So, too, with Mauritius. The over-production of sugar, with the consequent collapse of the sugar market, brought the staple industry of Mauritius to the verge of extinction; but now it is found that coffee, the aloe, china-grass, fibres, and other products can be successfully grown; and it is certain that good, and not evil, will be the ultimate issue of present perplexities.
Surely such lessons are plain enough for us to learn them here.
All the schools and lectures and experiments in the world will not furnish the farmer with moral attributes. They will not provide him with thrift, energy, intelligence, industry; but if in the possession of these, they will help him to use them to the best advantage, and I think it is in this way we can secure the most practical protection to the pristine profession, and give the most living impetus to the great agricultural industry.
Doubtless there are many drawbacks attendant on farming in Australia and New Zealand, such as want of capital, dearness and scarcity of labour, which act as a handicap on the struggling husbandman at the antipodes, but there are none the less grave grounds for reproach, and plenty of opportunities for candid self-examination and reform. Both in New Zealand and Australia, I have frequently observed with pain and regret the slovenliness and wastefulness of the methods employed by farmers in the ordinary work of the farm. There is frequently, too, the smug self-satisfaction of the incurably self-conceited egotist. Many
