TURKS ingly in the return of "net revenue and expenditure," while charges which may be met by such contribution from the Crown Funds should be included in the expenditure ISLANDS. side of that return, I beg to acquaint you that the term "incidental revenue was used in error and my intention must have been to direct that the contribution in question should be entered as "receipt in aid" of the general revenue. 4. The only expenditure properly chargeable against the Crown Funds as a local or special revenue is, I conceive, that incident to the care and improvement of the property from which those funds arise, and to the collection of the funds themselves. 5. By the course pursued in compiling the "Blue Book" the net amount of the Crown Funds as thus obtained is not shown, nor does the expenditure for the year incurred under the several heads in the service of the colony appear in its proper place. 6. I have to request that you will furnish me with a statement of the expenditure chargeable against the Crown Funds upon the principle just stated. 7. I may observe that in the cases of colonies which receive assistance from the Imperial Treasury, the amount of the contribution is recorded as a receipt in aid. I must also remark, that the fact that the colonial revenue is collected and disbursed by the receiver-general, and the Crown Funds by another officer, does not prevent the preparation of a consolidated return of the public revenue and expenditure, which is the document required by the Blue Book, and which perhaps the auditor would be the proper officer to prepare, from statements to be furnished by the two receiving and disbursing officers, subject to that responsibility for its accuracy on the part of the colonial secretary which the regulations of the service impose upon that functionary. His Honour W. R. Inglis, I have, &c. TRINIDAD. SIR, No. 11. COPY of DESPATCH from Governor KEATE to the Right Hon. (No. 131.) Sir E. B. LYTTON, Bart. Trinidad, September 26, 1858. I HAVE the honour to transmit to you the Blue Book for Trinidad for 1857, and to report upon the condition and prospects of the Colony. In so doing, I propose to compare the period under review with the two preceeding years, having, from my recent arrival in the Colony, been unable, when forwarding the Blue Book for 1856, to accompany it with any Report. 2. The establishments of the Island are principally supported by the receipts from customs duties levied on imports, with their attendant tonnage, wharfage, and warehouse dues. The costs of its public works also are mainly defrayed from these sources. There are others which contribute, but they are comparatively unimportant. They consist of the proceeds of sales of Crown lands, of licences for the sale of spirits, of legacy duty, fees of office, fees and fines of court, reimbursement of advances, with interest, and other smaller items. To these have to be added an excise duty on rum manufactured and consumed within the Colony, and the duty payable on every contract of labour entered into with immigrants introduced at the public expense, to defray which they are specially applicable. 3. The whole revenue from all these sources combined amounted in 1855 to 103,170.; in 1856, inclusive of an exceptional tax on exports, to 127,1817.; in 1857, without such export tax, to 136,6741. The expenditure during the same three years was as follows: TRINIDAD. No. 11. TRINIDAD. The balance to the credit of the Colony stood at the close of 1855 at 23,9717., at that 4. The local expenditure of the Island is met by local taxation; in the two towns of 5. The receipts of the borough council of Port of Spain reached— leaving an excess of expenditure in the three years of 3017. The revenue and expenditure of the wards during the same period were as follows:- showing a balance in favour of revenue in the three years of 4,0341. The water-rate in Port of Spain produced- £ 1,710 1,816 1,898 The aggregate of receipts from all sources, and applicable to all purposes of general £ or, taking the average of the three years, to 157,7551. Deducting from this amount a sum of 9,1071. as the aggregate of reimbursements of advances during the same space of time, a total of 148,548/. is left as the produce of what may be fairly called taxation, either of a direct or indirect nature. 6. The population of Trinidad was returned by the last Census, taken in July 1851, at. 68,600. Its increase since that time by births, as deducible from the records in the Registrar General's Office, by immigration from China, India, and the Cape de Verde Islands, as shown in the returns of the Agent General of Immigrants, and by the influx of strangers from the neighbouring colonies, so far as can be judged from the entries in the books of the Harbour Master, may be safely said to have raised it to 80,000. By dividing the aggregate of revenue arrived at in the last paragraph by the present estimated amount of population, a result is given showing an average taxation on the inhabitants of Trinidad of 1l. 15s. 2d. per head per annum. 7. Continuing to compare the period to which the Blue Book refers with the two preceding years, I proceed to point out the progressive increase that has taken place in the value of the imports and exports of the Colony. The former were returned £ In 1855 at 554,534 TRINIDAD. the extraordinary rise in the latter year being ascribable to improved prices in a far greater degree than to augmented exportation. 8. That in an island of more than 2,012 square miles of surface the industry of a population so small in comparison with its extent and so fluctuating in some of its elements should suffice for the production of exportable commodities valued at so high a figure is attributable in great measure to the steadiness with which certain principles have been adhered to in its legislation, and it is matter of congratulation that its institutions are such as to admit of this stability. To concentrate population round certain centres of civilization, and to check, so far as moral means of compulsion can do so, its spread into distant and unsettled districts, have been the objects aimed at. This has been sought partly by regulations affecting the sale of Crown lands, partly by the subjection of all lands, whether cultivated or not, to ward rates, and thus connecting inseparably the responsibilities of property with its enjoyment, and partly by territorial and administrative arrangements having for their object the care, instruction, and wellbeing generally of the people, and their inter-communication with each other. 