The point to be noted is that this system, initiated
as a tem- porary measure, has become the very staff of the Colony's in- dustrial life. The negroes and negroid Creoles have become almost completely alienated from the sugar plantations, aid agri- cultural work is held in very low esteem amongst them. Despite inducements to take up small holdings of Crown land, they persist in preferring the precarious livelihood of the gold diggings or unskilled labour in the towns. Agriculture is despised as "coolie work," and the idea is accepted on all hands that between the Creole-negro population and the sugar estates there is a gulf fixed which will never be recrossed.
Upon this condition of things the planters are able to look with perfect equanimity. So long as the natural increase of the East Indian element is supplemented by the introduction of two to four thousand new coolies yearly, the aloofness of the Creole-negro population from the sugar estates causes them no anxiety. And in view of their political and financial power locally, and the influence they enjoy with the Colonial Office through the West India Committee in London, the present system of immigration is likely to continue indefinitely.
It would be worth while considering how far the experience of British Guiana is likely to be reproduced in different conditions and on a larger scale in the Transvaal. Here is a powerful capitalist clique, able to dictate its wishes to the local Govern- ment, and strongly backed by the powers that be in England. Its demand for an immediate supply of cheap labour, under the most stringent conditions of employment, has been con- ceded on the plea that temporary exigencies justify exeeptional , measures. This is exactly what happened in British Guiana sixty years ago. Is it extravagant to suggest that the subse- Sir, Ste., A. BROWNING LYRE. Bodoein.
THE TWO ENGLANDS.
[To me Runes 01 Brocrarea.1
Sr,—Can you tell me what the writer of your article under the above beading in the Spectator of April 9th means when he says that, with the exception of "The Northern Farmer," "nearly every line which he [Tennyson] ever wrote referring to landscape is intensely Southern" P It seems to me we cannot allow such a statement to pass unchallenged. Is the scenery of " M.ariana " intensely Southern, with its "lonely molted grange," its " glooming Slate," its "dark fen," and "clusteed marish-mosses" P Has your writer ever read the "Ode to Memory "P-
" And chiefly from the brook that loves To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand . . . . Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds,
Upon the ridged wohla."
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