and silver coin imported and exported by the Colonial Bank in each of the years from 1st January, 1872, to 31st December, 1891 :—

The rates for the selling of Bills of Exchange at the Colonial Bank and at the Bank of Nova Scotia are as follow:

Drafts on Messrs. Lloyd's Bank, Limited, drawn to order on demand, are sold at the following rates :

Demand Drafts only issued; price varies according to Exchange quotation at New York.

The annexed statement shows the circulation of the Colonial Bank for twenty years, that is, from 1872 to 1891 inclusive.

* Of this amount £2,936 3s. 4d. was exported to Hayti,

In the above Table the equivalent values are given as near as possible, but generally Foreign moneys are not exactly commensurate with English, as the course of exchange continually varies, affecting consequently the relative values.

* In these, as in all British Colonial Possessions, English money of every denomination is current.

PART VIII.

EDUCATION.

KNOWING the sad state of ignorance that prevailed among the prædial classes of the West Indies during the days of slavery one of the first subjects to which the friends of emancipation turned their attention after the abolition of slavery, was the education of the working classes. The funds of Lady Mico's Charity were exclusively devoted to this philanthropic object being supplemented by a large annual grant from the Imperial Parliament, and elementary schools were started in all directions. In Jamaica there was the greatest enthusiasm in the cause of popular education; "but unfortunately the demand for schools were greatly in excess of the supply of properly trained or educated teachers. The consequence was that the majority of the schools established were extremely inefficient, the system of instruction employed in nearly all of them being the antiquated rote or sound-without-sense system, which produced nothing but the barest mechanical results. Indeed a considerable number were dame schools of the lowest stamp that did not deserve the name of school." The attendance of the scholars soon began to decline; many of the schools were closed, others languished and grew more inefficient for want of sympathy and proper attention and a general indifference with regard to the whole subject of education took possession of the public mind. The grant from the Imperial Parliament was discontinued in 1841 and the operations of the Trustees of the Mico Charity became contracted. This very unsatisfactory state of things continued for more than 20 years, during which all that was done for elementary education in Jamaica was the voting of the sum of £3,000 per annum by the local legislators and the subsidizing of some rural schools by the parochial vestries. But no good whatever was derived from these yearly votes for educational purposes as the awards were not regulated by any fixed principle, or made conditional on the attainment of any defined standard either of efficiency or numbers inattendance.

In 1864 a report embodying an account of the defective state of the schools inspected, and urging the adoption of a system "whereby the annual grants in aid might be determined on the more satisfactory basis of payment by results," was presented to the Government and laid before the Assembly, but no action was taken and matters continued in this most unsatisfactory way until the outbreak in 1865. For a time no consideration whatever was given to the question, but when the excitement subsided it became apparent that the adoption of effective measures for the extension and improvement of the education of the people should claim the early attention of the Government. Consequently Sir John Peter Grant soon after his arrival turned his attention to the subject, and the principles of the scheme that had been previously submitted to the Assembly were duly considered, with the result that in the year 1867 the code was adopted which with some modification and addition is still in force.

The first inspection under these regulations took place in 1868, when of 286 schools inspected it was found that only 96 came up to the Government standard, of which one only was placed in the first class, six were placed in the second class and eighty-nine in the third class. Thus a large proportion of the schools (two-thirds of the whole) failed to attain the standard required. This was a result that was not anticipated, and many of the school managers, who had formed erroneous conceptions of the character of their schools, were * Mr. Savage's Historical Sketch of Education in Jamaica.