BOOK IV.

Historical Summary or Résumé: 233-261, end

FROUDACITY

PREFACE

[5] Last year had well advanced towards its middle--in fact it was

already April, 1888--before Mr. Froude's book of travels in the West

Indies became known and generally accessible to readers in those

Colonies.

My perusal of it in Grenada about the period above mentioned disclosed,

thinly draped with rhetorical flowers, the dark outlines of a scheme to

thwart political aspiration in the Antilles. That project is sought to

be realized by deterring the home authorities from granting an elective

local legislature, however restricted in character, to any of the

Colonies not yet enjoying such an advantage. An argument based on the

composition of the inhabitants of those Colonies is confidently relied

upon to confirm the inexorable mood of Downing Street.

[6] Over-large and ever-increasing,--so runs the argument,--the African

element in the population of the West Indies is, from its past history

and its actual tendencies, a standing menace to the continuance of

civilization and religion. An immediate catastrophe, social,

political, and moral, would most assuredly be brought about by the

granting of full elective rights to dependencies thus inhabited.

Enlightened statesmanship should at once perceive the immense benefit

that would ultimately result from such refusal of the franchise. The

cardinal recommendation of that refusal is that it would avert

definitively the political domination of the Blacks, which must

inevitably be the outcome of any concession of the modicum of right so

earnestly desired. The exclusion of the Negro vote being inexpedient,

if not impossible, the exercise of electoral powers by the Blacks must

lead to their returning candidates of their own race to the local

legislatures, and that, too, in numbers preponderating according to the

majority of the Negro electors. The Negro legislators thus supreme in

the councils of the Colonies would straightway proceed to pass

vindictive and retaliatory laws against their white fellow- [7]

colonists. For it is only fifty years since the White man and the

Black man stood in the reciprocal relations of master and slave.

Whilst those relations subsisted, the white masters inflicted, and the

black slaves had to endure, the hideous atrocities that are inseparable

from the system of slavery. Since Emancipation, the enormous strides

made in self-advancement by the ex-slaves have only had the effect of

provoking a resentful uneasiness in the bosoms of the ex-masters. The

former bondsmen, on their side, and like their brethren of Hayti, are

eaten up with implacable, blood-thirsty rancour against their former

lords and owners. The annals of Hayti form quite a cabinet of

political and social object lessons which, in the eyes of British

statesmen, should be invaluable in showing the true method of dealing

with Ethiopic subjects of the Crown. The Negro race in Hayti, in order

to obtain and to guard what it calls its freedom, has outraged every

humane instinct and falsified every benevolent hope. The slave-owners

there had not been a whit more cruel than slave-owners in the other

islands. But, in spite of this, how ferocious, how sanguinary, [8] how

relentless against them has the vengeance of the Blacks been in their

hour of mastery! A century has passed away since then, and,

notwithstanding that, the hatred of Whites still rankles in their

souls, and is cherished and yielded to as a national creed and guide of

conduct. Colonial administrators of the mighty British Empire, the

lesson which History has taught and yet continues to teach you in Hayti

as to the best mode of dealing with your Ethiopic colonists lies

patent, blood-stained and terrible before you, and should be taken

definitively to heart. But if you are willing that Civilization and

Religion--in short, all the highest developments of individual and

social life--should at once be swept away by a desolating vandalism of

African birth; if you do not recoil from the blood-guiltiness that

would stain your consciences through the massacre of our

fellow-countrymen in the West Indies, on account of their race,

complexion and enlightenment; finally, if you desire those modern

Hesperides to revert into primeval jungle, horrent lairs wherein the

Blacks, who, but a short while before, had been ostensibly civilized,

shall be revellers, as high-priests and [9] devotees, in orgies of

devil-worship, cannibalism, and obeah--dare to give the franchise to

those West Indian Colonies, and then rue the consequences of your

infatuation!...

