suit- 
 able to the negro race, the returns of births and deaths have 
 much value because they bear directly on the question of food. 
 The causes that operate among the poor in cold countries 
 necessarily result in a considerable mortality, but deaths among 
 infants are largely owing to the severity of the weather. In the 
 West Indies the climate is favourable for children. Yet in 
 England out of every 1,000 children born 736 are alive on the 
 5th birthday. In Jamaica there would be only 600, and in 
 Antigua only 500. These serious circumstances have led to 
 the establishment of public nurseries, and in Antigua it is pro- 
 vided likewise that an inquest shall be held on every child 
 dying within a year of its birth. A more certain remedy would 
 be cheap and abundant food. The negro mother is fond of 
 her child, but she is often unequal to the strain of rearing it. 
 
 At the Jubilee of Emancipation, Lord Derby said : 
 
 " What may be the future of the negro race (in the West Indies) is one 
 with which we are only indirectly concerned. What does concern us is 
 that we should do our duty by them. Let them have freedom, let them 
 have a fair chance, let them be fairly matched in the race of life ; and 
 whether they win or lose our responsibility is covered. We are not 
 answerable for their doing well ; we are answerable for putting no obstacles 
 in their way to prevent them doing well." 
 
 This is the soundest advice that was ever given to the Colonial 
 Office. For the future the West Indies will have to stand on 
 their own merits against powerful competitors. Not only will 
 they have to compete for the best markets, but the people of 
 African descent will emigrate from the islands if the latter do
 
 50 THE CRQWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 not offer them advantages at least as great as they can obtain 
 elsewhere. The soil of these competing countries is no richer, 
 but it is equally as rich as that of the Islands, and the best 
 appliances of human ingenuity will be brought to bear on it. 
 If the British colonies fail in this contest, if they be not among 
 the foremost, it will be due to Englishmen not giving them the 
 advantages of free trade and cheap local self-government. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CEYLON. 
 
 CEYLON has historically an important and picturesque past. Its 
 present position is one of interest, but it has lost much of its 
 picturesque element. For reasons whose validness, if at any 
 time demonstrable, have never been made evident, the island 
 has been subjected to a fiscal and economical policy which 
 has not led to that prosperity which should ever distinguish 
 British rule. It would not be difficult to prove how a different 
 fiscal and economical policy would have led to more satisfactory 
 results, and have brought more happiness and more prosperity 
 to the old races who inhabit the island. The position is such 
 that it is doubted whether 1,500 years ago the island was not 
 better off than it is now after some centuries of European 
 dominion, of which about ninety years have been British. It 
 is satisfactory, however, to know that, notwithstanding the policy 
 so long followed in the island, and which is so opposed to 
 everything that is deemed essential to prosperity by all parties 
 in Great Britain, the colony can yet compare advantageously 
 with the adjacent colonies of other nations. Such compli- 
 mentary comparisons are often made, and, in consequence, it 
 is to be feared that too low a standard is apt to be accepted by 
 legislators and by governors for their platform. A British 
 Crown colony should compare with no other place : it should 
 stand alone as an example of a sound, enlightened, and gene- 
 rous policy practically exemplified. 
 
 When the forced labour which probably built the tanks, 
 and certainly kept them in repair and the milder forms of 
 slavery that existed in the island were abolished at the close of 
 the year 1844, no other methods were adopted to keep up the
 
 CEYLON. 51 
 
 tanks and supply the necessary irrigation for cultivators. Vast 
 districts fell out of cultivation, and had to be abandoned by the 
 population. It is true that before emancipation many of the 
 irrigation works were neglected by the administration, and fell 
 into decay. Some people doubted the wisdom of the abolition 
 of forced labour on account of these results, but it is manifest 
 that this just and statesmanlike act which was imposed on the 
 administration by public opinion at home should have been 
 followed up by the necessary measures to keep established 
 public works in repair. Any form of forced labour is well 
 known to be at least as expensive to the community as paid 
 labour, and, in fact, it is generally more expensive under 
 modern conditions of society and law, and always unjust and 
 irksome. The measure of emancipation was not in entire 
 accordance with the views of the Government officials in the 
 island, and these gentlemen, and their successors, have often 
 pointed out how unwise were the British public to interfere with 
 the gentle, paternal despotism that operated in their Eastern 
 dominions. Forced labour, redeemable by fine, was kept on for 
 the making and repairing of roads, because powerful interests 
 were brought to bear. But the policy of this forced labour is 
 also essentially bad and unwise. In recent times the fatal system 
 of neglecting the tanks has been somewhat reversed, and numbers 
 have been repaired and put to work at considerable cost ; be- 
 tween 1869-73, 3,000,000 rupees are stated to have been 
 spent on them, the people finding the money ; but a great deal 
 yet remains to be done before the effects of past neglect can be 
 obliterated. The abandonment of the tanks by the British 
 Administration not only ruined thousands of proprietors and 
 families, and caused large cultivated districts to relapse into 
 jungle, but actually cut off the water supply for the consump- 
 tion of the people, who were forced, in consequence, to drink 
 from polluted sources, and died in vast numbers of the diseases 
 thereby caused. 
 
 Forced labour has been revived, in some parts, for tank- 
 repairing and the establishment and maintenance of irriga- 
 tion works ; owners of paddy land and villagers being com- 
 pelled to give a certain number of days' labour in each year, 
 in proportion to their holding or interest, or pay a com- 
 mutation fee. The system has kept some tanks in repair, and 
 has resulted in important local irrigation works, that were
 
 52 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 much needed, being carried through. The Government 
 evidently gets considerable advantages from these works, by 
 the increase of its revenue from the taxes on grain ; in fact, 
 it reaps the advantage of the tenants' improvements, albeit 
 they have been obtained by compulsory labour. Besides the 
 repairing of tanks, there are the necessary works for the distri- 
 bution of the water to be made and maintained, and it seems 
 that certain obsolete local customs have been revived which 
 practically result in a system of forced labour ; the villagers 
 being compelled to labour on the irrigation works for a number 
 of days each year sometimes receiving the average wages of 
 the time and place, sometimes cultivators work without 
 remuneration. Although the village communities have been 
 entrusted with some jurisdiction in these matters, it is almost 
 certain -the Government headmen and the most powerful and 
 influential among the villagers will find means to act unfairly 
 to, if not to oppress, the poorer labourers. Such despotic 
 systems of coercive labour always work that way, wherever they 
 are in operation and however well they may be supervised. It 
 seems the Government charges no water rates when the earth- 
 works have been constructed by the enforced, unpaid, labour 
 of the village cultivators, and it then also supplies, at its own 
 cost (from the public taxes), the necessary masonry and iron- 
 work connected with such works.* 
 
 It is to be remarked, in connection with this subject, that 
 the making of, and the repairs to, these village tanks and the 
 attendant irrigation works, when operative, have vastly benefited 
 the occupiers of the neighbouring lands, and the Government 
 has reaped a large and more certain revenue. On the other 
 hand, in those parts where such systems have not yet been 
 enforced (or rather where village irrigation work has not yet 
 been taken in hand), the land is often in a bad condition, 
 and the revenue, of course, suffers in proportion ; the paddy 
 crops being uncertain, or there being none. 
 
 The argument that has naturally followed is that the 
 system of enforced labour is suited to the island, and should 
 be pursued and kept up, at all events for beneficial schemes of 
 recognised public utility. Now an argument of this nature 
 would be valid in any country on similar grounds. It is said 
 
 There are complaints to the contrary,
 
 CEYLON. 53 
 
 the people are paid in those cases where it is proper they 
 should be. But why should paid labour be forced unless the 
 remuneration be inadequate? Why are not the railways also 
 constructed by the forced labour of those who want them, and 
 who benefit by them, if it be the system suitable to the island, 
 and for the construction of important works ? What are wanted 
 in Ceylon, as in all tropical colonies, are good communications 
 and serviceable irrigation works, and as these cannot be made 
 at Ceylon, more than anywhere else, without costing their full 
 value in labour and in material to some one, why not have 
 them constructed, even as other public works are, by con- 
 tract, and payable, as other public works are, by taxation or 
 by loan ? Why pursue a method always degrading to a people, 
 and certain to impede, for years to come, that real advance 
 which depends more on an independent self-reliance and a 
 consciousness of freedom of action and absence of restraint 
 than on anything else? The practice of Oriental despotic 
 systems, even with benevolent intentions, is unworthy of a 
 British Administration. The public revenue pays for the rail- 
 ways that open up the hill-country to British planters and 
 capitalists. If irrigation works are essential to the welfare of 
 the people, they should be constructed and supported by 
 methods consistent with modern civilised administration, and 
 a local control which gives the people a real voice in matters 
 which so deeply concern them. 
 
 It is the opinion of many high authorities that these irrigation 
 works, undertaken and carried through by the village councils 
 but which councils the Administration sets to work, guides, and 
 instructs, through its agents have been of great use. It is a 
 misfortune that it should have been deemed requisite to have 
 had recourse to doubtful methods. It is impossible to justify 
 enforced labour, especially in countries where it is so necessary 
 to plant other notions among the people, and the use of such 
 labour makes less favourable the contrast of British rule and 
 authority with the despotic and unjust, as well as impolitic, 
 systems known to be employed in Java, Sumatra, and other 
 neighbouring places. It makes it really impossible for English- 
 men to denounce oppression anywhere. 
 
 The opinion is not universally held that the cultivation of 
 paddy is a paying concern in Ceylon, and many good judges 
 hold that it would be better to raise other crops and get the
 
 54 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 whole of the rice from Burmah or India, where it can be grown 
 much cheaper. Irrigation by tanks is useful and necessary for 
 many other kinds of produce besides rice. The natural irriga- 
 tion by river overflow in the great rice countries not only con- 
 veys moisture but manure. Sir C. P. Layard (a great Ceylon 
 authority) deems rice cultivation in Ceylon the least profitable 
 of pursuits for a native. To unprejudiced lookers-on it will 
 appear as if the Administration would not have interested itself 
 so much in the matter were it not for the revenues derivable 
 from grain. Irrigation will be wanted whatever may be the 
 cultivation of the future It is to be hoped a man's ordinary 
 freedom of action will be allowed him in Ceylon, even should 
 he reside where a village council, under a despotic Governor's 
 president, holds sway. 
 
 The Government railways have been made from Colombo 
 to the coffee and mountain districts ; the money was raised by 
 debenture loans, repayable by sinking funds. This is an out- 
 lay that was primarily almost entirely made in the interest of 
 planters, but it will be of use to the island, on condition that' 
 further railways be constructed over the whole island, and not 
 into districts for the convenience of British planters only 
 although these, also, should be well opened out. . Private^ . 
 enterprise should be the best medium, and this would leave 
 the Government free to deal more largely with the important 
 matter of tanks and irrigation. There were 178 miles of rail- 
 way completed, and more under construction, at the close of 
 1883. There were also about 1,100 miles of telegraph-wires 
 in use. As in all mountainous countries, subjected to a heavy 
 and fitful rainfall, roads are difficult to be kept in effective 
 repair, and this is no doubt one of the causes of that other 
 special forced labour or road tax being continued. It will also 
 be a reason why railways, in such countries, are generally a 
 practical and economical necessity, and pay for their construc- 
 tion fairly well. 
 
 The population in 1881 was about 2,764,000, the males 
 being in excess by about 180,000; the 160,000 to 200,000 
 coolies, who come over from the coast of Coromandel and 
 Southern India every year for several weeks or months or years 
 to labour for the estates and on the public works, have com- 
 paratively few women among them, compared with the resident 
 population. The island races are divided into Singhalese, who
 
 CEYLON. 55 
 
 number about three-fifths of the whole population ; Tamils 
 (Malabars), one-fifth ; and Moors (Indo-Arabs) or Mussulman 
 Tamils, nearly one-fifth. The remaining races, mixed and pure, 
 comprise together only about i per cent, of the whole, and 
 include the Europeans, the Burghers and Eurasians (descen- 
 dants of Portuguese and Dutch settlers and mixed races), 
 Veddahs, Parsees, Javanese, Afghans, and others. 
 
 In Ceylon the Government is the landlord. There are 
 about 2,600,000 acres of land under different forms and 
 degrees of cultivation. The amount of land privately held has 
 been variously estimated; there is the Government estimate 
 and there are other estimates from private sources which 
 conflict. Some of the total estimated acreage of the island 
 (15,909,000 acres) will be unavailable and unremunerative for 
 cultivation purposes ; deduction will also have to be made for 
 foreshore, water, roads, and railways, but all of these are ren- 
 dered remunerative for fiscal purposes by the revenue officials ; 
 further large deductions will have to be made from the possible 
 cultivated area for forest reserves and other purposes not neces- 
 sarily unremunerative to the Administration. It is evident 
 there is room for a large increase of the various industries con- 
 nected with land. Of the cultivated land, some is privately 
 held, having been purchased but some is held on terms of 
 yearly payment to the Administration. The land held by 
 planters has been sold to them ; land has also been reputedly 
 sold to native cultivators, but the sale is often an apparent one 
 only, for almost all cultivators of grain and paddy have to pay 
 a tithe of their produce yearly, which practically amounts to a 
 considerable rent-charge, from which raisers of other forms of 
 produce are exempted. It has been shown that paddy culti- 
 vators are also expected to make and keep up village tanks 
 and irrigation systems. The land at present unalienated may 
 be said to belong theoretically to the Government of Ceylon, 
 in trust for the people of the island ; much of it, indeed, 
 consists of jungle and waste that was occupied and cultivated 
 by the inhabitants in times more or less remote, before cultiva- 
 tion, villages, communities, and towns depreciated and fell 
 away, and the misfortunes that ever attend on war and con- 
 quest overtook the Ceylonese. The forest lands are said to 
 amount to 2f millions of acres. 
 
 The 2,600,000 acres in cultivation (including natural
 
 56 THE CROWN COLONIES OF 1 GREAT bRlTAlN. 
 
 pasturage) in the year 1885-6 comprised about 736,000 acres 
 for different grain and rice, 143,000 acres for coffee, 680,000 
 acres for palms, 36,000 acres for cinnamon, 48,000 acres for 
 cinchona, about 102,000 acres for tea plants, 7,000 acres for 
 cardamoms, 210,000 acres for cotton, vanilla, cacao, ginger, 
 spices, cultivated grass, and different kinds of fruit and cane. 
 It is to be observed that these estimates are open to some 
 variation in detail. A large capital is invested in the higher 
 class of cultivation, commonly called the " planting industry," 
 and more is being continually added. Certain products, such 
 as coffee, sometimes fall off, and others, such as tea, have 
 more ground given to them ; but the above figures will give a 
 fair idea of the position for the year 1885-6. 
 
 The chief produce raised for exportation used to be, and 
 perhaps still is, plantation coffee. In 1884 the amount was 
 13^ million rupees, of which Great Britain took about 
 ^1,082,000. [In 1880 the value of this article exported 
 came to ^3,124,000 a small proportion is native grown. 
 In 1881 the value was ^2,000,000, and ^1,685,000 in 
 1882.] In the same year, 1884, cinchona, valued at about 
 4^ million rupees, was raised, and nearly i^ million rupees 
 in tea.* Cacao (a recent introduction) gave 323,000 rupees. 
 The cinnamon cultivation is almost entirely in the hands ot 
 the natives, the average yearly export for ten years (1874-83) 
 was nearly ^75,000. The areca palm nut is largely con- 
 sumed in the island; there was an average export of about 
 ^93,000 annually during the ten years 1874-83. The pro- 
 duce of the cocoa-nut tree is chiefly exported in the form 
 of oil, and the amount varies considerably every year ; for ten 
 years (1874-83) it averaged nearly ^248,000 a year, and the 
 local consumption of nuts and oil will be equal to many times 
 the export. The fibre of the cocoa-nut is utilised in various 
 ways. Plumbago is an important item of export, on which the 
 Government charges a royalty of 5^d. per cwt. The average 
 yearly export for seven years (1874-80) was ^"123,000, and for 
 the three years 1881-83 ; 2 44> 00 j tne quantity exported in 
 the ten years was 1,710,000 cwt, bringing ^39, 187 duty. The 
 total produce of the island exported in 1884 is estimated to 
 
 * The cultivation and export of tea has greatly increased within the 
 last two years.
 
 CEYLON. 57 
 
 have been less in value than that of the previous year by 
 1,882,889 rupees. Ceylon re-exports some imports, but this 
 trade also fell off in 1884 from previous years ; it fell off nearly 
 950,000 rupees in 1884, compared with 1883. 
 
 The imports of bullion and specie into Ceylon for the 
 fifteen years 1869-83 amounted to about ;i 1,600,000, largely 
 from India, of which only about ;i, 341,000 appears as being 
 re-exported. Some of this large balance probably remained in 
 the island (the savings banks have about ^2 00,000), but the 
 greater part certainly has not remained, and much of it was 
 doubtless taken home by the returning Tamil labourers and 
 others leaving the island, and would not figure in any returns. 
 
 The total imports into Ceylon for the 15 years 1869-83 
 were about 75^ millions sterling, and the total exports 64 
 millions a difference of ji^ millions; but 10^ millions of this 
 is accounted for in the specie returns above. For the 2 years 
 1882-83 the total imports were about ^8,900,000, and 
 the total exports ,6,740,000. In 1884 the imports were 
 51,322,142 rupees (,4,811,450), of which 7,837,792 rupees 
 (,734>793) was specie; and the exports were 33, 7 20, 134 rupees 
 (,3,161,262), of which only 211,845 rupees (^19,860) was 
 specie. In 1883 the imports of specie were 5,190,669 rupees 
 (,486,625). 
 