9. This concentration, however, is as a matter of course comparative, and not absolute. Many causes, irrespective of the characteristic tendency of the peasantry to retirement and isolation, conduce to extend the circle which these measures are designed to limit. The very cultivation of cocoa, indeed, holding, as it does, so important a place among the staples of the island, may be said to operate in this direction, by peopling such of the secluded valleys among the mountains as are not too inaccessible or too distant from the available markets for their produce; and by the abandonment of estates cultivated in canes during slavery in the south-eastern portion of the island, and their consequent sale in small lots, a scattered population has been kept up along that remote coast. It is, however, a district peculiarly suited to the growth of the cocoa-nut palm, the planting of which is now being greatly extended, so that even this unpromising industrial element is gradually being utilized. Two well intended measures of Government at an earlier period in the history of the Colony have, however, hitherto had the effect of encouraging rather than of counteracting the spread of population towards uncultivated districts. allude to the location of disbanded military pensioners at Manzanilla, further south, along the same coast, and the settlement in the Naparimas of the American negroes compromised in the last war with the United States. In each case grants of land were allotted to the settlers larger than they could themselves work, and far beyond the limits to which the cultivation of the staples had at that time extended. Settlers, therefore, have been attracted towards them, as squatters on their small holdings, while they, and especially the Americans, have taken the place of the Indian wandering tribes, now almost TRINIDAD. extinct in the island, as hunters of the game with which the vast forests in the centre of it abound. Even among them, however, I can discern some signs of improvements. The pensioners are beginning to feel the irksomeness of their isolation, and to express a wish for the establishment of schools for their children, and for more easy communica tion with the capital; wants which I hope to be enabled to some extent to meet. Cane cultivation, moreover, is striding onwards, and gradually approaching and threatening in some places to envelop the American settlements. Their position, therefore, will gradually become less exceptional, and the habits of the settlers be influenced and moulded by contact with a civilization to which they have hitherto been comparatively strangers. 10. But it is to the continuous though expensive and by no means sufficient stream of immigration which has flowed into the island during the years under review that it is mainly indebted for the progress it has achieved. In addition to his usual Annual Report, a copy of which I transmitted in my Despatch, No. 19. of the 11th February last, the Agent General of Immigrants has taken the occasion of the close of a full period of five years' industrial residence to draw up some tabular statements, and to offer some remarks upon them, with a view to showing, upon more complete data than he had previously at his command, in what manner the inseparable interests of the workman and the employer have been promoted by this particular importation of foreign labour. I append a copy of his remarks and tables.* Perhaps in no sugar-growing colony, unless it is Mauritius, has the introduction of labour from abroad become so completely a part of the ordinary business of its local Government as in Trinidad. It is an island so favoured by nature in regard to its situation, its soil and its climate, that but one element of wealth remains to be developed in it by artificial means, namely, the possession of a population proportionate to its cultivable extent. So attractive a field of employment does it offer that it profits by a considerable voluntary immigration from the neighbouring colonies, nor are the exertions of individuals wanting to obtain reinforcements from more distant places which from time to time may be open to them; but the supply from the first of these sources is very uncertain, and that from the latter very partial, comparatively few proprietors being in a condition to avail themselves of it, even by combinations among themselves. Government agency, therefore, is looked to as the medium by which the artificial increase of the population can best be fostered; and indeed to restrict by legislative enactments and administrative arrangements the native races within an area compatible with the improvement of their social condition, and gradually, though more quickly than natural means could suffice to effect, to fill up that area, and then extend its limits, would seem to be in fact but different modes of carrying out the same line of policy. 11. A collateral result of this policy has been, to give, at a comparatively early period in the history of the colony, a parochial rather than a missionary character to its clerical organization. The island is an archdeaconry in the diocese of Barbados, and is divided for ecclesiastical purposes, in connection with the national church, into sixteen parishes, forming six rectories and nine island curacies, with assistant curacies attached to each rectory. Of these six rectories, five Island curacies and three assistant curacies are provided with clergy and stipends. The archbishop of a large Roman Catholic diocese, including several West Indian islands, British and foreign, resides in Trinidad, and enjoys a salary from its treasury. He is assisted in this part of his diocese by a vicar-general. It is divided into twenty cures and seven assistant curacies, all of which are supplied with clergy and stipends. In proportion as the inhabited area widens a call necessarily arises for an increase in the number of the clergy of both denominations. The more scattered population, especially in the cocoa-growing districts, being mainly of foreign descent, the Roman Catholic establishment has spread over a more extended range than that of the Church of England, but at this moment there is great need of a reinforcement to the ranks of the latter. 