Alas, if the foregoing summary of the ghastly imaginings of Mr. Froude

were true, in what a fool's paradise had the wisest and best amongst us

been living, moving, and having our being! Up to the date of the

suggestion by him as above of the alleged facts and possibilities of

West Indian life, we had believed (even granting the correctness of his

gloomy account of the past and present positions of the two races) that

to no well-thinking West Indian White, whose ancestors may have,

innocently or culpably, participated in the gains as well as the guilt

of slavery, would the remembrance of its palmy days be otherwise than

one of regret. We Negroes, on the other hand, after a lapse of time

extending over nearly two generations, could be indebted only to

precarious tradition or scarcely accessible documents for any knowledge

we might chance upon of the sufferings endured in these Islands of the

West by those of our race who have gone before us. Death, with

undiscriminating hand, had gathered [10] in the human harvest of

masters and slaves alike, according to or out of the normal laws of

nature; while Time had been letting down on the stage of our existence

drop-scene after drop-scene of years, to the number of something like

fifty, which had been curtaining off the tragic incidents of the past

from the peaceful activities of the present. Being thus circumstanced,

thought we, what rational elements of mutual hatred should now continue

to exist in the bosoms of the two races?

With regard to the perpetual reference to Hayti, because of our oneness

with its inhabitants in origin and complexion, as a criterion for the

exact forecast of our future conduct under given circumstances, this

appeared to us, looking at actual facts, perversity gone wild in the

manufacture of analogies. The founders of the Black Republic, we had

all along understood, were not in any sense whatever equipped, as Mr.

Froude assures us they were, when starting on their self-governing

career, with the civil and intellectual advantages that had been

transplanted from Europe. On the contrary, we had been taught to

regard them as most unfortunate in the circumstances under which [11]

they so gloriously conquered their merited freedom. We saw them free,

but perfectly illiterate barbarians, impotent to use the intellectual

resources of which their valour had made them possessors, in the shape

of books on the spirit and technical details of a highly developed

national existence. We had learnt also, until this new interpreter of

history had contradicted the accepted record, that the continued

failure of Hayti to realize the dreams of Toussaint was due to the

fatal want of confidence subsisting between the fairer and darker

sections of the inhabitants, which had its sinister and disastrous

origin in the action of the Mulattoes in attempting to secure freedom

for themselves, in conjunction with the Whites, at the sacrifice of

their darker-hued kinsmen. Finally, it had been explained to us that

the remembrance of this abnormal treason had been underlying and

perniciously influencing the whole course of Haytian national history.

All this established knowledge we are called upon to throw overboard,

and accept the baseless assertions of this conjuror-up of inconceivable

fables! He calls upon us to believe that, in spite of being free,

educated, progressive, and at peace with [12] all men, we West Indian

Blacks, were we ever to become constitutionally dominant in our native

islands, would emulate in savagery our Haytian fellow-Blacks who, at

the time of retaliating upon their actual masters, were tortured

slaves, bleeding and rendered desperate under the oppressors' lash--and

all this simply and merely because of the sameness of our ancestry and

the colour of our skin! One would have thought that Liberia would have

been a fitter standard of comparison in respect of a coloured

population starting a national life, really and truly equipped with the

requisites and essentials of civilized existence. But such a reference

would have been fatal to Mr. Froude's object: the annals of Liberia

being a persistent refutation of the old pro-slavery prophecies which

our author so feelingly rehearses.

Let us revert, however, to Grenada and the newly-published "Bow of

Ulysses," which had come into my hands in April, 1888.

It seemed to me, on reading that book, and deducing therefrom the

foregoing essential summary, that a critic would have little more to

do, in order to effectually exorcise this negrophobic political

hobgoblin, than to appeal to [13] impartial history, as well as to

common sense, in its application to human nature in general, and to the

actual facts of West Indian life in particular.

History, as against the hard and fast White-master and Black-slave

theory so recklessly invented and confidently built upon by Mr. Froude,

would show incontestably--(a) that for upwards of two hundred years

before the Negro Emancipation, in 1838, there had never existed in one

of those then British Colonies, which had been originally discovered

and settled for Spain by the great Columbus or by his successors, the

Conquistadores, any prohibition whatsoever, on the ground of race or

colour, against the owning of slaves by any free person possessing the

necessary means, and desirous of doing so; (b) that, as a consequence

of this non-restriction, and from causes notoriously historical,

numbers of blacks, half-breeds, and other non-Europeans, besides such

of them as had become possessed of their "property" by inheritance,

availed themselves of this virtual license, and in course of time

constituted a very considerable proportion of the slave-holding section

of those communities; (c) that these [14] dusky plantation-owners

enjoyed and used in every possible sense the identical rights and

privileges which were enjoyed and used by their pure-blooded Caucasian

brother-slaveowners. The above statements are attested by written

documents, oral tradition, and, better still perhaps, by the living

presence in those islands of numerous lineal representatives of those

once opulent and flourishing non-European planter-families.

