It may be that the extermination was not altogether undeserved; that they were not sufficiently educated or skilful to carry out that ‘petite culture’ which requires—­as I have said already—­not only intellect and practical education, but a hereditary and traditional experience, such as is possessed by the Belgians, the Piedmontese, and, above all, by the charming peasantry of Provence and Languedoc, the fathers (as far as Western Europe is concerned) of all our agriculture.  It may be, too, that as the sugar cultivation increased, they were tempted more and more, in the old hard drinking days, by the special poison of the West Indies—­new rum, to the destruction both of soul and body.  Be that as it may, their extirpation helped to make inevitable the vicious system of large estates cultivated by slaves; a system which is judged by its own results; for it was ruinate before emancipation; and emancipation only gave the coup de grace.  The ‘Latifundia perdidere’ the Antilles, as they did Italy of old.  The vicious system brought its own Nemesis.  The ruin of the West Indies at the end of the great French war was principally owing to that exclusive cultivation of the cane, which forced the planter to depend on a single article of produce, and left him embarrassed every time prices fell suddenly, or the canes failed from drought or hurricane.  We all know what would be thought of an European farmer who thus staked his capital on one venture.  ‘He is a bad farmer,’ says the proverb, ’who does not stand on four legs, and, if he can, on five.’  If his wheat fails, he has his barley—­if his barley, he has his sheep—­if his sheep, he has his fatting oxen.  The Provencal, the model farmer, can retreat on his almonds if his mulberries fail; on his olives, if his vines fail; on his maize, if his wheat fails.  The West Indian might have had—­the Cuban has—­his tobacco; his indigo too; his coffee, or—­as in Trinidad—­his cacao and his arrowroot; and half a dozen crops more:  indeed, had his intellect—­and he had intellect in plenty—­been diverted from the fatal fixed idea of making money as fast as possible by sugar, he might have ere now discovered in America, or imported from the East, plants for cultivation far more valuable than that Bread-fruit tree, of which such high hopes were once entertained, as a food for the Negro.  As it was, his very green crops were neglected, till, in some islands at least, he could not feed his cattle and mules with certainty; while the sugar-cane, to which everything else had been sacrificed, proved sometimes, indeed, a valuable servant:  but too often a tyrannous and capricious master.