12. However unavoidable, there can be no doubt that the existence of a double ecclesiastical establishment must tend rather to keep up distinctions, other than those of a purely religious character, which it is highly desirable to eradicate, distinctions that is of race, language, and manners. The educational system of the Colony is calculated to assist in counteracting this tendency. It is no part of the business of the civil government to inculcate unity of religious belief, but it is decidedly incumbent upon it to endeavour to prevent the absence of such unity producing social discord. While then *Note. This Report of the Agent General of Immigrants will be found printed in House of Commons Paper, No. 31, of Session 1859, page 354. (West India Immigration.) the training of the young in all doctrinal points is left to be conducted exclusively and TRINIDAD separately by the ministers of the communities to which they severally belong, ample time being set apart for this most essential object, their instruction in secular subjects is carried on in common in primary schools open to all, and through the medium of the English language only. Masters are provided for these schools, which number at present, inclusively of those maintained by the borough council of Port of Spain and San Fernando, 28, with an average attendance of 1,227 pupils, by a normal training school established in the former town, and which now has on its books the names of 126 pupils, of whom 13 are in the training department. There has also existed in the same town since 1856 an institution admirably organized and conducted for the education of females and the training of female teachers; 130 names are now upon its books, of which 5 are those of pupil teachers. It is already prepared to provide mistresses for infant schools; the establishment and maintenance of such, in addition to primary schools in the two towns, is intrusted by Ordinance to their borough councils; but I regret to say that it is only quite lately that either of these two bodies has taken any steps for discharging this portion of its duties. I am now given to understand that there is every likelihood of one such school being opened in Port of Spain in a short time. I can conceive no measure which would be more conducive to the gradual obliteration of the stigma now resting upon these two towns of possessing a larger proportion of idlers to their whole population than probably any two others in the world, or which would redound more to the credit, and exhibit more clearly the foresight of their municipal authorities, than a conscientious carrying out on their parts of the object the Legislature had in view when imposing this duty upon them. Fortunately other bodies have not been so remiss; and there exist in the towns and throughout the island, irrespective of Government schools, some 26 others, supported in various ways by voluntary contributions, the greater number of which are infant schools. 13. I was in great hopes of being able to announce in this Report the opening of the "Queen's Collegiate School" in Port of Spain, preparations for establishing which have long been made, for the purpose of providing on the spot for the children of parents in the upper ranks of society an education suited to them, and upon the same really catholic principle of combination instead of separation which characterizes the system adopted in regard to the general population. It has taken longer, however, than I anticipated to procure the services of a competent head master, before whose arrival no commencement can be made. I trust that the year will not elapse before the establishment is in full career. 14. Grave doubts are entertained in many quarters of the working of the Ordinance already referred to," For the Regulation of Municipal Corporations in the Island," No. 10. of 1853, and certainly the cause of education has not been promoted under it to the extent and in the manner it was intended to be. Petitions upon the subject have been presented to the Council of Government, not indeed referring especially to this point, but aiming at a change in the system which may ensure its operating more beneficially in every respect. The clause of the Ordinance particularly attacked is that which gives salaries out of the borough funds to the mayors of the two corporations, and it is contended that the effect of this provision has been, on the one hand, to deter the persons best fitted by character and position for seats at the boards from becoming candidates for them, by its giving to pecuniary considerations a predominating influence on the results of elections, and on the other hand practically to throw upon the mayors the whole of the duties which ought to be discharged by the councils, upon the ground of their being paid for the work, while the other members of them are not. Municipal institutions in the unrestricted form given to them by the Ordinance are in fact on their trial, and any expedient is worth adopting which may seem likely to help them to a successful issue. It is certainly essential to this that they should be worked out by the best hands; but it is incontestible, whatever the cause may be, that up to the present time the modified form in which the municipal principle is embodied in the ward system of the Island has been found in its practical results to suit its circumstances better. 15. The boards of auditors in the country districts and the borough councils of the two towns are constituted by another Ordinance Boards of health for these respective localities, and the duty of framing rules for their guidance is devolved upon a Central General Board. The first fruits of this organization has been the devising of a scheme for the underground drainage of Port of Spain, which will very soon be in course of execution. When finished, and when the sanitary regulations are in force, which cannot be brought into operation till it is so, the efforts of its municipal authorities to keep the |