The object of the policy pursued toward the colonies was directly the reverse of all this, tending to prevent any diversification whatsoever of employments, and thus not only to prevent increase in the value of land, but to diminish its value, because it forbade the return to the earth of any portion of its products. It forbade association, because it limited the whole people to a single pursuit. It forbade the immigration of artisans, the growth of towns, the establishment of schools, and consequently forbade the growth of intellect among the labourers or their owners. It forbade the growth of population, because it drove the women and the children to the culture of sugar among the richest and most unhealthy soils of the islands. It thus impoverished the land and its owners, exterminated the slave, and weakened the community, thus making it a mere instrument in the hands of the people who effected and superintended the exchanges--the merchants and the government--the class of persons that, in all ages, has thriven at the cost of the cultivator of the earth. By separating the consumer from the producer, they were enabled, as has been shown, to take to themselves three-fourths of the whole sales of the commodities consumed, leaving but one-fourth to be divided between the land and labour that had produced it. They, of course, grew strong, while the sugar-producing land and labour grew weak, and the weaker they became, the less was the need for regarding the rights of either. In this state of things it was that the landholder was required to accept a fixed sum of money as compensation for relinquishing his claim to demand of the labourer the performance of the work to which he had been accustomed. Unfortunately, however, the system pursued has effectually prevented that improvement of feeling and taste needed to produce in the latter desires for any thing beyond a sufficiency of food and a shirt. Towns and shops not having grown, he had not been accustomed even to see the commodities that tempted his fellow-labourers in the French Islands. Schools not having existed, even for the whites, he had acquired no desire for books for himself, or for instruction for his children. His wife had acquired no taste for dress, because she had been limited to field labour. Suddenly emancipated from control, they gratified the only desire that had been permitted to grow up in them--the love of perfect idleness, to be indulged to such extent as was consistent with obtaining the little food and clothing needed for the maintenance of existence.