 In the 8 years 1869-76 the imports from Australasia 
 amounted to ,1,506,000. and the exports to Australasia to 
 ,406,000. In the 7 years 1877-83 the imports from Aus- 
 tralasia were only ,313,000, and the exports thereto were 
 ,504,000 ; during the first period Australasia sent ,1,100,000 
 more than she received, and in the latter period she received 
 ,90,000 more than she sent, with a diminished trade. On 
 the other hand, in the 12 years ending 1883 the United States 
 received ,1,983,000, but there are only about ,4,000 imports 
 from that country during this period. In the 10 years 1874-83 
 Austria took nearly ,3,000,000, but exported to Ceylon very 
 little in return; in the 5 years 1879-83 the proportions were 
 18 to i. During the 10 years ending 1883 France and her 
 Possessions sent ,2,400,000, and took ,1,700,000 in return. 
 There was a balance due to them (,700,000) which was pro- 
 bably paid in bills. There was but a slight trade with Hong 
 Kong, Mauritius, and Suez ; and about ,30,000 to ,40,000 
 a year imports from the Maldive Islands.
 
 58 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 The trade with the United Kingdom shows exports 
 amounting to 28,821,000 for the 10 years 1866-75 an 
 average of 2,882,000 a year; and 17,331,000 for the 5 
 years 1875-80 an average of 3,466,000. The value of 
 imports from the United Kingdom (including bullion and 
 specie, when given, and foreign and colonial produce and 
 manufactures) for the 10 years 1866-75 was about 
 14,070,000 an average of 1,407,000 a year; for the 5 
 years 1876-80 it was ,7,167,000 an average of 1,433,000 
 a year. During the 15 years 1866-80" Ceylon sent to the 
 United Kingdom 46,152,000, and took 21, 237,000 (includ- 
 ing specie). 
 
 In the 3 years 1881-83 the exports to the United Kingdom 
 amounted to 5,924,000 (Ceylon valuation) an average of 
 1,974,000 a year; and the imports from the United Kingdom 
 were 3,676,000 an average of 1,225,000 ayear (including 
 bullion, specie, and foreign and colonial produce shipped from 
 Great Britain). 
 
 The imports of manufactured cotton and twist averaged 
 855, 200 a year for the 10 years 1867-76 and 572,400 for 
 the 5 following years 1877-81. For the 3 years 1882-84 the 
 average was 490,000 (at is. lo^d. a rupee), of which about 
 247,000 a year was in cotton yarn and piece goods from the 
 United Kingdom. The imports of haberdashery and millinery 
 for the 10 years above mentioned averaged 73,300 a year, 
 and for the 5 years following 89,000 a year, and for 1882-83 
 73,000 a year (of which under 19,000 a year was from the 
 United Kingdom). The imports of coal and coke averaged 
 172,000 a year for the 10 years 1867-76, and 187,000 for 
 the 5 years 1877-81. In the 3 years 1882-84, 556,645 tons 
 were imported (in 1883, the United Kingdom sent 55 per 
 cent.). The imports of cutlery and hardware from all countries 
 averaged 36,000 a year for the 18 years ending 1883, but has 
 been declining of late. 
 
 Ceylon during the 18 years ending 1883 has imported 
 from the United Kingdom 24,913,000 nearly no per cent, 
 less in value than she sent to it (52,056,000). During the 
 same period of 18 years her total imports (including bullion 
 and specie) amounted in value to about 89 millions sterling, 
 and her total exports to about 74! millions. The United 
 Kingdom, therefore, sent something over 27 1 per cent, of total
 
 CEYLON. 59 
 
 imports and took about 69^ per cent, of total exports, during 
 that period. 
 
 The Board of Trade returns for the whole 18 years show 
 the exports to Ceylon from the United Kingdom to be about 
 .7,750,000 (or 45 per cent.) less than the colonial valuations, 
 and the imports from Ceylon to be about ^"10,000,000 (or 19^ 
 percent.) more than the colonial valuations for the same period. 
 
 In the year 1882-3 Ceylon imported from India rough 
 and" clean rice, grain, wheat, pulse and seeds, weighing 
 3,278,330 cwt, and in 1883-4 she imported 3,241,190 cwt. 
 In the former year she also imported from India 2,729,034 Ib. 
 flour, and 2,938,296 Ib. in the latter year. In the two years she 
 took from India 8,120,737 Ib. salt fish. The imports from 
 India for the 18 years 1866-83 were valued at 55-^- millions 
 sterling, being 62 per cent, of total imports. The exports to 
 India for the same period were valued at Ceylon at less than 
 12 millions sterling. 
 
 Next to rice and grains, the most important imports from 
 India consist of cotton goods. In the 9 years ending 1884 
 their export value was estimated in India at .1,326,251 an 
 average of .147, 361 a year. India also sends over .8,000 a 
 year in gunny-bags to pack produce for export. An item of 
 import into Ceylon one would not expect to find is about 
 ,17,000 a year from India in vegetables and fruit fresh fruit 
 and fresh vegetables (some of which are re-exported). Ceylon 
 takes nearly .25,000 a year in sugar from India, and ,20,000 
 a year in special woods. 
 
 In the 3 years 1881-3 ^ ie duties of customs paid in Ceylon 
 on grain, dried fish, curry stuffs, and sugar alone, all articles 
 chiefly imported from India, were .769,413 (at is. io|d. 
 the rupee). 
 
 The total value of grain and paddy imported into Ceylon 
 in the 17 years 1867-83 was over -2, 300,000, and of cleaned 
 rice nearly 29*- millions sterling; during the same period the 
 imported salt and dried fish was valued at over i-J- millions, and 
 curry stuffs were valued at about .880,000. Live stock, 
 cattle, &c., were valued at ,1,085,000, and poonac (to feed 
 cattle and poultry and for other purposes) at .1,020,000. 
 Most of these imports were from India and Burmah, and 
 amounted to ,36,285,000. In the 3 years 1882-4 the value 
 of the above articles imported amounted to 44 per cent, of the 
 
 E 2
 
 60 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 total imports of the colony. The quantity of rice alone was 
 16,764,400 bushels, valued at ^5, 110,000, being 37^ per 
 cent, of total imports during those years. The import duties 
 levied on this rice at 29 cents a bushel was ^455,782 (at 
 is. io|d. the rupee), about 9 per cent, on its declared value. 
 During the same three years paddy and other grain was imported 
 into Ceylon, the duty on which, at 29 cents a bushel for grain 
 and 13 cents a bushel on paddy, came to about ^45,000. 
 
 In the same period the tax levied on grain grown in the 
 island itself was about ,276,000. This makes a total grain tax 
 of ,776,782 in three years, orthesame proportionas if the United 
 Kingdom paid about ^3,400,000 each year on corn imported 
 and grown at home. For a rich country like England this 
 would be thought serious, but Ceylon is a poor country, 
 where the wages of common manual labour are only a fraction 
 of the like wages in England, and the tax is levied almost 
 entirely on rice, the food of the poor. But these are not the 
 only charges ; home-grown grain has further burdens to bear. 
 The Government tax (or rent) on lands under grain or paddy 
 cultivation varies; it is sometimes more than one-tenth on 
 paddy lands, but the tenants may redeem the annual extra 
 charge, when more than the tenth, by effecting a commutation 
 of it on the basis of a twenty years' assessment, and paying 
 this amount in four instalments. From lands under fine grain, 
 and not adapted for paddy cultivation, a tenth of the yearly 
 produce only is exacted ; Kandyan territories are exempted. 
 The excise tax on grain has this much to be said in its favour, 
 that it causes the Administration to be directly interested in 
 the production of rice and grain, and consequently one might 
 suppose in the maintenance and spread of irrigation works. 
 But the Administration could perform this essential duty for the 
 people and obtain the necessary revenue more equitably. It is 
 for statesmen and administrators to devise the best methods, 
 and to abolish those which are bad. The taxes have no doubt 
 fallen on uncomplaining shoulders. In fact, the cultivators of 
 grain and paddy might not themselves object to the tax if 
 its removal led to another; it raises the cost of an article 
 they produce, but which it should be the interest of every 
 one else to make cheaper. No sound reasons can be ad- 
 vanced for continuing to impose a tax of this nature on a 
 special industry when so many other sources from which
 
 CEYLON. 6 1 
 
 revenue could be obtained are comparatively untouched. It 
 is as well, also, to candidly acknowledge that taxes of this 
 class-character lower the prestige of British administration ; 
 it is so evident that the same standard is not applied to the 
 people who have a voice in these matters, and those who are 
 administered patriarchially by an intelligent and benevolent 
 despotism. 
 
 The Administration is composed of a Governor, an 
 Executive Council of five officials, and a Legislative Council 
 of nine officials and six non-officials, the latter being all 
 nominees of the Governor. 
 
 If all cultivated lands were to be taxed alike in propor- 
 tion to their value, instead of those only under a particular 
 produce raised exclusively by natives and the most useful 
 and essential one of all, and the least remunerative to culti- 
 vate the Administration would come in contact with classes 
 of cultivators of a very different type to the docile and sub- 
 missive Ceylonese. But no British Administration need fear 
 doing right. A tax when spread over a larger area could be 
 much lower in proportion for all. There is a point also of 
 some moment to be thought of in these questions, and that 
 is, who consumes, or would consume if they could, the most 
 British merchandise, the planter or the people ? After nearly 
 a century of British rule, Ceylon takes yearly less of British 
 produce and manufactures ; the people are too poor to pay for 
 more. The great prosperity so often talked of was simply the 
 raising of produce for export, which planters sent to London 
 because it happened to be the best market for its sale, and 
 probably will continue to be so more and more. If the 
 industrial and economical history of the Crown colonies proves 
 anything, it is that this form of progress, when forced beyond 
 its natural growth, is not of much permanent use to a colony 
 or to its inhabitants, and it confers but little benefit on British 
 industries. Except the planters, who are often absentees, 
 the only people who profit at all are the merchants who deal 
 in the produce, and the carriers of it. The money spent in 
 wages gets distributed no doubt among the people, but these 
 wages are terribly low, and it is seen the people have to spend 
 most of them in buying Indian rice and paying the heavy 
 taxes levied on it, and on their home-grown grain. Mr. John 
 Fergusson, a most distinguished authority, in his work, " Ceylon
 
 62 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 in 1883," says : "We have no reserve fund of past profits to 
 fall back upon. . . . Money has been sent here to fell 
 our forests and plant them with coffee, and it has been returned 
 in the shape of copious harvests to the home capitalist, leaving 
 us in some cases the bare hill-sides from whence these rich 
 harvests were drawn," The speculation was undoubtedly a 
 good one; Mr. Fergusson calculates (in 1883) that 18,000,000 
 cwt. of coffee were raised on 320,000 acres of plantations since 
 1849, the cost was 425. per cwt, and it sold at 6os. per cwt., 
 a profit of ^17,000,000 in the aggregate. He laments lands 
 now lying waste that for years enriched the owners. He might 
 have added, the owners who paid no taxes. 
 
 As Mr. R. Giffen stated at the Statistical Society's meeting 
 on the 2ist February, 1882, "It is quite conceivable that a 
 country may be very prosperous without foreign trade at all, or 
 with very little foreign trade, or that for special reasons the 
 foreign trade of the least prosperous country, as a whole, may 
 be making greater progress than the foreign trade of a more 
 progressing country. The progress of the foreign trade of 
 different countries is thus no index at all as to their relative 
 progress materially." Another important authority, Mr. 
 Bourne, said : " Russia exports ^50,000,000 of corn a year, 
 but her people are worse fed, housed, and clothed than perhaps 
 any other nation in Europe." The conclusion that must be 
 arrived at is : that the raising of produce for export is a con- 
 siderable factor in the progress of a colony, if the people in- 
 habiting the colony are those who profit by the industry ; but 
 it is not necessarily the most important one when they do not 
 do so ; and no Administration will be doing its duty if it con- 
 fers on a planter's industry special facilities at the expense of 
 the general population. 
 
 It is not easy to describe the system so as to bring it home 
 to Englishmen, and make it understood by them this system 
 of looking at a colony chiefly as a produce exporter ; it has 
 been so often praised, and taken as a standard of the highest 
 administrative ability. But supposing at their own Norman 
 Conquest the conquerors, instead of becoming Englishmen, 
 had remained strangers, and had likewise brought over foreign 
 serfs for a term of years from the Continent to cultivate the 
 land, but not permanently to dwell on it, and had paid these 
 serfs out of the proceeds of cultivation just enough for them to
 
 CEYLON. 63 
 
 live on while they remained, and then exported the whole of the 
 crops so raised to the Continent, and pocketed the value, the Eng- 
 lish people (the Saxon serfs) having nothing to do in the mat- 
 ter, and having no concern in the industry that was exhausting 
 the best selected soil of their country. They must also imagine 
 the Saxon serfs had to get the food they could not raise, on the 
 plots of land they were allowed to occupy, from abroad, and 
 pay high duties on its entry, paying a like duty on the grain 
 they raised for themselves. It is said, of course, the people in 
 the colonies prefer this system, b.ecause they will not work 
 themselves, and, in fact, do not wish to do so. The coolies in 
 Ceylon and in the West Indies may be thought by some 
 to be as the Irish coming across to assist in the English 
 harvest, but the conditions are not by any means the 
 same. The results of the system speak for it, and prove it to 
 be one by which no country can permanently advance in 
 wealth, and no home of a people can ever be made happy and 
 prosperous. The cultivation of a country is never on a secure 
 basis except it be in the hands of the permanent inhabitants, 
 and indissolubly bound up with their family life, their interests, 
 and their hopes. It must not depend only, or even chiefly, for its 
 support and its existence on foreign capital and foreign enterprise. 
 This foreign capital and this enterprise may fail, or they may 
 seek other lands, or, having made the profits sought after, they 
 may retire on the fruits. But a people cannot retire from busi- 
 ness ; with them the struggle must be eternal and ever to be 
 renewed; the richest and the poorest, the oldest and the newest 
 countries have to struggle and to work; the moment they 
 cease to do this they die. 
 
 It is to be remarked that the duty on rice in the husk is 
 13 cents, and on cleaned rice it is 29 cents a bushel; as it 
 takes rather over 2 bushels of rice in the husk to make 
 i bushel of clean rice, this makes the duty on rice in the husk 
 about the same. The export duty from India is the same on 
 rice in the husk as on clean rice (3 annas a maund, about 
 6|d. per cwt), the consequence is that the importation of rice in 
 the husk into Ceylon is very limited indeed, because, on the 
 whole, it thus pays a higher duty (including Indian and Ceylon 
 duties) than clean rice. In tropical countries rice in the husk 
 will keep a long while, and may be stored up ; but cleaned rice is 
 perishable, and rapidly deteriorates. It is obvious that the
 
 64 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 system pursued even were duties on grain an unobjectionable 
 form of taxation is the worst possible ; it makes it difficult 
 for the people to take due advantage of a cheap and abundant 
 harvest and low prices to store up grain, and constrains them to 
 live, as it were, from hand to mouth on a perishable and 
 deteriorating commodity. It is well known that people often 
 prefer to purchase the article that is ready for immediate use, 
 even if the quality be somewhat inferior to that which might be 
 had by more trouble ; but on the score of cheapness and health, 
 it must often be better could the people obtain sound rice in 
 the husk, which they can clean themselves by manual labour, to 
 rice cleaned in India and full of dust and weevils. In order to 
 equalise the price of rice in the husk and clean rice to the 
 people of Ceylon, the former, at all events, should enter the 
 island free. It takes much labour to unhusk a bushel of rice. 
 
 The salt-tax is not much felt by the bulk of the population, 
 but it is said to act injuriously on the health of the people who 
 inhabit remote places ; it undoubtedly hinders agricultural 
 improvement in well-known directions. 
 
 The revenue for the seven years 1867-73 (at 23. the 
 rupee) was ^7,464,831 ; for the seven years 1874-80 it was 
 ^9,792,138; for the three years 1881-83 it was ,-3,585,434 
 (at is. io|d. the rupee). For the first seven years the duties 
 of customs amounted to 25 per cent, of the revenue, for 
 the subsequent seven years they amounted to over 20 per cent, 
 of it, and for the three years 1881-83 tnev were about 22 per 
 cent, of it. Besides the ordinary revenues, there are local 
 revenues for local purposes, amounting to about ^200,000 a 
 year. 
 
 There is an item of revenue which exists in this colony 
 (and, indeed, in too many other of the Crown colonies) which 
 compels every male between the ages of 18 and 55 to give six 
 days' work a year on the roads, or pay i rupee 50 cents 
 (2 rupees in Colombo). If, as with a conscription, every 
 man physically capable were compelled to work the six days, 
 the law would be absurd, but it would be just in the 
 abstract. At present it amounts to an unjust tax ; the revenue 
 from it in 1883 was 704,294 rupees, in 1878 it came to 
 928,793 rupees. [Indian coolies employed as agricultural 
 labourers are exempted, also those seeking employment as 
 such ; this is an exemption entirely in favour of the planters,
 
 CEYLON. 65 
 
 who are the only employers of this foreign labour.] This 
 Ceylon law is generally regarded as a remnant of the " Raja- 
 caria," the forced labour of bygone days. But the fact is that 
 colonial officials, when they proceed from one colony to 
 another, are apt to take with them their old-established views 
 with regard to systems they find operating in some backward 
 settlement they have been administering, and many colonies 
 thus get inoculated with views that have been condemned by 
 every politician and statesman in Europe. This tax of 
 i~ rupees is paid equally by the labourer, who only uses the 
 road by walking on it barefooted as a passenger, and the pro- 
 prietor who uses it to have brought to his door in waggons and 
 carts every commodity of a well-to-do household. [Of course 
 he pays also for his waggons and carts.] The local price of 
 good able-bodied labour averages 35 cents of a rupee a day, 
 but it is doubtful whether a man between 45 and 55 years of 
 age could earn more than two-thirds of this amount ; the 
 i i rupees represent 4^- days' work to the average good labourer, 
 and to the middle class man an hour's work. The revenue for 
 general purposes of government amounts to about 8s. 6^d. per 
 head of population ; compared with Mauritius this is very low, 
 not quite 4* rupees per head (the rupee at is. io|d.), against 
 24] rupees at Mauritius. But it represents over 13 days' labour 
 to every able-bodied working man in Ceylon (at 35 cents a 
 day), and the same for his wife and each child (because the 
 average of taxation is based on the entire population) ; together 
 with road labour, and after allowing for certain deductions for 
 family earnings, the taxes the Ceylonese adult has to pay represent 
 two months' labour of 26 days each to the working man a 
 year (who has a wife and three children), at the Ceylon rate of 
 wages 35 cents a day ~ 9 rupees 10 cents a month of 26 days ; 
 this at is. io*d. a rupee = 175. ofd. For a family of five = if|d- 
 per day each (30 days to one month). 
 
