Those sanguine friends of the West Indies who think that the abolition of the beet bounties necessarily means the industrial salvation of Jamaica, forget that the beet bounties did not destroy West Indian sugar industry, but only accentuated and accelerated a decay which had already commenced long before their institution. Even before a beneficent home Government allowed those European countries concerned in the cultivation of the beet to create bounties which have helped to send the British West Indies staggering to ignominious bankruptcy, the dry rot had already attacked West Indian sugar. At the time of Jamaica’s prosperity, foreign sugars were admitted into English markets only on payment of a duty of something like £60 per ton; even the produce of other British sugar colonies was taxed to enrich the West Indian planter. The Jamaican planters felt aggrieved when, in 1836, the East and West Indian sugar duties were assimilated; but when England imported foreign sugar on the same terms as that produced in British colonies the planters were filled with despair. On top of this grievance came the decree of emancipation, and the total disorganisation of the West Indian labour market. For centuries Jamaica had waxed rich. In addition to a magnificent soil, the planters had enjoyed “free” labour, ready markets, protection, and high prices. Within a period of twenty or thirty years, with one exception, all these advantages were swept away. The wonderful qualities of the soil alone remained to encourage the despondent planter to work on in hope of better times. From being the “protected” he became the outcast; in place of being the absolute master of his workmen, he found himself entangled in endless labour disputes; and his markets, once so wonderfully capacious, dwindled almost to vanishing point. Previous to the year 1836, the period of the beginning of the “equalisation” of the sugar duties, the industrial condition of the island was excellent, and the Jamaican planter was apparently entirely prosperous. I say “apparently” purposely, for if we examine Gardner’s _History of Jamaica_, published in 1873, we find that the actual position of the proprietors of many of the Jamaican sugar estates in the latter part of the eighteenth century was less satisfactory than one would have supposed. In the year 1791 there were 769 sugar plantations in the island; of these, “457 were in the hands of the men, or their descendants, who possessed them in 1772. Since that date 177 have been sold in payment of debts, 22 remain in the hands [Illustration: A WAITER]