system—failed with them even during days wherein she has had to face nothing like what she has to face to-day from the commercial competition of other nations.
In order to justify myself for holding the view that it is possible for any system of English administration to fail anywhere, I would draw your attention to the fact that the system used by us for governing unhealthy regions is the Crown Colony system. The two things go together, and we must assign one of them as the reason of our failure. You may, if it please you, put it down to the other thing, the unhealthiness. I cannot, for I know that no race of men can battle more gallantly with climate than the English—no other race of men has shown so great a capacity as we have to make the tropics pay. Still to-day we stand face to face with financial disaster in tropical regions.
If you will look through a list of England's tropical unhealthy possessions, leaving out West Africa, you will see nothing but depression. There are the West Indies, British Guiana, and British Honduras. All of these are naturally rich regions and accessible to the markets of the world. There is not one of them hemmed in by great mountain chains or surrounded by arid deserts, across which their products must be transported at enormous cost. They are all on our highway—the sea; nor are they sparsely populated. Their population, according to the latest Government returns, is 1,653,832, and this estimate is acknowledged to be necessarily imperfect and insufficient. But with all these advantages we find no prosperity there under our rule. Nothing but poverty and discontent and now pauperisation in the shape of grants from the Imperial Exchequer. You say, "Oh! but that is on account of the sugar bounties and the majority of the population not being
