One of the measures in which Lord Elgin took the most active interest was the establishment of a ’General Agricultural Society for the Island of Jamaica,’ and he was much gratified by receiving Her Majesty’s permission to give to it the sanction of her name as Patroness.

    I am confident (he writes to Lord Stanley) that the notice which Her
    Majesty is pleased to take of the institution will be duly
    appreciated, and will be productive of much good.

You must allow me to remark (he adds) that moral results of much moment are involved in the issue of the efforts which we are now making for the improvement of agriculture in this colony.  Not only has the impulse which has been imparted to the public mind in Jamaica been beneficial in itself and in its direct effects, but it has, I am firmly persuaded, checked opposing tendencies, which threatened very injurious consequences to Negro civilisation.  To reconcile the planter to the heavy burdens which he was called to bear for the improvement of our establishments and the benefit of the mass of the population, it was necessary to persuade him that he had an interest in raising the standard of education and morals among the peasantry; and this belief could be imparted only by inspiring a taste for a more artificial system of husbandry.  By the silent operation of such salutary convictions, prejudices of old standing are removed; the friends of the Negro and of the proprietary classes find themselves almost unconsciously acting in concert, and conspiring to complete that great and holy work of which the emancipation of the slave was but the commencement.

[Sidenote:  The labouring classes.]

On a general survey of the state of the labouring classes, taken after he had been a little more than a year in the island, he was able to give a most favourable report of their condition, in all that concerns material prosperity and comfort of living.

The truth is (he wrote) that our labourers are for the most part in the position of persons who live habitually within their incomes.  They are generally sober and frugal, and accustomed to a low standard of living.  Their gardens supply them in great measure with the necessaries of life.  The chief part, therefore, of what they receive in money, whether as wages or as the price of the surplus produce of their provision grounds, they can lay aside for occasional calls, and, when they set their minds on an acquisition or an indulgence, they do not stickle at the cost.  I am told that, in the shops at Kingston, expensive articles of dress are not unusually purchased by members of the families of black labourers.  Whether the ladies are good judges of the merits of silks and cambrics I do not pretend to decide; but they pay ready money, and it is not for the sellers to cavil at their discrimination.  The purchase of land, as you well know, is going on rapidly throughout the island; and the money thus invested