 There is no objection to the amount paid in taxation in 
 Ceylon, if it be raised by safe and sound methods, and wisely ex- 
 pended. Wages, it is seen, are very low, and there is no reason 
 why they should not continue to be so. But in order to increase 
 the quantity and efficiency of this cheap labour it will be necessary 
 to make the food of the people abundant and low-priced. 
 Ricardo laid it down that the natural price of labour was 
 regulated by the cost of food. Exceptions have been taken to
 
 66 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 this statement; perhaps it should include all other primary 
 wants as well as food. It will always, however, be largely true 
 as regards unskilled labour everywhere.* Sir E. Watkin, M.P., 
 in a letter to the Select Committee of the House of Commons 
 on Irish Industries, dated 25th June, 1885, said: "When the 
 labourer passes from the stage of underfeeding to that of good 
 nutrition he can do more work, and he always does it." The 
 fiscal systems actually in operation in Ceylon, with regard to 
 food, make it difficult, if not impossible, for the labourer, at 
 present wages, to subsist adequately. There is an excise duty 
 of at least a tenth on the production of most grain raised in 
 the island itself. This is an old form of taxation which may 
 not have been specially injurious in the olden time when the 
 people lived and worked under entirely different conditions to 
 those of the present day. In those days, also, the tanks and 
 irrigation works brought richness to every field ; there were no 
 other ways for raising revenue, and commerce, agriculture, and 
 industry were carried on by different, and defunct, methods, 
 and the island produced more than was wanted for a popula- 
 tion more numerous than that of the present day. But Ceylon 
 does not and cannot now raise enough grain for half its people. 
 It therefore seeks rice in India and Burmah. There is a tax 
 levied on the export of this article from India at the rate of 
 6^d. the bushel ; it is taxed again on entering Ceylon at 6^d. 
 the bushel. It is well known that many people in the island 
 are driven to find unwholesome substitutes for the food thus 
 partly placed out of their reach by fiscal arrangements. 
 
 The Government expects to be recouped for the expendi- 
 ture on irrigation works, irrespective of the tax of y^th and 
 upwards charged on most corn and grain grown in the island. 
 A local Ordinance, passed in 1873, enables cultivators to con- 
 vert the repayment by 10 annual instalments [for the outlay on 
 works on irrigated lands] into a fixed charge in perpetuity of 
 one rupee an acre. When land is not irrigated there is often a 
 limited crop, and sometimes no crop at all. The Administra- 
 tion gains by the certainty of abundant harvests and the 
 attendant prosperity. The Government, by this one rupee an 
 acre, is repaid, more or less, for all outlay on repairing tanks 
 
 * But the natural price of labour does not and could not possibly exist 
 in any country where the inhabitants have to compete with coolie or any 
 other form of servile labour, as a part of the social system.
 
 CEYLON. 67 
 
 and other irrigation works. It has been seen that the 
 Administration takes, besides, about a tenth or upwards of 
 nearly all the grain and rice crops raised by the capital, enter- 
 prise, and labour of the native cultivators. In the sixteen years 
 1868-83 this tenth land revenue amounted to 15,395,000 rupees, 
 while during the same period all other land revenues only 
 amounted to 1,512,000 rupees. 
 
 Import duties are as follows : on rice, wheat corn and 
 Indian corn, and other grain, 29 cents of a rupee (about 6id. a 
 bushel), on paddy (rice in the husk), 13 cents of a rupee. 
 Wheat flour, i rupee per cwt. Dried fish, 50 cents per cwt. 
 Ghee, 2 rupees 50 cents per cwt. Bacon, butter, ham, and 
 cheese, 3 rupees per cwt. Salted beef and pork, i rupee 25 
 cents per cwt. Tea, 25 cents per Ib. Jaggery or palm sugar, 
 75 cents; brown or muscovado sugar, i rupee 75 cents; and 
 refined sugar, 3 rupees per cwt. Salt, 2 rupees 13 cents per 
 cwt. Cocoa-nut poonac, 25 cents per cwt. Pickles, sauces, 
 confectionery, cocoas, 6^ per cent, ad valorem. Spirits under 
 proof, 4 rupees per gallon, and in proportion to strength. Ale in 
 wood, 1 3 cents per gallon, and 1 7 cents per dozen. Wine in wood, 
 50 cents to i rupee per gallon, and i rupee 25 cents to 2 rupees 
 50 cents per gallon in bottle. Tobacco, 12 cents per Ib., un- 
 manufactured ; and 25 cents manufactured ; i rupee per Ib. 
 snuffs and cigars. The following articles pay 6| per cent, ad 
 valorem duty : candles, petroleum, pitch, vinegar, carriages, 
 perfumery, stationery (except paper and envelopes, which are 
 free), chemicals, soap, earthenware, glass and leather goods, 
 clocks and watches, linseed and vegetable oils, hats and caps, 
 gold and silver ware, starch, house furniture, linen, hempen 
 and jute goods. Silks and woollens pay 6^- per cent, and 
 cottons, 5 per cent, ad valorem. Pig iron pays about 45. 8Jd. 
 per ton; bars and rods, 75. 6d. per ton; angle and Swedish, 
 95. 4^d. per ton; corrugated, 133. i-? r d. per ton; galvanised 
 roofing, 285. i^d. per ton ; nails and rivets, 235. 7^d. per ton ; 
 blister and cast steel, i8s. and 233. 5^d. per ton. Lead, n^d. 
 per c\vt. Zinc, in slabs, n^d. per cwt. ; perforated zinc, 
 53. 7^d. per cwt. Brass and copper, 53. 7^d. per cwt. Tin, 
 n|d. and is. 4|d. per cwt. Guns and rifles, 73. o|d. to 
 145. ofd. each; pistols, 45. 2^d. to 8s. 5^d. each. Gunpowder, 
 5 id. a Ib. ; shot, is. 4|d. a cwt. Saltpetre refuse, not used in 
 manure, n^d. a cwt. Cement, 3fd. per cwt.
 
 68 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 The exemptions are instructive : all machinery, railway 
 iron, iron hooping and tanks, millwork, steam engines, bricks 
 and tiles used in machinery buildings, manures, acids, fuller's 
 earth, saltpetre refuse used in manure, mineral oils and grease, 
 turpentine, rosin, coal and patent fuel, fire-clay, printing 
 materials, mill and grinding stones, roofing slates, coil-yarn, rope, 
 fibre, etc., horses, pianos, pictures, and gunny bags (to pack 
 produce for export). A new industry has been introduced 
 into Ceylon in recent years by the planters, because coffee was 
 failing; this is the growth of tea. Tea is packed in lead, 
 therefore tea-lead is now also exempted from duty. These 
 exemptions have nothing to be said against them, but they 
 embody the chief materials imported by planters for their 
 business, and the list contains few articles the people make any 
 use of. The free village communities had evidently no hand 
 in the framing of this list. 
 
 The spirit distilled in Ceylon, called " arrack," is manufac- 
 tured by distillers who pay an annual licence of thirty rupees to 
 Government. The number in 1883 was one hundred. The 
 exclusive privilege of retailing this arrack is annually put up to 
 auction in the several districts of the island. The renter is 
 often the distiller also. He is also frequently the Govern- 
 ment headman. The cost of the spirit, wholesale, is from 
 75 cents to i rupee a gallon, but the retailers are bound 
 to sell it at a fixed rate, usually about 3 rupees to 3 rupees 
 50 cents a gallon, sometimes more, as may be determined ; 
 taverns to sell arrack only, pay no licence, but a general 
 liquor shop has to pay 100 rupees. The Administration of 
 the island is more than usually interested in the consumption 
 of these spirituous liquors manufactured in it ; it gains by the 
 increased value of arrack farms (which show a steady rise). 
 Combinations among arrack-renters have been known to en- 
 deavour to corner the Government and lower the selling price 
 at auctions. In 1883 there were over 850 arrack-renters, about 
 140 liquor shopkeepers, and over 3,000 toddy-drawers in the 
 island, besides distillers ; but the Ceylonese, from all accounts, 
 are not an unsober race. Beer and porter only may be retailed 
 on a ten rupees' licence, and the licence for selling intoxicants, 
 not to be consumed on the premises, costs 30 rupees a 
 year. The licence for liquors to be drunk on the premises 
 costs 100 rupees a year. An hotel licence costs 250 rupees.
 
 CEYLON. 69 
 
 The Ceylon system of licences is very searching, and com- 
 prises many industries, and the stamp duties are very elabo- 
 rately set forth, and have been complained against for their 
 irksomeness. 
 
 All servants must be registered ; and sometimes the master, 
 sometimes the servant, has to pay the charge, which is from 
 a quarter rupee to half a rupee each time. 
 
 Timber may be cut in the Government forests (the Govern- 
 ment owns all the forests) on paying a licence and 25 per cent, 
 of the value of the timber. Jungle may be cut on payment of 
 one-tenth, except in the northern province, where the charge is 
 one-fifth, of the estimated value. The quarries (in the western 
 provinces) may be worked by payment of a royalty of 3 rupees 
 75 cents for every 1,000 stones, '06 cents a cartload of cabook 
 soil, and '03 cents for sand. Dead chanks may be dug for on 
 payment to Government of a fifth of their estimated value. The 
 Government sells salt to the dealers at 2*36 cents per cwt. 
 
 The exclusive privilege of selling liquors distilled from 
 palm-trees, and toddy generally, as well as the sale of arrack 
 and rum, is farmed out in each province by Government. 
 
 There are certain tolls (a long list) collected on roads and 
 bridges as well as for canals and ferries, and these are also 
 rented or farmed out by the Government. For the local taxes 
 in towns there is an assessment rate of 5 per cent, on property 
 within the limits. 
 
 Matters are not always as quiet in Ceylon as they might be 
 in administrative eyes. It appears that in some quarters of the 
 island police are specially stationed, at the cost of the inhabi- 
 tants accused of misconduct. This is an extreme measure, 
 and the power to apply it ought not to be among the ordinary 
 functions of an irresponsible Administration. The cost of the 
 administration of justice for the criminal classes is nearly 
 ^90,000 a year. There are between 1,600 and 1,700 regular 
 police, costing about ^60,000 a year. 
 
 The export duties are 100 rupees for each elephant, plum- 
 bago 25 cents per cwt., coffee and tea and cocoa 10 cents per 
 cwt., and cinchona 20 cents per cwt. The export duty on 
 plumbago is virtually a royalty. 
 
 Wages for able-bodied daily field labour vary from 25 
 cents, or a fraction over 5 id., to 50 cents, or n|d. ; 7 id. a 
 day is deemed good wages. Domestic labour is paid for at
 
 70 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 about the same rate. Other labour is paid, from unskilled at 
 3|d. per day, to is. io^d. a day for skilled. Labourers are 
 also engaged for periods, receiving at the rate of about 145. a 
 month, more being paid for special duties or exceptional capa- 
 city. Bread is said to be 5^d. per lb., flour being purchasable 
 at from 333. gd. to 673. 6d. the barrel of 196 lb. Bread is evidently 
 not greatly in demand, for a barrel of flour can make 270 lb. 
 The food of the people is rice, which may be bought cleaned at 
 from 35. 8d. to 53. 7^d. the bushel; and in the husk, at from 
 is. 8|d. to is. nd. the bushel. Beef sells from 3^d. to 5^d. 
 per lb., and mutton from 5|d. to nd., and pork at s|d. 
 Meat is cheap, but the quality is inferior. 
 
 A labouring man requires one bushel of rice a month in 
 Ceylon (a native of Africa will want half as much again, at least) ; 
 a man, wife, and three children will want at least three bushels 
 a month a total of thirty-six bushels a year for the family, cost- 
 ing for the lowest qualities perhaps 1443. The road tax will 
 be 23. 9fd. for himself; the State taxes will be 8s. 6^d. per 
 head, or 425. 7^d. for the family; but as 193. 6d. of this will 
 have been included in the cost of the rice, the balance remain- 
 ing to be paid will be only 233. i^d. If a man be a good 
 labourer, employed the whole year round, he will earn in 300 
 days, at 7|d. a day, 1873. 6d. After the above deductions, he 
 will have 173. 6|d. left. But there will be some local tax, 
 or forced labour, or bad weather, or illness, or all combined, 
 to take something from his earnings, leaving him probably 
 a balance of only 23. or 33., often nothing. He has yet to 
 supply a home, clothing, and the various other essentials of 
 the commonest existence. His wife and children will earn 
 wages when competent to do so. In such cases the expen- 
 diture will also have to be greater for food necessaries. The 
 greatest of mysteries in Eastern countries is how people manage 
 to live. The official returns show that the population of 
 Southern India earn less than id. a day per head ; it used to 
 be d. per day (their prosperity has recently doubled). Things 
 are perhaps better in Ceylon, but life is dearer there also. It 
 is of immense and paramount importance to look clearly into 
 the minutest details of taxation and economic systems in such 
 countries, for the ruin of a people is easily accomplished, their 
 physical powers sapped, and their life-blood and vitality drained 
 away from them for ever. The probability the certainty, is
 
 CEYLON. 7 1 
 
 that the people of Ceylon do not and cannot obtain or pur- 
 chase enough food for a decent and healthy existence. The 
 population do not live in these countries, they exist ; and 
 neither mental nor physical energy can ever be expected from 
 them. It is melancholy to see travelled and instructed people 
 speaking of these and similar races as being unfitted by Pro- 
 vidence for those rights and duties which it is nevertheless cer- 
 tain the beneficent Creator intended all mankind equally to 
 possess. A course of starvation extending over generations has 
 had its depressing and demoralising results, and Nature is 
 charged with giving birth to effeminate races when they are 
 only a people suffering from the consequences of impolitic and 
 oppressive economic systems. A food tax, however light, is 
 the most unjust, as it is the most dangerous, method by which 
 revenue can be raised in such countries as Ceylon. 
 
 The mortgage laws are much complained of by parties 
 interested in such matters, and they make out a strong case. 
 It is only in accordance with the strictest common sense that 
 while people are disputing about property before a court of law, 
 it should not meanwhile become valueless by the abandonment 
 of all cultivation. In tropical countries, unless cultivation be 
 kept up, a property, within a very short time, becomes a mere 
 jungle. It may be necessary to go to a court of law to have a 
 claim determined, but some method should be at hand to keep 
 the property from deterioration or, may be, ruin. 
 
 The shipping returns show (for 1884) 3,294 vessels inwards, 
 measuring 1,758,445 tons; of these, 135 (steamers) measuring 
 217,490 tons, called at Colombo to coal, and 318 (steamers) 
 measuring 432,731 tons, called at Galle. Of the above vessels 
 2 >379> averaging 8o| tons each, were colonial coasters, and 
 doing local trade with India and adjacent ports chiefly ; 745 
 were British, and averaged nearly 1,730 tons each; 79 were 
 French, averaging 1,955 tons each; 37 were Austrian, averag- 
 ing nearly 1,724 tons each; and 10 were Italian, averaging 
 1,487 tons each. There was an increase of 76,082 tons in 
 British shipping over the previous year, but there was a de- 
 crease of 20,058 tons in colonial shipping, and of 40,525 tons 
 in foreign shipping. Most large steamers, British and foreign, 
 on their way to and from China and the eastern ports, call at 
 Ceylon, and this accounts for much of the above tonnage.
 
 72 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MAURITIUS. 
 
 THE Island of Mauritius is much favoured by nature as regards 
 soil, climate, and position. It is now essentially a sugar- 
 growing colony, and its industrial existence practically depends 
 on a profitable market being found for this commodity. 
 
 A lavish supply of capital, and a low-priced labour easily 
 procurable, on conditions specially advantageous to planters, 
 resulted in a forced production, and much of the resources 01 
 the island have been prematurely used up. A too great clearing 
 of forest on an island of only about 700 square miles in 
 extent, and far removed from any continent, has led to a lower 
 rain-fall, and much of the old land is no longer cultivable with 
 profit, while a still greater quantity has perceptibly deteriorated. 
 The newly cleared lands are wanted to take the place of aban- 
 doned or worn out districts which, if extreme caution be not 
 used, are likely to increase in extent. The immense capital 
 invested in this island is, some of it, in a precarious position, 
 and it is important for all interests that the island should be 
 placed on a more healthy and natural footing. Time and wise 
 measures alone will bring this about. 
 
 The colony includes many smaller islands of value in- 
 habited by mixed races. Some of these are fertile and some 
 are renowned for their picturesqueness and the variety and 
 rarity of their natural vegetable productions, but they are too 
 small in extent to count for much as raisers of produce, and 
 are, consequently, little heard of. One or two of them possess 
 qualities which last, and are of more value for a power aiming 
 at empire than the mere capacity to grow sugar. The harbour 
 of Mahe, in the Seychelles Islands, has considerable capacity 
 and splendid anchorages, and could be made anything of; 
 the soft coral reefs are easily sawn, and capacious wharfs could 
 be made ; there is abundance of excellent water ; the climate is 
 warm, but healthy ; there are no hurricanes, and it could be 
 rendered as impregnable as Malta.* 
 
 * Many excellent authorities prefer the position to that of Port Louis, 
 Mauritius. The French, who are spending enormous sums in endeavouring 
 to make harbours on the hurricane swept coast of Reunion, would give 
 much for such a port, so situated.
 
