experience of the Native Miners was underrated;—their machinery condemned, without any previous inquiry as to its powers, or the different degrees of perfection which it had attained in the different Districts:—Gradual improvement was pronounced too sluggish a process; and Cornwall was drained of half its population, in order to substitute an entirely new method, for that which had been endeared to the Mexicans by the experience of three Centuries.
The total failure of this attempt was the natural consequence of the want of consideration with which it was made.
That it has failed, (although the fact seems still to be disputed in England,) it is impossible to deny; nor do I believe that, under any circumstances, it could have proved permanently successful.
Englishmen of the lower orders appear to undergo a change, on leaving their own country, (particularly if exposed to the contagion of a large town,) which renders them the most inefficient of human beings: nor is it by an excess of liberality, which only raises them above the sphere in which they were fitted to act, that this evil can be remedied. Indolence, obstinacy and insolence, take, but too soon, the place of those qualities, by which our working classes are distinguished at home; and, as their prejudices are not less strong than those which they have to encounter on the part of the Natives, the result, in all cases where mutual assistance is required, cannot be favourable.
