folk, the expulsion of capital, and the establishment (with a pronunciamento and a revolution every few years) of a Republic such as those of Spanish America, combining every vice of civilisation with every vice of savagery.  From that fate, as every honest man in Trinidad knows well, England has saved the island; and therefore every honest man in Trinidad is loyal (with occasional grumblings, of course, as is the right of free-born Britons, at home and abroad) to the British flag.

CHAPTER IV:  PORT OF SPAIN

The first thing notable, on landing in Port of Spain at the low quay which has been just reclaimed from the mud of the gulf, is the multitude of people who are doing nothing.  It is not that they have taken an hour’s holiday to see the packet come in.  You will find them, or their brown duplicates, in the same places to-morrow and next day.  They stand idle in the marketplace, not because they have not been hired, but because they do not want to be hired; being able to live like the Lazzaroni of Naples, on ’Midshipman’s half-pay—­ nothing a day, and find yourself.’  You are told that there are 8000 human beings in Port of Spain alone without visible means of subsistence, and you congratulate Port of Spain on being such an Elysium that people can live there—­not without eating, for every child and most women you pass are eating something or other all day long—­but without working.  The fact is, that though they will eat as much and more than a European, if they can get it, they can do well without food; and feed, as do the Lazzaroni, on mere heat and light.  The best substitute for a dinner is a sleep under a south wall in the blazing sun; and there are plenty of south walls in Port of Spain.  In the French islands, I am told, such Lazzaroni are caught up and set to Government work, as ’strong rogues and masterless men,’ after the ancient English fashion.  But is such a course fair?  If a poor man neither steals, begs, nor rebels (and these people do not do the two latter), has he not as much right to be idle as a rich man?  To say that neither has a right to be idle is, of course, sheer socialism, and a heresy not to be tolerated.

Next, the stranger will remark, here as at Grenada, that every one he passes looks strong, healthy, and well-fed.  One meets few or none of those figures and faces, small, scrofulous, squinny, and haggard, which disgrace the so-called civilisation of a British city.  Nowhere in Port of Spain will you see such human beings as in certain streets of London, Liverpool, or Glasgow.  Every one, plainly, can live and thrive if they choose; and very pleasant it is to know that.