In urging the adoption of machinery in aid of manual labour, one main object I have had in view has ever been the creation of an aristocracy among the labourers themselves; the substitution of a given amount of skilled labour for a larger amount of unskilled. My hope is, that we may thus engender a healthy emulation among the labourers, a desire to obtain situations of eminence and mark among their fellows, and also to push their children forwards in the same career. Where labour is so scarce as it is here, it is undoubtedly a great object to be able to effect at a cheaper rate by machinery, what you now attempt to execute very unsatisfactorily by the hand of man. But it seems to me to be a still more important object to awaken this honourable ambition in the breast of the peasant, and I do not see how this can be effected by any other means. So long as labour means nothing more than digging cane holes, or carrying loads on the head, physical strength is the only thing required, no moral or intellectual quality comes into play. But, in dealing with mechanical appliances, the case is different; knowledge, acuteness, steadiness are at a premium. The Negro will soon appreciate the worth of these qualities, when they give him position among his own class. An indirect value will thus attach to education. Every successful effort made by enterprising and intelligent individuals to substitute skilled for unskilled labour; every premium awarded by societies in acknowledgment of superior honesty, carefulness, or ability, has a tendency to afford a remedy the most salutary and effectual which can be devised for the evil here set forth. [Sidenote: Agriculture.] With the view of awakening an interest in the subject of agricultural improvements, Lord Elgin himself offered a premium of 100_l_. for the best practical treatise on the cultivation of the cane, with a special reference to the adoption of mechanical aids and appliances in aid or in lieu of mechanical labour. In forwarding to Lord Stanley printed copies of eight of the essays which competed for the prize, he wrote as follows:--