 MAURITIUS. 73 
 
 Mauritius received a great blow by the opening of the Suez 
 Canal, which diverted the valuable custom of a port of call 
 and for revictualling. The Canal had the same effect on its 
 fortunes as a new line of railway would have had on a coaching 
 inn in the olden days. The terrible fever epidemic of 1866 
 damaged its reputation as a sanatorium. Since these events it 
 has become more than ever known as a sugar-growing colony, 
 favoured by capitalists on account of the proximity of cheap 
 coolie labour. 
 
 The population in 1883 was estimated to be about 361,000, 
 of whom 246,600 were East Indians. About half of the latter 
 are usually known by the denomination " coolie," which means 
 a native of India hired by a planter to work at sugar-growing 
 in some Crown colony for a term of years at a fixed tariff 
 under the supervision of an official paid by the colony and 
 nominated by the Colonial Office. A large number of these 
 coolies elected to remain at Mauritius on the termination of 
 their indentures, and continued to work on the estates as free 
 labourers. The place suits them, on the whole, very well, and 
 they thrive and some grow rich. They are a thrifty, painstaking, 
 and frugal race ; they are tenacious of all they get ; all the 
 lesser and a good deal of the higher commerce is falling into 
 their hands ; and much land is taken up by them directly as 
 cultivators, and, indirectly, as mortgagees. Mauritius, unlike 
 most other Crown colonies, had no aboriginal inhabitants. 
 It was colonised by the French, whose language, customs, 
 religion, and laws still predominate among the Creoles. Up 
 to the time of emancipation the land was cultivated by slaves 
 from Madagascar and Africa, and since that period by coolies 
 from India, who now, with their descendants, form the bulk of 
 the population. 
 
 In the following calculations (taken from the Parliamentary 
 returns and Blue Books) rupees are converted into sterling at 
 2S. the rupee up to 1879 ; after that date the value has been 
 usually calculated at is. gd. 
 
 The exports from Mauritius have kept up well for the 
 fifteen years ending 1883, without much variation in the value 
 on the whole ; but, :is with the West Indian colonies, the 
 quantity has, probably, been somewhat greater in recent years. 
 The lower prices for sugar, the staple produce, have kept the 
 exports from showing an increase. 
 
 F
 
 74 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 The total exports for the five years 1869-1873 were valued 
 at ^"14,476,000 (25. the rupee), an average of ^2,895,000 a 
 year. In the following six years, 1874-1879, they were valued 
 at ^20,051,000 (25. the rupee), an average per year of 
 ^3,342,000. In the four years 1880-1883 they came to 
 150,142,000 rupees, equal to .13,137,425 (at is. gd. per 
 rupee), an average of .3,284,000 a year. 
 
 The total imports for the five years 1869-1873 were 
 ;x 1,101,000, an average of ^2,220,000 a year. In the six 
 years 1874-1879 they were ,14,037,000, an average of 
 ^2, 340,000] a year. In the four years 1880-1883 they were 
 102,145,000 rupees, equal to .8,937,687 (at is. gd. per 
 rupee), an average of .2,234,000 a year. 
 
 As with the exports, the imports into this colony have not 
 increased in value during the last ten years. Of late years 
 the rupee at Mauritius has been worth not over is. 8d. sterling. 
 In the above period, 1869-1883, the total exports were valued 
 at ^"47,665,000, and the total imports at .34,076,000, 
 showing an excess pf the former over the tatter to the large 
 amount of .13,589,000. This is an average of over ,900,000 
 a year, or, taking the fifteen years, the exports have exceeded 
 the imports by more than 505. per head of population each 
 year. The question that naturally arises will be, Who receives 
 the equivalent for this ? The answer will be given farther on. 
 The exports to the United Kingdom for the five years ending 
 1873 average ^897,000 a year, or nearly 31 per cent, of the 
 whole yearly exports; for the six years ending 1879 tne 
 average was ;i, 010,000 a year, or a little over 30 per cent. ; 
 and for the four years ending 1883 the average was .369,000 
 a year (at is. gd. a rupee), or nearly n per cent, of the 
 exports of the colony for that period. 
 
 The imports from the United Kingdom for the five years 
 ending 1873 averaged .559,000 a year, a little over 25 per 
 cent, of total imports ; for ths six years ending 1879 the aver- 
 age had fallen to ^"490,000 a year, about 2 1 per cent. ; for the 
 four years ending 1883 tne average was .555,000 a year (at 
 is. gd. a rupee), about 25 per cent. 
 
 The Board of Trade returns give the value of exports from 
 the United Kingdom to Mauritius at about ^"569,000, or 7^ 
 per cent, less than the colonial returns, and the imports to the 
 United Kingdom are valued at about .978,000, or 8| per cent.
 
 MAURITIUS. 75 
 
 more than the colonial returns, for the fifteen years ending 
 1883. 
 
 Mauritius sends comparatively little produce to England ; 
 her chief market is Australasia, to whose various ports she sent 
 upwards of 17! millions sterling (at 25. the rupee) of produce 
 in the fifteen years ending 1883. She received in return, direct 
 from Australasia, less than 2 millions sterling, much of it in salted 
 beef and provisions. This accounts for more than 15^ millions 
 of the 1 6 millions excess of exports over imports, referred to 
 before. The produce shipped to Australasia was not paid for 
 in exports to Mauritius, but by bills and other arrangements 
 made by the owners, dealers, and shippers of the produce. 
 During the eight years 1869-76 Mauritius exported to the 
 Cape of Good Hope ^5 40,000 in produce, and received 
 ,331,000 in return. In the seven years 1877-83 the ship- 
 ment to the Cape largely increased, and amounted to 
 ;i, 732,000; the return imports amounting only to ,343,000 
 in the seven years. The shipments to the Cape exceeded the 
 imports from it by ;i, 598,000 (rupee, 25.) in the fifteen years. 
 The imports from France consist principally of wine, liquors, 
 millinery, haberdashery and apparel. In the eleven years 
 1869-79 Mauritius imported from that country goods valued 
 at ,3,882,000 (rupee, 25.), and exported to it only ,1,400,000 
 in return. In the four years 1880-83 tne imports from France 
 were valued at .1,555,000, and the exports to France at 
 ,301,000 (at is. gd. a rupee). The balance of this account, 
 amounting for the whole period of fifteen years to ,3,736,000, 
 was probably settled in London. During the same period of 
 fifteen years, merchandise, valued at about ,1,629,000 (25. a 
 rupee), mostly guano and some mules, was imported from 
 Peru, and the payments for this amount were probably also 
 made in London, where are situated the chief offices of the 
 various companies who do most of the business of the island. 
 The Madagascar trade with Mauritius might have developed in 
 importance if recent events had not disturbed it. The total 
 imports (a good deal of them in live stock and straw bags for 
 sugar) for the fifteen years have been valued at ,1,505,000, 
 and the exports to Madagascar at .1,511,000 (rupee, 25.), thus 
 balancing one another. The United States have recently 
 taken produce from Mauritius; in the four years 1880-83 
 the exports amounted to .553,000 (is. 9d. the rupee), but 
 F 2
 
 76 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 there were only about ^2 0,000 in imports direct irom the 
 United States for the same period. In the same four years 
 Mauritius imported from Pondicherry to the value oT 
 ^"182,000, and exported direct in return only ^58,000. 
 
 The trade with the adjoining French colony of Reunion, for 
 the three years 1881-83, amounted only to about ^5 0,000 im- 
 ports and ^120,000 exports. There is a movement of trade 
 between Mauritius and the smaller islands of the colony valued 
 at about ^50,000 a year imports and ^38,000 a year exports. 
 
 The Seychelles Islands, until recently, were sadly neglected, 
 and indeed suffered serious injustice ; there is even yet much to 
 be desired in their treatment. They are practically entirely 
 placed under the Mauritius Council, and as the supposed 
 interests of Mauritius are in some instances deemed not to be 
 identical with the interests of these islands as ports of call and 
 for other purposes, the laws and regulations enacted or per- 
 mitted with respect to them have not always been framed with 
 that impartiality and strict fitness which should ever be the 
 standard of British administration. In order to please the 
 greater colony, where they lived and whose good report they 
 naturally valued most, and whose interests and even prejudices 
 they always warmly advocated and espoused, the Mauritius 
 officials have ever thrown the weight of their opinion against 
 these unfortunate islands, and were it not that the Secretary of 
 State made it a rule that the Governors should occasionally 
 visit them, so that they might see for themselves and redress 
 some of their grievous wrongs, these islands to-day would be 
 a discredit to the_ British Administration as they were some 
 time back. 
 
 The imports of bullion and specie into Mauritius have 
 decreased of late ; in the six years ending 1875 they amounted 
 to ;i, 639,000, of which ^"912,000 was re-exported; in the 
 seven years 1876-83 they were ;i, 732,000, the exports during 
 the same period amounting to ^940,000. It thus appears as if 
 ;i, 619,000 remained in the islands; it is, indeed, estimated 
 that 3,620,000 rupees are in the hands of the islanders, much 
 of it being hoarded and concealed by Indians, and this would 
 account for ^316,750. The local banks would have a good 
 deal, and much leaves the island without being declared at the 
 custom house. 
 
 Mauritius imports food-stuffs largely, mostly from India
 
 MAURITIUS. 77 
 
 and Burmah. For the 17 years ending "1883 the average 
 yearly value of rice, corn, and wheat imported into the island 
 was over ^645,000 ; ^7, 740,000 worth of rice alone was 
 imported during that period. This is a large importation for a 
 population numbering only 361,000 in 1883. The importance 
 of the above imports of grain food may be estimated from the 
 fact that during the same term of 1 7 years the average importa- 
 tion of cottons, haberdashery, and millinery combined averaged 
 ; 2 2 0,000 a year, or only a little over a third in value of the 
 former. The total imports into Mauritius from India (including 
 bullion and specie) for the 10 years ending 1883 were valued 
 at ^9,071,000 sterling (23. a rupee). 
 
 During the 17 years ending 1883 this colony imported on 
 an average machinery and mill -work to the amount of 
 ^"39,000 a year. In 1883 the quantity imported from the 
 United Kingdom was valued at 510,000 rupees, and from 
 Belgium and France at 522,000 rupees. Cutlery and hardware 
 to the value of about ^"61,000 a year was imported during the 
 same period, mostly from the United Kingdom. Out of 
 ,805,000 cotton goods imported in the 5 years 1879-1883 
 the United Kingdom sent only ^122,000. 
 
 The revenue raised during the 10 years 1871-1880 was 
 ^7,238,796 (the rupee throughout estimated at 23. sterling), of 
 which ^2,252,701, or about 31 per cent, was raised by customs 
 duties. During the last three years the revenue raised by Govern- 
 ment was 26,258,200 rupees, equal to about 24' 1 3 tf > o rupees per 
 head of population. 
 
 The average wages of the working classes in tropical agri- 
 cultural colonies subject to the system of coolie labour, or 
 practically depending on it for the production of its exportable 
 produce, is necessarily low, because such labour is regulated 
 by contract for a term of years, at a price for which independent 
 labour, when procurable, usually refuses to work, or, which 
 amounts to the same thing, at a price and on conditions which 
 make independent labour unreliable. According to the 
 Mauritius Mercantile and Commercial Gazette, i6th February, 
 1885, the wages of Indians ist and 2nd class best labourers 
 have been reduced to 5 or 6 rupees a month, and rations 
 reduced as low as possible, salaries of sirdars and all employes 
 being similarly lowered. 
 
 The public taxes are levied on a system assumed to be in
 
 78 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 harmony with public opinion. It might be deemed unnecessary 
 to inquire too minutely into the formation of this opinion, and 
 into its authority j but experience of Crown colonies, and an 
 examination of their tariffs, leads one to doubt on these 
 matters. In every country, whether free or dependent, personal 
 interest and personal claims are always the most aggressive, 
 and every one is ready in the public interest to place burdens 
 on other people's shoulders. In the Mauritius, as in the West 
 Indies, the statement is made with apparent conviction as to its 
 soundness, that the only way to get the idle man (the man who 
 will not work for the planter on the conditions offered) to pay 
 any taxes, is to levy a rate on imported food. And the indus- 
 trious labourer with a family, who practically is the chief con- 
 sumer of the article, has to suffer, in order that this statesman- 
 like and quasi fair-play policy may be carried on. But the fact 
 is the tax is not imposed or maintained for such reasons, nor 
 would it be proper or possible that it should be so ; if the tax 
 on rice and grain be otherwise an impolitic tax it should be 
 done away with, if it be sound in principle on other grounds, 
 and levied fairly, let it remain ; but let not the idle man be 
 falsely deemed indirectly the means of shaping the fiscal policy 
 of the colony. Then, what is the public opinion that upholds 
 these taxes ? It is the opinion of the few who do not feel 
 them of the few who cannot trace their evil effects on the 
 welfare of the many, and on the industry of the place ; they 
 are kept up in the interests of the few who fear their abolition 
 will ultimately lead to a burden falling on their own shoulders. 
 These are the reasons for the continuation of the system. The 
 labourer pays duty on the clothes he wears, the same as the 
 rich man, and no less ; he pays as much on his spirits as the 
 rich man on his imported wine and beer ; and nearly as much 
 on his leaf tobacco as the other on his manufactured tobacco 
 and cigars ; and he pays quite enough by this and other ways. 
 A place, an island, far away by itself in the Indian Ocean, 
 levying a tax upon an article of importation such as rice, on 
 which its existence depends (if the supply were to fail to 
 come for a single year the place would starve outright), seems 
 impolitic, especially when the tax may. very well be replaced by 
 others more safe and more equitable. 
 
 The customs charges are 54 cents of a rupee on every 
 100 kilogrammes of gram, dholl, rice, and wheat ; 60 cents the
 
 MAURITIUS. 79 
 
 100 kilos of maize ; and 80 cents the 100 kilos of beans, barley, 
 oats, peas, and wheat flour, biscuits and ship's bread. In 1883 
 rice was imported valued at 3,177,279 rupees; the duty was 
 300,809 rupees, being 9.} percent, on the declared value. The 
 rice was nearly all from India, where another duty equal to 
 6|d. per cwt, or about 8 per cent, on its value on the spot, 
 was charged on its export a total of 1 7^- per cent, on its value. 
 During the same year the imports of grain, oats, maize, barley, 
 dholl, lentils, peas and wheat were valued 1,814,683 rupees. 
 Most of these articles were also from India, but there were no 
 charges made on them in that country. The duties of entry 
 into Mauritius amounted to 170,816 rupees over 9^ per cent, 
 on the declared value. Wheat flour is chiefly imported from 
 Australasia, in casks ; the quantity imported in 1883 was valued 
 at 732,747 rupees, on which a duty amounting to 31,804 rupees, 
 or 4 1 per cent, only on its declared value, was levied. Wheat 
 flour is the food of the rich and the well-to-do ; it therefore 
 has to pay less than half the duty that is charged on rice and 
 the other grain foods consumed by the working classes. Such 
 is the public voice that regulates taxation in this island. The 
 other duties levied are as follows : 4 rupees 40 cents on every 
 100 kilogrammes of butter, cheese, coffee, refined sugar, bacon, 
 ham, tongue, sausages, etc. This will be about 45. 5^d. a cwt. 
 The duties on beef and pork are 2 rupees the 100 kilogrammes 
 or 2s.2^d. a cwt. The duty on fish, dried, salted or pickled, is 
 i rupee the 100 kilos., or is. ifd. a cwt. To show how an 
 apparently low specific duty can influence the cost of a low- 
 priced article it will be only necessary to point out that in 1883 
 dried fish was imported, chiefly from the Cape of Good Hope, 
 valued at 391,395 rupees, and the duty levied on it at Mauritius 
 came to 24,310 rupees, or nearly 6J per cent, on its declared 
 import value. 
 
 The duty on colonial spirits is 9 j" - rupees the decalitre, 
 sweetened spirits being charged 6^-^- rupees extra (the duty 
 paid on rum for home consumption in 1883 amounted to the 
 large sum of 1,772,354 rupees). Ale is charged 7 rupees 
 8 cents the hectolitre (about 7od. a gallon), and i rupee the 
 dozen bottles. The duty on wine (the quantity imported is 
 considerable) is 7 rupees 58 cents the hectolitre in the wood 
 and i rupee the dozen litres. Tea is charged only 8 cents 
 per kilogram. Unmanufactured tobacco is i rupee 58 cents
 
 So THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 per kilogram, manufactured tobacco i rupee 96 cents per 
 kilogram, and cigars 2 rupees 10 cents per kilogram. Cottons, 
 silks, woollens, linens, pay 6f per cent, ad valorem ; also all 
 iron, glass, and earthenware, leather, oils, candles, soap and 
 salt. Paper, stationery and books enter free. 
 
 The other chief articles exempted from duty are machinery, 
 manures, and coals ; very good exemptions, but, nevertheless, 
 class exemptions. 
 
 There is an export duty on sugar, the produce of the 
 colony, of 4|d. a cwt. (30 cents per 100 kilos.), which in 1883 
 realised 347,380 rupees. There was even a surcharge during 
 the year on this duty, realising 81,055 rupees. The abolition 
 of this duty was lately under consideration. 
 
 The local taxes are far-reaching ; every business, profession, 
 and trade imaginable has to pay a yearly licence. In 1883 the 
 shops paid 604,604 rupees ; common hawkers, 53,845 rupees ; 
 fishermen, 4,644 rupees; professions, 25,281 rupees. There are 
 game licences, of course, and licences for hotels and coffee- 
 houses, and the like ; and on carriages, horses, and so on. 
 
