What West Indians have to learn--some of them have learnt it already--is that if they can compete with other countries only by improved and more scientific cultivation and manufacture, as they themselves confess, then they can carry out the new methods only by more skilful labour.

They therefore require now, as they never required before, to give the labouring classes a practical education; to quicken their intellect, and to teach them habits of self-dependent and originative action, which are--as in the case of the Prussian soldier, and of the English sailor and railway servant--perfectly compatible with strict discipline.

Let them take warning from the English manufacturing system, which condemns a human intellect to waste itself in perpetually heading pins, or opening and shutting trap-doors, and punishes itself by producing a class of workpeople who alternate between reckless comfort and moody discontent.

Let them be sure that they will help rather than injure the labour- market of the colony, by making the labourer also a small free- holding peasant.

He will learn more in his own provision ground-- properly tilled--than he will in the cane-piece: and he will take to the cane-piece and use for his employer the self-helpfulness which he has learnt in the provision ground.