Much, I believe, is involved in the issue of this and similar experiments. So long as the planter despairs,--so long as he assumes that the cane can be cultivated and sugar manufactured at profit only on the system adopted during slavery,--so long as he looks to external aids (among which I class immigration) as his sole hope of salvation from ruin--with what feelings must he contemplate all earnest efforts to civilise the mass of the population? Is education necessary to qualify the peasantry to carry on the rude field operations of slavery? May not some persons even entertain the apprehension, that it will indispose them to such pursuits? But let him, on the other hand, believe that, by the substitution of more artificial methods for those hitherto employed, he may materially abridge the expense of raising his produce, and he cannot fail to perceive that an intelligent, well-educated labourer, with something of a character to lose, and a reasonable ambition to stimulate him to exertion, is likely to prove an instrument more apt for his purposes than the ignorant drudge who differs from the slave only in being no longer amenable to personal restraint.[1] One of the measures in which Lord Elgin took the most active interest was the establishment of a 'General Agricultural Society for the Island of Jamaica,' and he was much gratified by receiving Her Majesty's permission to give to it the sanction of her name as Patroness. I am confident (he writes to Lord Stanley) that the notice which Her Majesty is pleased to take of the institution will be duly appreciated, and will be productive of much good. You must allow me to remark (he adds) that moral results of much moment are involved in the issue of the efforts which we are now making for the improvement of agriculture in this colony. Not only has the impulse which has been imparted to the public mind in Jamaica been beneficial in itself and in its direct effects, but it has, I am firmly persuaded, checked opposing tendencies, which threatened very injurious consequences to Negro civilisation. To reconcile the planter to the heavy burdens which he was called to bear for the improvement of our establishments and the benefit of the mass of the population, it was necessary to persuade him that he had an interest in raising the standard of education and morals among the peasantry; and this belief could be imparted only by inspiring a taste for a more artificial system of husbandry. By the silent operation of such salutary convictions, prejudices of old standing are removed; the friends of the Negro and of the proprietary classes find themselves almost unconsciously acting in concert, and conspiring to complete that great and holy work of which the emancipation of the slave was but the commencement. [Sidenote: The labouring classes.]