 The railways belong to Government ; the yearly traffic 
 receipts are from i-*- millions to if millions. The debenture 
 debt on the 3ist December, 1883, was .753,500. 
 
 Taking the general trade of the island, it has been seen 
 that only about one-quarter of the imports, and n^ per cent, 
 of the exports, are with the United Kingdom. There is a 
 large intercolonial trade with India, Australia, and the Cape of 
 Good Hope. The imported cottons are partly from the 
 United Kingdom, but there is a large importation from India. 
 France does most of the hosiery trade, the bulk of the haber- 
 dashery trade, and all the boot and shoe trade. The imports 
 of earthenware, chinaware, glassware, and hardware are divided 
 between Great Britain, France, and Germany; Great Britain 
 doing the most. 
 
 In the year 1883, 513 vessels, measuring 301,508 tons, 
 entered with cargo, and 64 vessels, measuring 28,904 tons, in 
 ballast. Of these, 309 vessels, measuring 168,195 tons, were 
 British, and 140 vessels, 119,549 ton's, were French. It must 
 be understood that the steam communication of Mauritius and 
 Seychelles with Europe and India, via Aden, is carried on by 
 the great French Company, the " Messageries Maritimes," 
 subsidised by the French Government for the sake of the
 
 MAURITIUS. 8 1 
 
 neighbouring French colony of Reunion ; the steamers are 
 monthly, and their termini are Mauritius and Aden. 
 
 In the eighteen years 1866-1883 Mauritius exported 
 about two million tons of sugar, being, during that period, about 
 31 per cent, of the total exports of the sugar- producing 
 colonies of the United Kingdom (exclusive of India ; but 
 this country exports comparatively little of the ^22,000,000 of 
 sugar computed to be annually grown). British Guiana now 
 produces about as much sugar as Mauritius. In the year 1883 
 the import of cane sugar from Mauritius into the United 
 Kingdom was only about 2\ per cent, of the whole of that 
 description of sugar imported, and \2\ per cent, of the produce 
 of the island for the year. Mauritius, like other British 
 colonies, sends her produce to other markets when convenient 
 for her to do so. 
 
 The inhabitants of intertropical lands, such as Mauritius, 
 should be indeed rich ; Nature does so much. In 1883 the 
 exports nearly reached 105 rupees per head of population, the 
 imports were nearly 74 rupees per head. But Mauritius is not 
 nearly so rich a place as it should be. It is well off, no doubt, 
 compared to a West India island. The laws, especially the 
 land laws, enable land to be held and cultivated by the people. 
 The succession laws are just. The mortgage laws secure to 
 the lender, whoever he may be, the amount he advances ; he 
 runs the ordinary risks of depreciation, but no one can take 
 away and pocket the advances he has made on the land as 
 may be done, according to law, in the West Indies, by the 
 "consignee." The coolie being the only labourer, the great 
 injustice done to Jamaica and other West Indian islands by his 
 introduction does not operate. 
 
 It is to be hoped the new constitution given to the people 
 of this island will prove not only a blessing to them, but 
 to many; for according to the uses they make of the new 
 powers given them will it be judged wise or the reverse 
 to give the like to others. The chances are greater in 
 Mauritius than in the West Indies that the separate interests of 
 all classes and races will coalesce for the common good. The 
 genuine friends of Crown colonists, and the real lovers of 
 liberty and freedom everywhere, have been often adverse to 
 granting full rights of self-government, because the franchise in 
 such cases has so often been held and exercised by a certain
 
 82 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 class only, with the result of imposing an intolerable tyranny 
 on the remainder of the population. If an elective body be 
 not constituted so as to include all classes and all interests, 
 better almost for those excluded to have none. It is often 
 said, that Eastern people prefer a despotic government ; they 
 have not had many chances of an alternative choice ; but, 
 perhaps, they would prefer it, on the whole, to an oligarchy ; 
 and, above all, to that meanest and most depressing of 
 all tyrannies, an oligarchy of planters. When politicians pro- 
 pose measures, the reasons they publicly give for them are 
 those only which are intended to meet apprehended oppo- 
 sition, the objects really aimed at are often carefully hidden ; 
 but there is no doubt it is intended that Mauritius should 
 enter the path of self-government. There were somewhat 
 similar measures proposed by certain parties for some West 
 Indian islands, but they were not identical in the objects 
 aimed at. The new Constitution granted to the Mauritians 
 is, however, evidently inadequate, the bureaucratic adminis- 
 tration having complete and practical control in all matters. 
 The very thing not wanted. What the people in the Crown 
 colonies really want is to be governed as little as possible by 
 outsiders, to be able to live on their own land without being 
 too much worried and meddled with by regulations and laws, 
 to impose their own taxes, to have good cheap food, and, 
 above all, to enjoy their earnings themselves. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FIJI. 
 
 THERE was an opportunity lost at Fiji. The import tariffs 
 established in that colony are elaborate and severe ; they bear 
 a strong likeness to those in some other Crown colonies, noted 
 for their onerous customs duties, and in many points they can, 
 unfortunately, be compared with the restrictive tariffs so much 
 complained of in some of the neighbouring Australian colonies. 
 There is one great exception in their favour : wheaten flour is 
 permitted to enter free of duty. It is not very evident why 
 this useful article should be so favoured (unless it be to 
 encourage flour imports from Australia), while corn flour,
 
 FLU., 83 
 
 maizena, oatmeal, and biscuits, should be charged id. per lb., 
 and rice IDS. a ton. The latter articles should enter somewhat 
 largely into the food of the people. It is well to encourage 
 the consumption of every form of grain and flour food ; the 
 higher the class of food commonly used, the more civilised, 
 industrious, and self-respecting will be the people. Not only 
 wheaten flour, but rice and corn flour, and, indeed, every 
 description of flour and grain, should be free from duties of 
 customs. 
 
 The following are the chief tariffs : Biscuits, barley, corn 
 flour, maizena, oatmeal, split peas, sugar, sago, tapioca, jams 
 and jellies, and candles, pay id. per lb. ; malt and oats, 6d. a 
 bushel ; tea, coffee, chicory, cocoa, chocolate, confectionery, 
 spices, vermicelli, and macaronis, 3d. per lb. ; common soap 
 ^d. per lb. ; fancy soap, 15 per cent, ad valorem ; bacon, ham 
 and cured pork, cheese, dates, dried and preserved fruits, 
 honey, pepper, and nuts (not being cocoa-nuts), 2d. per lb. ; 
 unmanufactured tobacco, is. per lb.; manufactured tobacco, 
 45. per lb. ; cigars and cigarettes, 55. per lb. ; ale, etc., is. a 
 gallon in bottles, and gd. a gallon in wood ; wine, in wood, 25. 
 a gallon, and in bottles, 2s. a gallon ; sparkling wines, 6s. a 
 gallon; spirits, 125. a gallon; opium, 153. per lb. ; salt, 
 saltpetre and Scotch soda, 203. a ton ; butter, Indian and 
 other corn, 5 per cent, ad valorem ; potted meats, pickled 
 and dried fish, drapery, earthenware, drugs, boots and 
 shoes, glassware, furniture, carriages, clocks, ironmongery, 
 nails, iron tanks, sauces, and oilman's stores 10 per cent. 
 ad valorem. 15 per cent, is charged on perfumery, and 20 
 per cent, on jewellery and fire-arms. Iron in bars, etc., pays 
 2os. a ton, and galvanised iron 403. a ton. Kerosene oil is 
 charged 6d. a gallon ; sporting powder, 6d. per lb. ; paper pays 
 35. per cvvt., and for stationery purposes 10 per cent, ad valorem. 
 Wheaten flour, iron rails, preserved and salted meat (an 
 Australian import), coal, and machinery, are free. 
 
 There is an export duty of ^5 per ton on sandal-wood, and 
 2\ per cent, on silver coin when over ^10. The Western 
 Australian export duty on sandal-wood is only 55. a ton ; 
 if there was any business to be done at Fiji with this article, 
 the difference would be serious. Perhaps this high export duty 
 is intended to limit the export. 
 
 In 1 88 1 the population numbered 124,788 (natives,
 
 84 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 immigrants, and mixed races) and 2,307 Europeans. In the 
 Island of Rotumah the population was 2,500. The area of 
 the colony is something over 8,000 square miles. 
 
 The total imports for the six years 1875-80 were valued at 
 ,810,87 1, and for the three years 1881-3, ; I > 3 > 000 - The 
 total exports for the six years 1875-80 were ,930,000, and 
 for the three years 1881-3, ^7 I 5> 000 - 
 
 Like most British tropical Crown colonies, Fiji is anxious 
 to enter the race to provide the already rather lavishly supplied 
 sugar market. During the five years 1878-82 she exported 
 4,350 tons of sugar; she shipped about 5,000 tons in 1883, but 
 it did not go to England. 
 
 Fiji takes few goods from the United Kingdom except 
 machinery and iron-work. In the four years 1879-83 about 
 2ii per cent, of her imports were from Great Britain, and 73 
 per cent, of these consisted of metals, machinery, nd mill- 
 work. In the five years 1879-83 she sent 18^ per cent, of 
 her exports to the United Kingdom, consisting chiefly 01 
 substances from which oil is to be expressed. Some of the 
 declared exports of Fiji consist of cotton and copra imported 
 from Samoa; these amounted to ,2 7,000 in 1883. There is a 
 considerable export of green fruit, valued at ,15,500 in 1883. 
 The main industry is the preparation and export of copra ; 
 this amounted to 6,203 tons in 1883, valued at ,80,647. The 
 trade of Fiji is almost entirely with Australasia. In 1883, 198 
 vessels entered these islands, having an average of 346 tons 
 each ; 159 were "under British colours, with an average of 355 
 tons each. 
 
 The revenue for the four years 1878-81 was ,297,000, of 
 which ^89,000 was raised by customs. The revenue for the 
 two years 1882-83 was ^218,000, of which ^83,000 was raised 
 by customs ; in the last two years the customs revenue was 38 
 per cent, of the whole, in the previous four years it was about 
 29! per cent, of the whole. The nature of the customs charges 
 have been already referred to. The internal taxation, in one 
 direction, is wide and exhaustive ; every person who purposes 
 to carry on any industry or trade has to pay a special tax for 
 the permission to do so. A baker in a town has to pay ,3, 
 and in the country ;i ; a butcher in a town has to pay ,10 ; 
 a chemist, .20 ; joint stock company agents are charged .25. 
 Even a hawker has to pay ,2. Land surveyors are charged
 
 FIJI. 85 
 
 ^5. A wholesale store pays ,15 in a town, 10 in the 
 country; and a retail store with a hawker's business in the 
 country will have to pay ^4. Publicans in a town are charged 
 ^45, and in the country ^15. No one is exempted ; a barber 
 pays 2; a carpenter, ^5 ; a shoemaker, 2; a tailor, ^2, and 
 so on, by the year. Marriage registrations, 1. 
 
 The public debt is ^250,000. 
 
 This colony has not yet settled down into a fixed condition. 
 There remain many weighty problems still to be settled, and it 
 will be some time before they are all solved. The people are 
 in a transition state, and, naturally, they must be governed in 
 many matters by their old customs and laws until circumstances 
 arise when alterations may become advisable and practicable. 
 It is admitted by all competent authorities that the Administra- 
 tion has acted, so far, with foresight and discretion in dealing 
 with the natives. It is difficult, for civilised Governments to 
 deal justly with primitive communities, because they have not 
 the courage to restrain their subjects from taking those unfair 
 advantages which even the commonest and dullest of civilised 
 men have over the shrewdest of savages. There are not want- 
 ing those who look on the extermination of savage races as a 
 benefit. But experience, scientific research, and history all 
 prove, every day more and more, that such conclusions are mis- 
 taken. Civilised people know something, but not much, about 
 their own intelligence, and they know something of their own 
 history, but they know nothing whatever about those people 
 they condemn to extinction simply because they do not under- 
 stand them. Savages are, in fact, easier to be taught than civi- 
 lised men ; it is easier for them to break with the past. As 
 Principal Fairbairn said in the Contemporary Reinew, March, 
 1884, "there is less of hope of a debased civilisation than of 
 the rudest and frankest naturalism." It is to be hoped many 
 races will survive in the world, were it only to avoid too much 
 monotony. In his work, " Man before Metals," Mr. N. Joly 
 says : ' The instincts common to all humanity necessarily pro- 
 duce a similarity of results when men are subjected to the same 
 needs, and placed in the same circumstances." The funda- 
 mental passions and morals of mankind are eternally the 
 same ; it is only manners that vary. The extinction of races in 
 such places as Fiji only result in the after letting in of some 
 well-known type of no particular interest, and perhaps of less
 
 86 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 real capacity. It is to be hoped Fiji will escape for some 
 time yet from the condition Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu so well ex- 
 presses by the term, " Glorification of exports : " " Le regime 
 artificiel avail fonde nos colonies sur la servitude, stir le monopole, 
 sur le commerce exterieur ; il en etait resulte la glorification 
 presque exclusive des produits d? exportation et principalement de 
 la canne ; tin lei ordre de choses a fait son temps" It is to be 
 feared, however, that the system is not yet quite exploded. 
 
 A recent petition from the Fijian Chamber of Commerce 
 to the Secretary of State for the Colonies respecting taxation in 
 kind and the arbitrary power given to chiefs over the people 
 requires the most careful and painstaking consideration. It is 
 lamentable to note the excess of deaths over births, due mainly 
 to the introduction of European diseases. The administrative 
 system introduced into this colony was an experiment, and will 
 no doubt require to be modified from time to time. The 
 fiscal system must appear faulty to the commonest under- 
 standing. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MALTA. 
 
 THE natives of this small island are noted in the many places 
 where they are found for their industrial qualities ; they are 
 frugal and hard-working, painstaking in all they undertake 
 and persevering in their objects. Education leaves some- 
 thing to be desired, otherwise, in a position so open to the 
 world and so much visited, one would expect to see fewer 
 prejudices and more of that industrial, economical, and com- 
 mercial tact and knowledge which has made the fortune and 
 reputation of many places less favoured by position in the 
 Mediterranean and other seas. The Maltese, it is true, are re- 
 nowned as successful petty traders, and have made a reputation 
 in certain callings and industries they almost may claim as their 
 own ; but these qualities do not suffice, of themselves, to create 
 a great commercial centre. When the vested interests of a 
 powerful class are involved in any established system, it is of 
 little use endeavouring to remodel or alter it, however mis- 
 chievous it may be, unless other interests equally strong and
 
 MALTA. 87 
 
 powerful, if not more so, are on the spot to insist on a change. 
 This is the reason, and the only one, why protection flourishes 
 anywhere. What can be more difficult than the getting rid ot 
 an obnoxious tax when there is no public opinion of sufficient 
 political potency on the spot to urge the Administration into 
 action ? The high duties on grain in Malta have had 
 more evil results for trade than many grave calamities. The 
 people and the merchant mariners of adjacent countries may 
 hear much of British policy, but they can see for them- 
 selves that in the British colony of Malta protection in its 
 worst form is maintained, and it is not unreasonable for them to 
 argue that when the British Foreign Office and British com- 
 mercial agents urge the advantages of free trade they are not 
 acting consistently ; a suspicion would be aroused that the 
 fiscal policy so much vaunted must have something against it, 
 when the people who talk so loudly in its favour allow their 
 Crown colonies to so heavily tax, as to almost exclude, the 
 grain and flour of their neighbours. Neither has the tax in any 
 measure benefited Malta ; half the sad diseases in the island 
 are known to be due to the low-class diet of the labouring 
 population. It is said the people of the island oppose the free 
 introduction of grain, not because they have too much for their 
 own use which is not the fact by a long way but because 
 such introduction would endanger the not too great profits now 
 obtained by its cultivation. Yes ! the growers of grain must be 
 supported, even at the cost of the physical health of the people, 
 and the children of the humble must remain ill-fed in order that 
 certain proprietors may effect a satisfactory balance sheet. 
 How would they like the English people to act on the same 
 principle, and exclude the 107,000 cwt. of potatoes they sent to 
 the United Kingdom in 1883? The proprietors of Malta 
 would do better to grow those crops which require no bolster- 
 ing, and not to have the starving poor to contribute their mites 
 to their income. It is conceivable the military governors of 
 Malta should not have been very zealous in this matter. The 
 position of Malta is so unique and excellent that the trade of 
 its chief port is even now considerable, and were it a free 
 port, this might become so extended as to interfere with its 
 position and status as a military stronghold. 
 
 In most Crown colonies the two opposing influences 
 of free-trade and protection are struggling for the upper
 
 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 hand, and the former has by no means always on its side 
 the local Government authorities. On the whole, the Crown 
 colonies have not, with some notable exceptions, been al- 
 together unfortunate in the contest. The sympathies of 
 the people of the United, Kingdom in this matter happen to 
 be in harmony with their material interests ; but under any 
 circumstances they would be on the side of the people of 
 the colonies struggling against those who favour high tariffs, 
 either for protectionist or for revenue purposes. But it 
 has been seen how the interests of a class of local cultivators, 
 the desire of others to shift the chief burden of taxation from 
 their own shoulders on to those of the consuming public and 
 the labouring classes, who have no voice in the matter, and the 
 satisfaction of the colonial Executives at having a form of taxa- 
 tion by which they avoid immediate contact with the contribu- 
 tors, all combine to keep up a system in the Crown colonies 
 that has been condemned at home as unjust and impolitic. 
 
