just as when they are dear land and
cheap labour, the contrary would be the case, as it is in Britain.

Now, when I call a quarter of a dollar per diem a high rate of labour,
I may be misunderstood if it is not stated that this rate, when paid
to the slow and careless Indian labourer, is fully equivalent to
three times that sum to a white or British labourer working at home;
as an able-bodied man at home would do about three times as much work,
and would perform it in a highly superior manner.

These reasons make me loath to see the present system of small holdings
changed, which would sever old and respectable ties, and would force
the present independent Indian cottage-farmer to seek employment from
the extensive cultivator, and, without getting more work out of him
in the course of a year, would lower him in self-respect, and in the
many virtues which that teaches, without deriving any correspondent
advantage to society.

In a tropical climate the elements of society are varied, and
quite different from those of a country with a climate like that of
Great Britain. A native Indian, under a tropical sun, could scarcely
support a system of really _hard_ labour for six days of the week for
any length of time; and their indolent habits are, in some degree,
necessary to their existence, perhaps as much as his night's rest
is to the British labourer; for without days of relaxation to supply
the stamina which they have lost during exposure to the sun and hard
labour under it, it is my decided opinion that the men so exposed,
and exhausted, would, after a very few years, knock themselves up,
and become unfit to work, thereby rendering themselves an unproductive
class, and burdens on their friends and on society.

The present cultivators, who show a high degree of intelligence
in many of their operations, in cultivating their staple, rice,
for example, actually expend more labour on their land, and work
much more constantly than any hirelings would do; as at Jalajala,
out of upwards of a hundred labourers in the village who had no other
employment or source of revenue but their labour, not above a third
of the able-bodied men mustered in the fields when the labours of
the day began in the morning; and I understood from the owner of the
estate, that under no circumstances could he prevail on the whole
body of labourers to muster, nor, so long as their rice lasts, will
they work; it is only when that fails, and they will st