Your Commissioners also recommend an artesian well to be sunk until fresh water be discovered. This method has been found successful in Australia, which is also an island and largely composed of sand. It is said that this method of irrigation produces astonishing results.
Finally, in the matter of industry your Commissioners propose (not, of course, as a unique industry but as a staple) the packing of sardines. A sound system of fair trade based upon a tariff scientifically adjusted to the conditions of the Island should develop the industry rapidly. Everything lends itself to this: the skilled labour could be imparted from home, the sardines from France, and the tin and oil from Spain. It would need for some years an export Bounty somewhat in the nature of Protection, the scale of which would have to be regulated by the needs of the community, but they are convinced that when once the industry was established, the superior skill of our workmen and the enterprise of our capitalists would control the markets of the world.
As to political rights, we recommend that Atlantis should be treated as a territory, and that a sharp distinction should be drawn between Rural and Urban conditions; that the inhabitants should not be granted the franchise till they have shown themselves worthy of self-government, saving, of course, those immigrants (such as the negroes of Carolina, etc.) who have been trained in the exercise of representative institutions. All Religions should be tolerated except those to which the bulk of the community show an implacable aversion. Education should be free to all, compulsory upon the poor, non-sectarian, absolutely elementary, and subject, of course, to the paramount position of that gospel which has done so much for our dear country. The sale of Intoxicants should be regulated by the Company, and these should be limited to a little spirits: wine and beer and all alcoholic liquors habitually used as beverages should be rigorously forbidden to the labouring classes, and should only be supplied in bona fide clubs with a certain minimum yearly subscription.
IN CONCLUSION your Commissioners will ever pray, etc.
MS. note added at the end in the hand of Mr. Charles P. Hands, the curator of this section:
(The Island was lost—luckily with no one aboard—during the storms of the following winter. This report still possesses, however, a strong historical interest).
PERIGEUX OF THE PERIGORD
I knew a man once. I met him in a wooden inn upon a bitterly cold day.
He was an American, and we talked of many things. At last he said to me:
"Have you ever seen the Matterhorn?"
"No," said I; for I hated the very name of it. Then he continued:
"It is the most surprising thing I ever saw."