 The revenue for 10 years, 1874-83, amounted to 
 ^"1,857,000, of which no less a sum than ^1,066,000 was 
 raised by duties of customs. In 1884 the revenue was 
 ^212,569, the share of duties of customs being ^i 19,080. 
 During the same year the population of all the islands was 
 deemed to be 156,675 (153,812 Maltese, 1,801 United King- 
 dom, 1,062 foreign) ; the taxation per head will, therefore, be a 
 little under 275. 2d. Considering the nature of the population, 
 the average earnings of labour, and, above all, the form in 
 which the revenue is raised, most people will think it sufficient. 
 
 The Maltese tariff is los. per strike salm for wheat, 6s. for 
 Indian corn, 45. for barley, 35. to 53. for other grains. Manu- 
 factured grain pays 6s. per cantar (175 Ib.) ; damaged grain, 
 unfit for food, 23. the salm; pulse and seeds pay 25. per 
 salm ; olive oil pays 6d. per caffiso. Spirits are charged 243. 
 the Maltese barrel ; wine and ale also pay a duty. Tobacco 
 and all other articles are free. There is a revenue from land (it 
 came to nearly ^"15,000 in 1884), and there are other rents 
 (worth over ^23,000 in 1884). There are licences and 
 dividends from investments, and there was an imperial grant in 
 1884 of ;i 0,000 for maintenance of Egyptian and other 
 refugees. 
 
 Malta shows a very large total for imports and exports, but 
 nearly all of the produce and merchandise included in them
 
 WEST AFRICA. 89 
 
 simply entered the harbour for a time, and then cleared out in 
 the same bottom, to proceed to the destination intended. This 
 traffic is almost entirely with steamers. Out of 3,278 British 
 vessels which entered in 1884 only 14 were sailing vessels ; 
 out of 290 vessels under foreign (European) flags not 
 including Italy and Turkey only 13 were sailing vessels. 
 With Italy and Turkey it is different ; the Italians had 978 
 sailing vessels to 133 steamers, and the Turkish flag 60 sailing 
 vessels to 19 steamers. The imports for 1884 were valued at 
 ^13,343,789, but only merchandise valued at ,634,744 was 
 landed, the balance (^12,709,045) went on its way. Much of 
 the merchandise landed at Malta is subsequently re-exported. 
 
 In the 5 years 1879-83 the Board of Trade returns show 
 importations into the United Kingdom from Malta and Gozo 
 valued at ^863,000, of which ^324,000 was for potatoes 
 and onions. The exports to Malta and Gozo of the produce 
 and manufactures of the United Kingdom were valued at 
 ^4,5 2 2,000, of which about ^2,000,000 was for wearing 
 apparel and haberdashery, cottons, linens, and woollens, 
 ;:, 1 80,000 for coal and fuel, and ^27 7,000 for sugar refined 
 in the United Kingdom ; much of this was for sale to passing 
 vessels and for re-export. 
 
 The imports of British beer and ale into Malta are con- 
 siderable j in the 5 years these amounted to ^211,000. 
 Among articles of foreign and colonial produce, and manufac- 
 tures imported from the United Kingdom, in the 5 years, the 
 most prominent were coffee (^229,000), rice (^100,000), sugar 
 (^"137,000), and tobacco (^"133,000). Much of the pro- 
 visions will be for the supply of the large garrison. The total 
 exports to Malta from the United Kingdom of foreign and 
 colonial produce and manufactures were valued at ^932,000 
 for the 5 years 1879-83. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WKST AFRICA. 
 
 OF all the colonial possessions of the British Crown, the mosv 
 disappointing have undoubtedly been the territories and pro- 
 tectorates in Western Africa. Time out of mind great expecta- 
 tions have been formed of them, expeditions after expeditions 
 
 G
 
 90 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 have been undertaken, numerous wars have been fought, and all 
 of them have been gloriously concluded, treaties have been made 
 of the most satisfactory and binding character, the despatches of 
 governors have shown the most splendid results of an astute 
 and far-seeing diplomacy, territories have been annexed and 
 settlements founded, and large sums have been spent by the 
 British Government in various ways, and in the latter half 'of 
 the year 1885 the actual position, on the whole, looks wonder- 
 fully like what it was at any previous time during the last 
 twenty or fifty years, or before. British administration in 
 Western Africa has not been a success. 
 
 It must have been a failure ; the elements necessary for 
 the most temporary success have always been wanting. It is 
 difficult at any time to rule a country against the wish of its 
 inhabitants ; but the West African system has been, as much 
 as possible, to rule the country as if there were no inhabitants 
 in it. They have been acknowledged to exist, it is true, in 
 treaties, in wars, and in expeditions, and they must have been 
 supposed to exist for taxing purposes ; for few, if any other, 
 reasons have been given for recent annexations, except the 
 necessities of the custom houses, or the fear of other nations 
 placing rival custom houses too near them. 
 
 British intervention in Western Africa should be an unmixed 
 benefit to the people, and of immense value to British commerce; 
 but in order to accomplish any good the presence of the people 
 must be acknowledged, and their co-operation enlisted in the 
 work. It is possible that the various settlements within the 
 strict limits of their legal boundaries may have been managed, 
 on the whole, as well as circumstances admitted from the usual 
 point of view of Crown colonies ; but British power and 
 political influence have never been confined to these limits in ' 
 Western Africa, nor have they ever pretended to be so. When a 
 long line of coast has been declared British territory by the 
 usual methods employed on such occasions, and custom houses 
 and revenue officials hold sway over it, all native rule is 
 destroyed for a considerable distance inland. Now it so 
 happens that in such cases a reign of murder, plunder, and 
 general disorganisation ensues in these hapless lands, and no 
 one is held responsible. The British Administration adheres 
 to its strict limits, or to its supposed limits, under shelter of its 
 forts and fleets, and takes no heed of its solvent influence over
 
 WEST AFRICA. gi 
 
 native rule, which falls to pieces by mere proximity. It is curious 
 to note how little heed is taken of the rights and claims of other 
 and contiguous people by local administrations ; and it is not 
 too much to say that almost all wars, disputes, heart-burnings, 
 and troubles on the coast adjacent to the British settlements 
 are entirely and solely due to this selfish and unpardonable 
 oversight and deliberate injustice. The only system known in 
 Africa for raising revenue is by duties of customs, either on 
 exports or imports ; and when a European Power annexes a 
 line of coast, it practically commands the revenue of the whole 
 country supplied by that line of coast. To take possession of 
 a mere fringe of coast, as Great Britain has often done, and 
 to refuse all responsibilities beyond that fringe is manifestly 
 an unjust proceeding, because the inland people are equally 
 taxed with those on the coast, and probably more so from 
 having no facilities for smuggling, and the inland chiefs chafe 
 under a taxation for which neither they nor their people 
 receive any equivalent whatever. In the five years ending 
 1883 the revenue raised in the four British West African 
 settlements (Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, and Lagos) 
 amounted to ,1,253,000, of which ^1,016.300 was raised by 
 duties of customs. 
 
 If British dominion in Africa should ever be of any real 
 good to the people, or of any lasting benefit to British 
 commerce, it will only be by an entire reversal of the policy so 
 long pursued. The various settlements should be looked upon 
 only as stations or convenient outposts for opening up the 
 interior portions of the vast continent to the advantages of 
 commerce and industry, without which neither civilisation nor 
 Christianity itself can make any headway in these lands. No 
 attempt even should be made to govern the country anywhere 
 except through the selected chiefs of the people, who are open 
 to the best influences, and whom the people will implicitly 
 obey. A noble career lies before any European people whose 
 Executive adopts this simple method of dealing with a great and 
 much-wronged race. British dominion in various forms has 
 been established in portions of this western coast for two 
 centuries and upwards, and there is more than enough 
 experience to prove that white men can never inhabit it except 
 in small -numbers and at perpetual risk of life. In fact the 
 country must be ruled and governed by a native element, and 
 G 2
 
 92 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 Great Britain can easily assist and guide it by laws and 
 regulations the fruit of ages of experience engrafted on to 
 and merged with such existing native systems and methods 
 the people may desire to keep to and to follow. 
 
 The actual British possessions, as such, have been of no 
 value to the United Kingdom, and they have conferred no 
 benefit on the African race ; and it is much open to doubt 
 whether, if they had never existed, civilisation and Christianity 
 would not have made more way among the people. Such is 
 the result of a narrow policy, around which, on four isolated 
 spots on the coast, have grown up four small communities of 
 Crown colonists, having no sympathy or touch with the large 
 populations and rich countries of the near interior, and they 
 are unknown beyond. 
 
 As might be expected from what has been said above, 
 the trade of these four settlements is inexpansive and irregular. 
 They have all had their movements, usually short-lived, when 
 trade blossomed and the frontiers were quiet, and then follow 
 the dark hours of trouble of loss, bloodshed, and reprisals. 
 It is a sorrowful history, ending to-day as it began over two 
 centuries ago, monotonous in its gloom and sad in its dis- 
 appointments ; and so it will continue, and the same tale will 
 ever have to be told until the machine be lifted out of the rut 
 in which it has so long stagnated. As Sir Thomas, now Lord, 
 Brassey has well said in his work, " Foreign Work and English 
 Wages," under head "Colonisation": "We cannot create a 
 trade with Africa or New Guinea without first raising those 
 countries in the scale of nations. We must co-operate with 
 the native populations in the development of their resources ; 
 we must help them to accumulate wealth, or they cannot 
 purchase our goods." 
 
 The total exports of British West Africa for the seven years 
 1867-73 were ^9, 274,000 an average of ^i, 325,000 a year; 
 for the following seven years 1874-80 they were ^10,715,000 
 an average of ^1,530,000 a year ; for the three years 1881-83 
 they were ^4,543,000 an average of ^1,514,000 a year. 
 Taking similar periods, the imports for the seven years 1864-73 
 were ^7,245,000 an average of .^^035,000 a year; for the 
 seven years 1874-80 they were ^9,563,000 an average of 
 ^1,366,000 a year; and for the three years i88i-83 r they were 
 ^4,192,000 an average of ;i, 397,000 a year. The total
 
 WEST AFRICA. 93 
 
 exports for the eighteen years were ,24,532,000, and the total 
 imports, ^21, 000,000. It must be understood, of course, that 
 most of the produce exported by way of the British ports is not 
 obtained in the settlements, but in the adjacent countries. In 
 the same way most of the imports go to pay for the produce 
 thus obtained. 
 
 Most of the gold exported from West Africa is from the 
 Gold Coast, but some finds its way from the interior to the other 
 settlements. Since the introduction of the palm oil industry on 
 the Gold Coast, the people occupy themselves more profitably 
 in collecting the valuable berries from the vast palm oil tree 
 forests, and preparing the oil and kernels for conveyance by 
 human portage by land and by water to the coast towns, 
 than by seeking for gold. The gold exported from the Gold 
 Coast in 1883 was valued at ,52,435, all of which, with the 
 exception of ,373, was sent to the United Kingdom. The 
 exports of bullion and specie from British West Africa in the 
 four years 1880-83 were valued at .394,792 ; and the imports 
 of bullion and specie for the same period were valued at 
 ,335,275, the latter mostly consisting of newly-coined silver 
 from Great Britain. 
 
 A large quantity of rice is grown in the neighbourhood of 
 the Sierra Leone possessions and southwards, the tribes or 
 nations in those parts subsisting largely on this produce. This 
 native-grown rice is of a very superior quality to any imported ; 
 it is not only cultivated on the plains adjoining the large rivers, 
 which are flooded every year the same as the valley of the 
 Nile, but on the slopes and hill-sides. Nevertheless, over 
 10,000 tons of cleaned rice were imported into Sierra Leone 
 ports in the five years 1879-83 ; nearly all this rice was from 
 India and Burmah, via Great Britain. On the Gold Coast 
 and the adjoining countries rice is practically unknown to the 
 people. Here maize is the national diet, and is consumed in 
 the form of a fermented paste ; no rice, in consequence, is im- 
 ported into this country, but the Americans do a considerable 
 and growing trade in flour and biscuits. Those whose only 
 opportunities have been to observe the people of the coast, and 
 especially the people of the British settlements, whose physique 
 has degenerated through the unwholesomeness of the positions, 
 even for Africans, and the imperfect sanitary arrangements 
 and want of water, and also from a large consumption of the
 
 94 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 vilest imported liquors misnamed rum and gin, can have but a 
 very inadequate opinion of the capacities of the African race. 
 The British policy so long pursued has confined direct Euro- 
 pean trade and intercourse to the swampy fringe of coast, leav- 
 ing the interior untouched. The African is destined to be one 
 of the strongest races in the world physically, as well as one of 
 the most influential ; he will be dominant in his own huge 
 continent of Africa and have something to say in America. No 
 one who has observed the African at home (not including 
 Sierra Leone and the British coast towns, for reasons before 
 given), and in the West Indies, but must be immediately struck 
 at the enormous physical degeneracy of the race at the latter 
 place. In Africa food is abundant in the shape of the best rice, 
 corn, and oil seeds; and, besides, there are no duties on the entry 
 of food. In the British West Indies the people have been 
 pauperised, home-grown food is scarce, and is inferior in quality 
 to the African descriptions, and a crushing duty is imposed on 
 every description of imported food. Food duties are not only 
 administratively impolitic and commercially unsound, but they 
 are cruel to the people. 
 
 The imports of United Kingdom goods only into British 
 West Africa for the seven years 1867-73 averaged ^668,000 a 
 year ; in the following seven years (1874-80) the yearly average 
 was ^934,000, in the three years 1881-83 the average 
 was ^764,000 a year. The increase of these imports during 
 the last ten years has not been due to any greater trade with 
 the United Kingdom ; it is due to the fact that the trade with 
 the Dutch settlements since their annexation to the British 
 Gold Coast has been transferred from the heading " Trade with 
 Foreign Countries and their Possessions" to "Trade with 
 British Possessions." 
 
 The Possessions of foreign Powers in Western Africa 
 during the five years 1879-83 imported from the United 
 Kingdom merchandise of the average annual value of 
 ^312,000, of which ^293,000 were exclusively British goods, 
 the remainder consisting mainly of rice and other products 
 from British India and colonies. Those territories which, 
 until recently, might have been designated Native, or Indepen- 
 dent Western Africa, but much of which have lately found new 
 masters in Germany and Great Britain, imported merchandise 
 from the United Kingdom of the average value of ^"1,080,000
 
 WEST AFRICA. 95 
 
 a year for the five years 1879-83, of which ^872,400 a year 
 were exclusively British goods. The importation into West 
 Africa of foreign merchandise via England is probably profit- 
 able to the British merchants engaged ; it consisted in rice, 
 ,19,000 a year (probably chiefly from India) ; ^85,000 a year 
 in tobacco, chiefly from the United States; arms, ^12,000 a 
 year, chiefly from Germany; beads, ^15,000 a year, a good 
 deal of which are from Venice ; and spirits, ,25,000 a year, 
 chiefly from Hamburg (a vile stuff, much of it distilled from 
 wood and sawdust). Germany has made great efforts to pro- 
 duce, at a low cost, articles readily saleable in the markets of 
 backward countries ; red calicoes, Saxony prints, Hagan hard- 
 ware, and gunpowder, are finding an increased market, and even 
 " articles de Paris," which have a not inconsiderable sale in 
 West Africa, are being supplanted by German goods. Were 
 German manufacturers unfettered at home, and the incubus of 
 protection removed from them, they would be the most for- 
 midable of competitors for the trade of the world in every 
 branch of industry. 
 
 The settlements at the Gambia River charge id. per Ib. on 
 all sugar, and id. on every Ib. of kola nuts imported. This 
 latter article is a most valuable produce, combining the 
 qualities of tea, coffee, and tobacco, and it is the great 
 support and stand-by of the weary traveller, and the porter, 
 staggering under his load, and sweltering in the midday heat, 
 on long and toilsome journeys. The extent of the trade may 
 be judged from the fact that the annual importation is from 
 ,30,000 to ,35,000 a year into Gambia (in 1883 it was 15! 
 per cent, of total imports). The produce comes chiefly from 
 the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, and the trade in this 
 article is almost entirely in the hands of the natives outside 
 the settlement, or, perhaps, the relative high export duty of 
 55. the hundredweight would not be charged at that port 
 This article, the tea and coffee of many natives, is thus made 
 to pay an export duty of ,5 a ton at Sierra Leone, and 203. a 
 ton entrance duty at Gambia. The other chief import duties 
 are is. 6d. to 35. per gallon on spirits, 3d. per Ib. on un- 
 manufactured tobacco, 55. per ton on salt, gd. per gallon on 
 claret in bulk, and 3d. per gallon on kerosene oil. The export 
 trade of Gambia is chiefly with foreign countries ; about 60 per 
 cent of the exports of 1883 went to France, and 22^ per
 
 96 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 cent, to England ; the produce is mainly the ground nut, on 
 which there is an export duty of 6s. 8d. a ton. In 1883 about 
 45 per cent of the imports were British (^"41,000 being 
 British cottons and ;io,ooo in rice), the remainder were from 
 the coast and foreign countries. 
 
 Proceeding south to Sierra Leone, the trade with the pro- 
 duce of palm-trees begins to assume large proportions. Out 
 of about ,22,000 of palm oil exported in 1883, Great Britain 
 received ; 14,000, France received nearly all the remainder. 
 The total exports of palm kernels were valued at over 
 ,81,000. France received the largest portion, ,31,000; 
 Great Britain came next with ,27,000, and Germany took 
 ,22,000. All the gum copal, valued at nearly ,15,000, 
 went to the United Kingdom. France took nearly all the 
 ground nuts. Of the ginger, 65 per cent, went to the United 
 Kingdom, and nearly all the remainder to the United States. 
 Over ,30,000 of kola nuts were shipped to Gambia and 
 Goree. Great Britain received about 38 per cent, of the pro- 
 duce of this settlement, but she sent about 70 per cent, of the 
 imports (^233,000 being in cottons). The United States 
 takes about 7 per cent, of the exports, and sends about 9 per 
 cent, of the imports of this settlement. 
 
