If there is one thing rather than another to which the grand law of
continuity or development will apply, it is to human progress. There are
certain stages through which society must pass in its onward march from
barbarism to civilization. Now one of these stages has always been
some form or other of despotism, such as feudalism or servitude, or a
despotic paternal government; and we have every reason to believe that
it is not possible for humanity to leap over this transition epoch, and
pass at once from pure savagery to free civilization. The Dutch system
attempts to supply this missing link, and to bring the people on by
gradual steps to that higher civilization, which we (the English) try to
force upon them at once. Our system has always failed. We demoralize and
we extirpate, but we never really civilize. Whether the Dutch system
can permanently succeed is but doubtful, since it may not be possible to
compress the work of ten centuries into one; but at all events it takes
nature as a guide, and is therefore, more deserving of success, and more
likely to succeed, than ours.
There is one point connected with this question which I think the
Missionaries might take up with great physical and moral results. In
this beautiful and healthy country, and with abundance of food and
necessaries, the population does not increase as it ought to do. I can
only impute this to one cause. Infant mortality, produced by neglect
while the mothers are working in the plantations, and by general
ignorance of the conditions of health in infants. Women all work, as
they have always been accustomed to do. It is no hardship to them, but
I believe is often a pleasure and relaxation. They either take their
infants with them, in which case they leave them in some shady spot on
the ground, going at intervals to give them nourishment, or they leave
them at home in the care of other children too young to work. Under
neither of these circumstances can infants be properly attended to, and
great mortality is the result, keeping the increase of population far
below the rate which the general prosperity of the country and the
universality of marriage would lead us to expect. This is a matter in
which the Government is directly interested, since it is by the increase
of the population alone that there can be any large and permanent
increase in the production of coffee. The Missionaries should take up
the question because, by inducing married women to confine themselves to
domestic duties, they will decidedly promote a higher civilization, and
directly increase the health and happiness of the whole community. The
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