mart of Dutch enterprise than Surinam; and the eastern colony is indisputably the more attractive, the larger, the wealthier, and, more I believe owing to external and accidental circumstances than to its own intrinsic qualities, as contrasted with those of its rival, proportionally the more remunerative of the two. Hence, while the invigorating cordial, to continue our former metaphor, or rather the true and certain panacea for the patient’s lingering illness is poured out freely in the direction of the Pacific, a feeble and interrupted dribble is all that finds its way to the Atlantic coast. Nor again can the annual subsidy with which for years past the maternal government of the States has striven to uphold and still upholds the drooping vigour of her western offspring be regarded as a remedy adapted for the case; it is at best a palliative, nor, I think, — and in this the wisest heads of the colony agree, — one conducive to genuine recovery and health. State support after this fashion tends rather in its results to cramp the energies of the recipient than to develop them; it has something of the prop in it, but more of the fetter. Compare, for example, the French colonies, where it is most lavishly bestowed, with the English, where the opposite and almost niggardly extreme is the rule; the conclusion is self-apparent, and the corollary too. Periodical subsidy in particular is an error, less injurious it may be than the opposite conduct of Denmark, exacting for herself a yearly tribute from her overtaxed and exhausted colonies, but an error nevertheless; it is the injudicious conduct of an over-indulgent parent, as the other is that of a step-mother at best. Private enterprise, private capital, these are what Surinam requires; and, on the part of the mother country, not a supplement to her coffers, but a guarantee. Lastly, emancipation and its immediate and inevitable consequences, the multiplication of small freeholds, both of them events of yesterday in Surinam, have not yet allowed time for the balance of hired and independent labour to redress itself; nor has the increase of creole well-being yet reacted, as react it ultimately must, in a corresponding increase of prosperity among the European townsmen and estate-owners themselves. The present moment is one of transition; and transition implies that something has been left behind, a temporary loss even where more has been attained, or is in process of attainment.
THE DILEMMA.
CHAPTER XL.
But the intimacy was rudely interrupted. One day Kirke received a letter from army headquarters, through the general commanding the station, enclosing an anonymous vernacular petition which had been addressed to the commander-in-chief, in which various irregularities were alleged to have been committed by him in regard to the regimental accounts; and, although it was not intended to take any action on an anonymous petition, it was suggested to be desirable that he should furnish any explanations he thought proper upon the allegations made. Kirke kept the matter from the knowledge of the other officers, although it leaked out through the station staff-office that such a letter had been received; but his suspicions pointed to the ressaldar Futteh Khan as the writer of the petition, some of the more specific allegations in it referring to transactions — principally relating to advances of pay — with which this officer was concerned; while the man, he recollected, had been reprimanded, not to say abused, publicly before the whole regiment one day, just about the time this petition was dated. Sending for the man therefore to his house, he taxed him with the authorship. The ressaldar, although denying it, did so in such a way as to confirm Kirke's suspicions, and to draw down upon him a volley of abuse from his infuriated commanding officer, which the man, instead of receiving quietly as would have been usual, losing his temper in turn, replied to insolently; whereon Kirke put him in arrest, and applied to the major-general for a court-martial to try him for insubordination. The man now sent in another petition, this time in his own name, containing numerous specific accusations against his commandant of irregular transactions in regard to the regimental accounts, improper dealings with the native banker of the regiment, and above all, that he had drawn pay for troopers in excess of the number enlisted, for many months after the regiment was first raised. On this petition being received at headquarters, an order was issued from the adjutant-general's office to Sir Montague Tartar to convene a court of inquiry, composed of the senior officers at the station, who had Colonel Kirke and the regimental records under examination for many days, and called numerous native officers and troopers of the regiment as witnesses.