 Referring to the export duties, this settlement, besides the 
 55. per cwt. on kola nuts, charges beny seed, 2d. per cwt. ; 
 ground nuts, 3d. per cwt. ; gum copal, 25. per cwt. ; palm kernels, 
 2d. per cwt. ; hides, 2d. each, and palm oil, id. the gallon. As 
 hardly any of the above-mentioned articles exported are the 
 produce of the settlements, and the exported kola nuts are 
 not consumed within the British dominions to which they are 
 exported, these taxes fall on outsiders, and the only question 
 to be determined would be their effect on trade. The kola 
 nut tree grows wild, but it is also cultivated. The pro- 
 duce of the palm oil tree is a pure gift of nature, and the 
 only expense attending it is the collection, preparation, and 
 portage. The price varies, and the value of palm oil is a 
 good deal influenced by the market for tallow ; in fact, the 
 value of African palm oil is largely influenced by the price of 
 Australian tallow. There is no want of competition among the 
 traders on the coast to get it, and it seems as if any quantity 
 would find a market. The palm oil is a chief food of the 
 people, but in that case it is differently and more carefully
 
 WEST AFRICA. 97 
 
 prepared. It has many advantages, as a food, when fitly 
 prepared, over other oils in common use in Europe, and it 
 might be introduced with advantage. The quantity of palm 
 oil imported into England in 1884 was about 35,200 tons, all of 
 it the produce of West Africa ; 39,000 tons of oil nuts were 
 imported in the same year. Africa may well be called the 
 " cilery " of the world. 
 
 Sierra Leone is for most articles a free port of entry ; the 
 only duty is on kerosene oil, 6d. a gallon, and light duties on 
 beer, ale, spirits, wines, and tobacco (the duty of 6d. per Ib. 
 weight on common leaf tobacco is much too high ; this article is 
 a currency all over this part of Africa, and represents food). 
 Were it not for the policy pursued, already referred to, Freetown 
 would become a great and important trading depot, and a really 
 great centre for commercial transactions. 
 
 The trade of the British Gold Coast is more exclusively 
 with the United Kingdom than that of any other of the 
 British West African settlements. In 1883, out of a total of 
 ,382,583 imports, ,295,176 were from the United Kingdom ; 
 and out of ,363,868 exports, the United Kingdom received 
 ,251,390, of which nearly ;i 68,000 was the produce of the 
 palm oil tree. Germany took about ,21,000 in palm tree 
 produce, and the United States nearly ^56,000. The United 
 States sent nearly ^5Q,ooo in white rum (potato spirit), Great 
 Britain sent - 12,000 in gin, mostly of German origin. The 
 cotton goods and haberdashery, etc., valued at about 
 ,135,000, were entirely British. The trade of this large 
 settlement is most contemptible in amount, and could easily 
 be ,5,000,000 imports with a like value for exports ; but the 
 policy followed has made all trade with the interior practically 
 impossible for the last 30 years or more. Until British 
 authorities make up their minds to come to terms with the 
 powerful inland races, who are among the most intelligent and 
 energetic in Africa, our possessions on this part of the coast 
 will be a real hindrance to any advance among the people. 
 The terms demanded by the people of the interior are, on the 
 whole, just and reasonable, and the coast tribes should be 
 given the alternative of accepting them or being left to them- 
 selves. It is the policy of these coast tribes, with which the 
 British Administration has identified itself so long, that has 
 been the fertile cause of all wars and troubles in these parts,
 
 98 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 and they will certainly be the cause of many more yet to come 
 unless a policy more in accordance with the position of things 
 and the facts to be dealt with be introduced. The British 
 Government can have no right to be in Africa anywhere 
 unless it be there for the general benefit. No one doubts the 
 benefit conferred in some directions, but on a very limited 
 scale, by British influence and administration ; but unless 
 something more be done these advantages can have no lasting 
 effect or influence on the bulk of the population of the interior. 
 
 The duties of customs at the Gold Coast and Lagos are 
 light and simple, being 4 per cent, ad valorem on everything 
 except ale, beer, wines, spirits, gunpowder and guns, and 
 tobacco which are specifically but lightly taxed. Spirits 
 pay 2s. 6d. per gallon ; gunpowder, 6d. per lb., and guns, as. 
 each. The duty of 6d. on unmanufactured tobacco is high ; 
 the common leaf tobacco in these countries is a chief currency 
 for purposes of barter. What has been said before about the 
 interior people being resentful of the duties levied by the 
 British authorities on the goods in transit to them, applies also 
 to this part of the coast. Some costly British wars have been 
 undertaken here, the real object in dispute being a point on 
 the coast The natives were determined to have access to it 
 for their trade, and the local British Administration, fearful for 
 its custom houses and its ad valorem duties, in fact, for its 
 revenues, were equally determined to keep them off. The 
 British Administration triumphed, of course, but in beating 
 off the natives, the cotton goods of England were to a large 
 extent beaten off also, and excluded from the markets of the 
 interior.* 
 
 The export trade of Lagos is chiefly in the produce of the 
 palm tree, of which in 1883 ^465,000 was exported, out of a 
 total of ^594,000 for exports. Great Britain took 107,000 
 in palm oil and 125,000 in palm kernels; Germany took 
 128,000 in palm kernels and 47, 500 in oil; France took 
 25,000 in kernels and ,27,600 in oil. The United 
 Kingdom sent about 56 per cent of the imports and took 
 about 44 per cent of the exports in 1883 ; but the imports 
 contained articles to the extent of about 20,000 from foreign 
 
 * The duties of customs are considerably less at Lagos than on the 
 Gold Coast. Leaf tobacco only pays 2d. per lb. ; spirits, 6d. per gallon ; 
 gunpowder, 2s. ptr 100 lb., and guns, is. each.
 
 WEST AFRICA. 99 
 
 countries, taken on board in Great Britain ; this is one of the 
 parts of Africa, getting fewer every year, where cowries (from 
 Mozambique and Zanzibar), as a currency, are yet dealt in. 
 Nearly all cotton goods are British, the quantity imported in 
 1883 was valued at over ,222,000; nearly .75,000 of 
 Geneva (spirit) was imported, partly from England and partly 
 from Germany, but it was doubtless nearly all of the same 
 German origin. Some of the import and export trade of the 
 port of Lagos is only a coasting trade. Next to Great Britain 
 Germany does the largest trade here ; her direct imports in 
 1883 were ,126,000, and her direct exports nearly ; 17 7,000. 
 
 Lagos, on account of its bar, is not a really good port, but it 
 has water communication with rich countries and among ener- 
 getic races anxious for trade. But the same system being pur- 
 sued here, as elsewhere on the coast under the British flag, the 
 adjoining people are often hostile and always suspicious, and 
 the trade has insignificant proportions to what it might, and 
 easily could, have been made to have. 
 
 There are no export duties at Lagos or the Gold Coast. 
 The customs revenue for these two settlements for the five 
 years 1879-83 came to .664,196, and most of this will have 
 been paid by the interior people the consumers residing out- 
 side British jurisdiction. In some senses it is satisfactory to be 
 thus able to make other people pay for one's administration 
 and government, and it is perhaps the only instance known 
 where duties of customs have this result. Under the circum- 
 stances, the moderation in the duties levied should perhaps be 
 commended. People in England, and especially the poor and 
 over-taxed people of continental Europe, know too well that all 
 the customs charges at their ports come out of their own 
 pockets. 
 
 The total tonnage of vessels entered at, and cleared from, 
 the British West African ports in the year 1883 was 1,335,398; 
 of this, 1,176,293 tons were for steamers, and 1,052,897 tons 
 were under the British flag. As a matter of fact, each steamer 
 calls at every port where there is any cargo to discharge or any 
 produce to be shipped, and this makes the total tonnage to look 
 large. The West African coast is well looked after for cargo, 
 and the vessels belonging to the great companies are always 
 willing to go out of their way to oblige customers and ship pro- 
 duce from the beach. The contrast is enormous between these
 
 100 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 parts and the West Indies in this respect, and proves once 
 more the advantage of free competition over heavy Govern- 
 ment subsidies. 
 
 In Africa the people are fond of their individuality. The 
 land everywhere belongs to the people, sometimes in com- 
 munity ; the notion of the few holding it absolutely and the 
 bulk of the free population being their labourers would be 
 repugnant to them. They are what Europeans call savages, 
 and they have slavery among them, but all free men are 
 equal ; they cannot understand a free man not being so. They 
 have sound laws which respect what every man possesses; giving 
 honour to position, wealth, and the fruits of industry. In all 
 these countries there are arbitrary acts committed by cruel 
 despots, but the people prefer these fitful despotisms by their 
 own race to what to them appears a regularly organised, if 
 more humane, one by Europeans. What the people really 
 prefer is to be governed as little as possible by outsiders. 
 They are all very willing to trade, but are distrustful of the 
 ulterior intentions of Europeans. 
 
 There is only one policy that could be followed successfully 
 by the British in Western Africa everywhere. It would be a 
 consistent policy. And while it would be in harmony with the 
 greatest traditions of the English people, it would fall com- 
 pletely in with the views, the sentiments, the traditions, the 
 customs, and the habits of the people of the African continent. 
 
 The system of native government in Western Africa is 
 usually federal that is to say, the people are ruled by 
 big councils of native chiefs, where treaties, war and 
 peace, and such matters are determined, and they have lesser 
 councils determining local matters, and family councils settle 
 family questions. Nothing is ever done without a palaver, 
 according to its degree ; for if any one in ordinary life acts by 
 his own motion, and does a deed of wrong, or one opposed to 
 the general sentiment, swift and terrible retribution follows. 
 But no council or palaver can upset the proceedings and deter- 
 minations of any previous council, unless all the contracting 
 parties to the first consent also to the other. This is one of the 
 greatest stumbling-blocks of the local British administrators, 
 who, as a rule, are wholly ignorant of this fact, and they think 
 the decision of every palaver they attend binding, whereas it is 
 only so conditionally. The parties to the second palaver are
 
 WEST AFRICA. IOI 
 
 often accused of being false, when in point of fact they are 
 only true to their constitutional and traditional system ; the 
 decisions of the previous palaver not having been abrogate' 
 they are forced to stand by it, even against their will. 
 
 The proposed policy is to take advantage of the machinery 
 existing in the land, and honoured and obeyed by the people. 
 Let these great councils that are called together for big 
 palavers be erected into permanent bodies, having complete 
 power over determined areas, such as they now influence, with 
 adequate revenues (say one-tenth of what a direct British 
 administration would cost). The revenues are there, and all 
 the necessary machinery. The British can do this easily ; and 
 the certain success and good example of these councils will 
 lead to others being rapidly established on a similar system, 
 and then the interior of the continent will be opened up to 
 commerce and civilisation. The leading missionaries and 
 traders of repute could be joined to these councils, and, if 
 necessary, a British official would assist the chiefs to lay down 
 rules and regulations.* 
 
 Nothing in all the history submitted on this subject is mere 
 misleading, untrue, and unjust than the reiterated statement 
 that the chiefs and people of Western Africa are unfitted for 
 peaceable self-government. It is not pretended they will reach 
 for the present any Western European ideal, but they will 
 not lag much behind some people who claim to be better. 
 The people do not want war ; the very facility with which their 
 disputes are temporarily adjusted serves to show this disposition. 
 This coast is far from having recovered from the dire effects of ! 
 the slave trade. The chiefs are weak, and much of their 
 power is taken from them by the very British Administration 
 which scolds them for their non-success. No native power is 
 ever permitted to levy duties of customs, or other taxes, on the 
 coast line at all events ; but the coast of the country is never- 
 theless annexed in many places by the British authorities, who 
 levy taxes and spend the proceeds for purposes unknown to the 
 natives who pay them. 
 
 The present system depends for its very fitful, temporary 
 
 * The British traders on the lower Niger have recently organised a 
 Government system which should work well. But the more important 
 districts of the upper Niger appear to have fallen entirely under French 
 influence.
 
 CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 and extremely limited success on the active personality of an 
 Administrator, and when this utmost possible success is 
 tained, it is only at the point where the Administrator 
 appens to be for the moment, and the effect does not outlast 
 his departure or death. Then the history of British adminis- 
 tration on the coast everywhere shows how rare it is to have 
 an official with the physique and local experience necessary for 
 even this limited work. It is well known also that this 
 personal system, at its best, is full of abuses of the worst 
 kind politically ; the Administrators, and those who influence 
 them, get to have favourites, and even chiefs have their 
 legitimate power, influence, and dignity interfered with because 
 they refuse to pay homage to their views. In consequence of 
 all this, an apparently successful Administrator is usually, and 
 sharply, followed by even worse confusion and more protracted 
 wars than were known before his advent It is the history of 
 all weak, despotic systems, having no basis in the country or 
 among the people sought to be governed or influenced. 
 
 A policy such as the one sketched above is what is wanted 
 in those parts where Great Britain has annexed the coast ; it 
 can be consistent in its acts as in its policy, and will depend 
 for success, in all its branches, on the people of the country 
 and their legitimate chiefs. It will inaugurate a real permanent 
 and progressive government for the people behind the British 
 possessions, where the present systems render all stable govern- 
 ment and progress impracticable. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. 
 
 THE Straits Settlements, including the adjoining territories 
 under British protection, have not yet been developed to any- 
 thing like their full capacity for planting purposes. The 
 splendid facilities for trade offered by Singapore, and the 
 profits of mining, have absorbed the energy of those who seek 
 fortunes. All that part of the Malayan Peninsula which is not 
 claimed by Siam is under the dominion of the British Crown 
 by occupation, or as protected territories both meaning the 
 same thing in practice, the only differences being in details
 
 STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. 103 
 
 of administration. In course of time the problems of govern- 
 ment in communities such as these will present real difficul- 
 ties, which will no doubt be overcome by the wisdom of 
 the British nation. The population of to-day will not be the 
 population of the future ; the movements and amalgamations of 
 races in these parts are among the phenomena of the time ; 
 considerable wealth is accumulating in the hands of native 
 merchants, Chinese and others, at the trading ports ; education, 
 and a superior civilisation, and social and family life of a 
 higher level than the past, are being rapidly established, and 
 they will bring inevitable changes in the general views and 
 habits of the people. The government and laws will have 
 to conform to all these circumstances in order to render British 
 authority secure, by being founded on mutual interests and the 
 love and gratitude of the people. 
 
 The unchangeable East is changing by its daily and hourly 
 contact with the aggressiveness of the West. Not by the 
 aggressiveness of war, because this has the effect of making 
 people rather cling than otherwise to those old customs and 
 habits which alone conquest and annexation cannot take away 
 from them. The aggressiveness that operates is that of public 
 opinion, of literature, and of commerce ; these bring the 
 people into contact with Western thought and habits, and they 
 will adopt them more and more when they see that the com- 
 plete and definite conquest and annexation they feared are not 
 among the consequences of doing so, but the contrary. It is 
 thus that the leaven of Western civilisation will arouse the 
 people from the slumber of ages. It cannot yet be seen ho\v 
 much of European civilisation and systems the people may 
 elect to adopt, but no one will be able to say to them, "This much 
 you may adopt and no more," and they will demand a prepon- 
 derating voice in the management of their own concerns. The 
 fear sometimes expressed of the neighbourhood of foreign 
 settlements might be reasonable if Great Britain ever acted 
 unworthily ; but if she continues in the paths of justice she need 
 never fear the permanent loss of her legitimate power and just 
 influence among the people. At the same time it is necessary 
 to provide against such places as Singapore being put to ransom, 
 or damaged, by an unscrupulous foe. 
 
 The population of the four Crown settlements (Singapore, 
 Penang, . Malacca, and Wellesley) in 1883 was computed at
 
 104 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN". 
 
 3,500 Europeans, 174,000 Chinese, 170,000 Malays, and 41,000 
 East Indians. The Malays are not likely to increase much 
 Mohammedan races rarely do so ; they are already out- 
 numbered, and before many years are passed they will be only 
 a fraction of the population. The protected territories are 
 also but thinly peopled by Malays; there are a few other 
 inhabitants in remote districts who appear to be the represen- 
 tatives of older races. But the whole peninsula is fated to be 
 ultimately filled up by the Chinese. These people will not be 
 mere labourers and factors for Europeans ; they will be land- 
 holders, cultivators, and merchants, and, if other industries 
 hereafter develop, these will also be largely in their hands. 
 
 The imports from the United Kingdom for the ten years 
 1868-77 averaged ^2,497,000 a year, and for the six years 
 1878-83 they were ^3,865,000 a year (including bullion and 
 specie, and foreign and colonial produce) ; this will make the 
 United Kingdom imports for the sixteen years ^48,160,000. 
 The exports to the United Kingdom for the same period were 
 valued at ^36,645,000. The Board of Trade returns differ 
 from the colonial returns. This is the case with valuations of 
 all colonial imports and exports ; but the margin of difference 
 between the two returns varies much. "According to the 
 former, the exports to the Straits Settlements for the sixteen 
 years were of the value of ^36,355,000, and the imports from 
 the Straits Settlements of the value of ^50,495,000. This 
 makes the colonial valuation of United Kingdom merchandise 
 and other exports 32 J per cent, higher than the Board of Trade 
 estimates; and the Board of Trade returns give a greater 
 valuation to Straits Settlements' shipments to the United 
 Kingdom by 32 per cent. 
 
