Whites have
conveyed to these shores slow but infallible destruction on the one
hand, and on the other the knowledge of the life that is to come;
and the rival influences of blessing and cursing have now been fifty
years at work, producing results with which most reading people are
familiar.
I have not heard the subject spoken of, but I should think that the
decrease in the population must cause the burden of taxation to
press heavily on that which remains. Kings, cabinet ministers, an
army, a police, a national debt, a supreme court, and common
schools, are costly luxuries or necessaries. The civil list is
ludicrously out of proportion to the resources of the islands, and
the heads of the four departments--Foreign Relations, Interior,
Finance, and Law(Attorney-General)--receive $5,000 a year each!
Expenses and salaries have been increasing for the last thirty
years. For schools alone every man between twenty-one and sixty
pays a tax of two dollars annually, and there is an additional
general tax for the same purpose. I suppose that there is not a
better educated country in the world. Education is compulsory; and
besides the primary schools, there are a number of academies, all
under Government supervision, and there are 324 teachers, or one for
every twenty-seven children.
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