 The value of British and Irish produce and manufactures 
 alone exported to the Straits Settlements in the ten years 
 1874-83 amounted to ^22,502,000 (Board of Trade returns, 
 at 1=35. 8d.). It has been seen the values of goods are 
 differently estimated at the ports of shipment in the United 
 Kingdom from what they usually are on arrival in the colonies ; 
 they have naturally, also, a different value at each place. Chief 
 among British goods exported to the Straits Settlements are 
 cottons, wearing apparel, haberdashery and linens, and 
 woollens; the value of these articles in five years 1879-83 
 amounted to ,8,207,000 (Board of Trade returns). British
 
 STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. 105 
 
 coal and fuel (1,312,177 tons) amounted to ,689,000. Hard- 
 ware, cutlery, machinery, metals, and telegraphic necessaries 
 were valued at ;i, 378,000. The principal articles imported 
 into the United Kingdom from the Straits Settlements in the 
 five years 1879-1883 were caoutchouc and gutta-percha, 
 ^2,850,000 ; sago and other farinaceous substances, 
 ,2,314,000; dye and tanning stuffs, gums, lacs, etc., 
 ,2,588,000; pepper and spices, ,2,817,000; tin and ores, 
 ,4,826,000 ; and leather and hides, ,1,063,000. Sugar 
 amounted to only ,916,000, and isinglass to ;i 85,000. 
 
 The total imports into the Straits Settlements for the seven 
 years 1869-75 were valued at ,79,361,000; and for the 
 seven years 1876-83 at ,106,187,000. The total exports 
 for the first seven years were valued at ,74,184,000, and for 
 the second seven years at ,97,436,000. These figures are 
 from colonial returns. 
 
 There is a large traffic with the Eastern possessions of 
 Holland; during the ten years ending 1883 they shipped to 
 the British Settlements merchandise to thevalue of ^"24,210,000, 
 and received through the Settlements to the value of 
 ,35,898,000. The direct trade of France, Holland, and 
 Germany with the Settlements figures for ^3, 891,000 imports, 
 and ,6,628,000 exports, in the ten years. There is a large 
 trade with Siam and China, amounting to 15^ millions sterling 
 imports and 14^ millions exports, in the ten years 1874-83. 
 During the same years the imports from Hong Kong amounted 
 to ,16,823,000, and the exports to Hong Kong to ,10,485,000. 
 There was a considerable movement of imports and exports 
 between the several ports of the Malayan Peninsula and 
 Singapore an intercolonial and coasting trade of importance. 
 The Eastern possessions of France do an important trade ; 
 their imports into the Straits Settlements in the ten years 
 1874-83 amounted to .3,677,000, and their exports to 
 ,6,763,000; much of this is probably a carrying trade by the 
 French mail steamers (main line), which all touch at Singapore, 
 and have branch lines communicating with French colonial 
 ports. The imports from the Eastern possessions of Spain 
 amounted to ,1,120,000, and the exports to the same 
 amounted to ^1, 011,000, in the ten years. There were ship- 
 ments to the United States averaging for the ten years over 
 ;8oo,ooo a year, but no equivalent figures of imports ; the 
 
 H
 
 I06 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 total imports from America were only about ,600,000 in the 
 five years 1879-83. The imports from India for the ten years 
 ending 1883 were valued at ^24,276,000 (colonial returns), 
 and at ^25,890,000 (Indian returns), and the exports to India 
 at ;8,355,ooo (colonial returns). The Indian returns always 
 include imports and exports for Government account. The 
 trade of the Settlements with Independent Borneo and Sarawak 
 for the ten years 1874-83 averaged ,138,000 a year imports, 
 and ^104,000 a year exports. The trade with Labuan averaged 
 ^62,000 a year imports, and ^29,000 a year exports, during 
 the same period. The chief trade of these Settlements is with 
 the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, the Dutch possessions, 
 Siam, China, India, and between their own ports and the 
 Malayan Peninsula. 
 
 In the five years 1879-83 the Dutch East India posses- 
 sions, besides the trade done via Singapore, imported from the 
 United Kingdom merchandise the produce and manufacture 
 of the United Kingdom to the value ot ,9,344,000, of which 
 ,7,108,000 were cottons, linens, and woollens ; they exported 
 to the United Kingdom produce valued at ,14,518,000, of 
 which ,14,002,000 was sugar. It will be seen above that 
 these colonies of Holland, in the trade with Singapore, received 
 ,11,688,000 more in merchandise than they shipped to that 
 port ; much of this balance will be in payment of the balance 
 due on the sugar, in the shape of British goods. The great 
 free ports of Singapore and Hong Kong give British merchants 
 many facilities for trading in Eastern seas. During the five 
 years 1879-83 British goods the produce and manufacture of 
 the United Kingdom valued at ,5,909,000 were sent to the 
 Philippine Islands, of which ,4,376,000 were cottons, linens, 
 woollens, and apparel. Great Britain received ,9, 49 1,000 in 
 produce, of which ,5,700,000 was in sugar and ,3,332,000 
 in hemp. The trade of the United Kingdom with Siam, Cochin 
 China, and Borneo is chiefly transacted through Singapore. 
 
 Labuan is a settlement that at one time promised much, 
 from its possession of valuable coal deposits, its position and 
 fine harbour. It acts as an intermediate station between 
 Singapore and the large island of Borneo ; some of the produce 
 of the latter is prepared at Labuan for the Singapore market. 
 When the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos was Secretary of 
 State for the Colonies (1868), with Sir C. B. Adderley (since
 
 STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. 1 07 
 
 Lord Norton) as Parliamentary Under-Secretary, it was proposed 
 to incorporate this island with the Straits Settlements; un- 
 fortunately for Labuan the recommendations then formulated 
 were not carried through. Labuan will ultimately be annexed 
 to the British North Borneo Company, and the whole will 
 probably .form another British colony hereafter. It is to be 
 hoped the inhabitants will never have cause to believe the 
 British flag may be indirectly employed to cover any acts 
 different in character and in principle from those which have 
 made its chief renown among the oppressed. 
 
 There are other places in the world besides Singapore 
 which would show similar results, in proportion to possible 
 commerce, had they the same advantages of absolute free 
 trade. But for the purpose of obtaining the little or great 
 revenue necessary for local purposes of administration, imports 
 and commerce are taxed, and the stream of wealth passes their 
 ports and seeks other lands. 
 
 The revenue of this colony for purposes of government are 
 raised chiefly by a monopoly of the preparation, for use, of 
 rough opium from India, and the farming out of the privilege 
 to sell opium preparations and spirits. There are spirit, opium, 
 and toddy farmers, and licences for pawnbrokers, hotels, and 
 such like. Land brings in a revenue from its sale and from 
 rents and fees ; but much of it, it appears, was alienated in fee 
 simple before the year 1871. In Singapore land is usually 
 held direct from the Crown by lease or grant for a long term 
 of years. In the country pepper and gambier plantations 
 have sometimes 10 year leases. Quit rents for country land 
 are now from 40 cents of a dollar per acre readjustable every 
 30 years. The same system obtains at Penang and Malacca ; 
 but native customary tenure without written evidence of title is 
 accepted. Unoccupied Crown lands may be had on lease for 
 999 years on payment of the quit rent and a premium. Per- 
 mits are granted to hold land in anticipation of the survey, and 
 much is so held in Province Wellesley. The actual conditions 
 of tenure seem to vary much according to what happened to 
 be the policy at the time the agreements were made. It is 
 said there are 18 different forms of title in the hands of the 
 Singapore public, and 20 in the hands of the inhabitants of 
 Penang. To interfere with past arrangements would be 
 impolitic and dangerous. If the people are satisfied there 
 H 2
 
 108 THE CROWN COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 can be no reason to change or simplify existing methods. 
 But in some countries such a condition of things would give 
 plenty of work to the lawyers. There are stamp duties and 
 the usual fees and fines of Court and the Post Office. Port 
 dues are only 3 cents the registered ton. With these taxes and 
 some few unimportant items a revenue for the purposes of 
 government has been raised without pressure or difficulty. 
 The revenue for the 3 years ending 1879 averaged about 
 ^"373,000 a year, for the 3 years ending 1882 the average was 
 ^469,000 a year, in 1883 it was ,559,000. A large pro- 
 portion of this revenue is spent on public works. The rapid 
 augmentation of a revenue that does not press on industry need 
 not be regarded with suspicion, if it be spent advantageously. 
 
 In the year 1884 the craft that entered Singapore numbered 
 15,265, with 300,472 people for crews. 4,551 were British 
 vessels, measuring 2,467,739 tons, and with 166,252 crews; 
 9,417 were native vessels, measuring 266,594 tons, with crews 
 numbering 70,732 ; there were 1,291 foreign vessels, with crews 
 numbering 63,488. 
 
 The advantages of a free trade policy are too apparent at 
 a place like Singapore to need dwelling on. People are apt to 
 ascribe all the prosperity to the special position and natural 
 advantages of the place. Of course these advantages do exist ; 
 but there are numerous other places, as a glance at a map will 
 show, equally well placed and having similar advantages, but 
 where a restrictive policy has made all progress impossible. 
 Even vast numbers of small and frail native craft from distant 
 islands, some two or three thousand miles away, through weary 
 weeks and months of a toilsome navigation, laboriously seek 
 Singapore, passing Dutch and other ports innumerable places 
 in other respects more suitable and nearer for them whose 
 restrictive systems repulse trade and make even these people 
 prefer the more distant free port of Singapore, where they 
 can trade and traffic as they please.
 
 HONG KONG. 109 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HONG KONG. 
 
 HONG KONG is in many ways the ideal of what a port should 
 be. It owes much to locality and to its capacity, but its pre- 
 eminent position is due to its being a free port under the 
 British flag. As in most places in the world where powerful 
 interests have much at stake, abuses crept in, and some sec- 
 tions of the community got to be favoured, and others, equally 
 entitled to respect and consideration, had to struggle against 
 injustice and adverse conditions. Most, if not all, of these ob- 
 jections have been removed, and the local laws and regulations 
 show no blots, or only a few, in this respect. Every nationality 
 in the world claiming to do foreign trade with the East is repre- 
 sented here. Englishmen might well be proud to see what 
 may "be done under their flag when the great national princi- 
 ples of free trade are given full scope, and commerce, untram- 
 melled by vexatious regulations, is allowed to grow and develop 
 in its might. 
 
 The colony gives no returns of imports and exports, that 
 being impracticable ; but it is the chief centre, and, as it were, 
 the focus of the trade^of China and Japan with the West. The 
 Board of Trade returns show that it imported from the United 
 Kingdom in the five years 1879-83 merchandise valued at 
 ^17,087,000, of which ,16,264,000 were manufactured goods 
 and produce of Great Britain and Ireland, ^13,257,000 being 
 apparel, cottons, linens, and woollens. The imports into the 
 United Kingdom from Hong Kong consist of portions of the 
 produce of China, Japan, and other Eastern countries, which it 
 was found most convenient to send through that port ; and also 
 the above merchandise, shipped to Hong Kong direct from the 
 United Kingdom, was only a portion of the goods intended for 
 such countries, the remainder being shipped to them direct. 
 Hong Kong received from Great Britain 365,000 tons of coal 
 and fuel in five years, 1879-83 ; but she also obtains large sup- 
 plies of these articles from other countries, some of which are 
 nearer and more handy than England. 
 
 The revenue of the colony averaged about ^244,000 a 
 year for the five years 1879-83. The revenue for 1884 was
 
 110 THE CROWN COLONIES OF .GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 $1,171,099 ($118,350 less than the previous year); at 45. 2d. a 
 dollar, this is .^243,977. The population in 1883 numbered 
 7,990 whites, 1,722 coloured, and 150,690 Chinese; total, 
 160,402. The taxation is, therefore, $7*31 per head. For 
 such a rich port this compares favourably with the taxation per 
 head in the poor, ill-taxed agricultural settlements. The reve- 
 nue is raised by rents on Crown lands put up to auction for 
 terms of years, by rents on stone quarries, by spirit licences, 
 and licences to sell and prepare opium, and by market charges. 
 There are the usual stamps, court fees, etc. There are taxes 
 on houses for lighting and police purposes, and there are port 
 charges. 
 
 Chinamen live cheaply almost anywhere ; they probably 
 can do so effectively in this great port. Prsedial labour is paid 
 in kind, and ordinary labour is about 17 cents of a dollar a 
 day. Skilled and mechanical labour is proportionately paid 
 higher, but it is not dear. 
 
 In the year 1884 the number of vessels that entered Hong 
 Kong harbour was 26,763, measuring 5,167,231 tons, and hav- 
 ing 431,429 people as crews. Among these were 23,473 
 Chinese junks of 1,687,594 tons, with 290,846 crews. There 
 were 2,397 vessels under the British flag, measuring 2,685,194 
 tons, and having 106,364 crews. The next in importance are 
 the Germans, with 474 vessels, 309,171 tons, 10,389 crews. 
 The Americans come next with 146 vessels, 192,803 tons, and 
 5,797 men (the Americans have always fewer hands on their 
 commercial especially sailing vessels than other people). The 
 French have 104 vessels, 156,120 tons, and 20,346 men. Out 
 of the total number of British vessels it seems that only 148 
 arrived direct from the United Kingdom. The movements of 
 commerce are most complicated, but the study is deeply inter- 
 esting, and of great moment for a commercial people. The 
 rise of such ports as Hong Kong and Singapore are only possi- 
 ble on free trade principles. Although all the g "* Powers of 
 the world, as may be seen, are interested in the? 
 much of their Eastern trade through them, ever) mend of tree- 
 dom must be fearful to see them so insecure as to be open to 
 a passing raid, and the heavy attendant losses, by any enter- 
 prising ironclad.
 
 FALKLAND ISLANDS, ST. HELENA, GIBRALTAR, BERMUDA. Ill 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FALKLAND ISLANDS, ST. HELENA, GIBRALTAR, BERMUDA. 
 
 THE above Crown colonies have each a special interest and 
 value. The Falkland Islands are a colony that will be of 
 much importance hereafter to the Empire.* In the present 
 redundance of available colonies for Europeans, the perplexed 
 emigrant hardly knows which to select. There are so many 
 that are more accessible, if they do not present more attractive 
 features, that it will be yet some time before these distant and 
 breezy islands will be in request. A population of 1,600 souls 
 to an area of 6,500 square miles is not much ; but they manage 
 to send to England produce of their own of an annual average 
 value of ^53 per head, of which ,42 per head is in sheep and 
 lambs' wool. Almost all the export trade is direct with the 
 United Kingdom. The only customs charges are 23. per Ib. on 
 tobacco and 43. per Ib. on cigars ; 3d. a gallon on ale in wood 
 and 6d. a dozen in bottles ; wine, 25. a gallon in wood and 45. a 
 dozen in bottles ; and spirits, IDS. a gallon. 
 
 St. Helena has lately had to live a good deal on the 
 memory of the past. The Suez Canal took from it its main 
 importance. All the whale fishing in the Indian Ocean and 
 south of it is in the hands of Americans, whose vessels are 
 able to fit out and provision cheaply for a three or four years' 
 stay ; and these make St. Helena one of their stations to refit, 
 and to stow and forward their oil. The days of St. Helena 
 are, nevertheless, not gone for ever. From its position it need 
 fear no rivals. The western coast of Africa is developing 
 rapidly, and, by-and-bye, more powerful, larger, and faster vessels 
 than are now dreamt of will again seek the route to the East 
 rid the Cape. St. Helena will find itself again a much needed 
 position. ' TI ' ', only duties of customs charged here are for 
 
 ' ' - 193. per hogshead and is. per dozen bottles; 
 
 me in the w^u., 23. 6d. a gallon; leaf tobacco, 6d. per Ib. ; 
 manufactured tobacco and cigars, is. per Ib. ; spirits, los. per 
 gallon. 
 
 Bermuda is chiefly noted as a naval and military port ; it is 
 
 * They already send a good deal of frozen mutton to the London 
 market.
 
 Illl II Illlll III Illl Illl II (III Illlll III II Illl I II 
 
 3 1158 00513 3193 
 
 112 THE UROWN COLONIES Ot UKKAT BRITAIN. 
 
 sometimes regarded as geographically one of the West India 
 Islands, but it has little in common with these groups, except 
 that the population to some extent is composed of African 
 races and their descendants. The revenue is about 30,000 
 a year, four-fifths of which is raised by custom-house charges. 
 These charges are, nevertheless, not high. Ale pays 205. a 
 hogshead in wood and is. a dozen bottles; wine pays 20 per 
 cent, ad valorem ; all tobaccos pay 2d. per pound and cigars 
 los. the 1,000; spirits, 43. the gallon; beef is charged is. the 
 quarter; cattle, 45. per head; coal and books are free; everything 
 else pays 5 per cent, ad valorem. The average yearly imports 
 into the island for the 10 years 1874-83 were valued in the 
 colony at about 254,000, and the average yearly exports for 
 the same period at about 80,000. Much of the imports will 
 be for the use of the garrison. Only about ,55,000 a year of 
 the imports are in British goods, 11,000 a year being for ale 
 and beer. 
 
 Gibraltar is classed as a Crown colony, but practically it is 
 a British stronghold under a purely military administration. 
 The population in 1881 (exclusive of military) was reckoned to 
 be 18,381. The yearly revenue varies between 44,000 and 
 49,000 a year, of which about 10,000 is from duties of 
 customs, the remainder being obtained by land rents, port dues 
 and fees, etc. The exports to the United Kingdom are 
 unimportant ; but the imports of the produce and manufacture 
 of the United Kingdom are considerable, chiefly for sale to 
 passing vessels and for garrison supplies. In the 5 years 
 1879-83 they amounted to 3,629,000, of which 1,580,000 
 was for wearing apparel, cottons, linens, and woollens, 245,000 
 for beer and ale, and 183,000 for refined sugar. The imports 
 also included 1,817,000 tons of British coal, valued at 
 "911,000. In 1883 vessels of all nations,"measuring 9,504,093 
 tons, entered and cleared, of which 7,602,423 
 British colours, and 9,256,763 tons of 
 steamers. Wine in bulk pays 8 peseta.- 
 and i peseta 25 cents per dozen bottles rj 
 per gallon ; and ales, 5 cents per gallon. 
 
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