Common sense, here stepping in, must, from the above data, deduce some

such conclusions as the following. First that, on the hypothesis that

the slaves who were freed in 1838--full fifty years ago--were all on an

average fifteen years old, those vengeful ex-slaves of to-day will be

all men of sixty-five years of age; and, allowing for the delay in

getting the franchise, somewhat further advanced towards the human

life-term of threescore and ten years. Again, in order to organize and

carry out any scheme of legislative and social retaliation of the kind

set forth in the "Bow of Ulysses," there must be (which unquestionably

there is not) a considerable, well-educated, and very influential

number surviving of those who had actually [15] been in bondage.

Moreover, the vengeance of these people (also assuming the foregoing

nonexistent condition) would have, in case of opportunity, to wreak

itself far more largely and vigorously upon members of their own race

than upon Whites, seeing that the increase of the Blacks, as correctly

represented in the "Bow of Ulysses," is just as rapid as the diminution

of the White population. And therefore, Mr. Froude's

"Danger-to-the-Whites" cry in support of his anti-reform manifesto

would not appear, after all, to be quite so justifiable as he possibly

thinks.

Feeling keenly that something in the shape of the foregoing programme

might be successfully worked up for a public defence of the maligned

people, I disregarded the bodily and mental obstacles that have beset

and clouded my career during the last twelve years, and cheerfully

undertook the task, stimulated thereto by what I thought weighty

considerations. I saw that no representative of Her Majesty's Ethiopic

West Indian subjects cared to come forward to perform this work in the

more permanent shape that I felt to be not only desirable but essential

for our self-vindication. [16] I also realized the fact that the "Bow

of Ulysses" was not likely to have the same ephemeral existence and

effect as the newspaper and other periodical discussions of its

contents, which had poured from the press in Great Britain, the United

States, and very notably, of course, in all the English Colonies of the

Western Hemisphere. In the West Indian papers the best writers of our

race had written masterly refutations, but it was clear how difficult

the task would be in future to procure and refer to them whenever

occasion should require. Such productions, however, fully satisfied

those qualified men of our people, because they were legitimately

convinced (even as I myself am convinced) that the political destinies

of the people of colour could not run one tittle of risk from anything

that it pleased Mr. Froude to write or say on the subject. But,

meditating further on the question, the reflection forced itself upon

me that, beyond the mere political personages in the circle more

directly addressed by Mr. Froude's volume, there were individuals whose

influence or possible sympathy we could not afford to disregard, or to

esteem lightly. So I deemed it right and a patriotic duty to attempt

[17] the enterprise myself, in obedience to the above stated motives.

At this point I must pause to express on behalf of the entire coloured

population of the West Indies our most heartfelt acknowledgments to Mr.

C. Salmon for the luminous and effective vindication of us, in his

volume on "West Indian Confederation," against Mr. Froude's libels.

The service thus rendered by Mr. Salmon possesses a double significance

and value in my estimation. In the first place, as being the work of a

European of high position, quite independent of us (who testifies

concerning Negroes, not through having gazed at them from balconies,

decks of steamers, or the seats of moving carriages, but from actual

and long personal intercourse with them, which the internal evidence of

his book plainly proves to have been as sympathetic as it was

familiar), and, secondly, as the work of an individual entirely outside

of our race, it has been gratefully accepted by myself as an incentive

to self-help, on the same more formal and permanent lines, in a matter

so important to the status which we can justly claim as a progressive,

law-abiding, and self-respecting section of Her Majesty's liege

subjects.

[18] It behoves me now to say a few words respecting this book as a

mere literary production.

Alexander Pope, who, next to Shakespeare and perhaps Butler, was the

most copious contributor to the current stock of English maxims, says:

"True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance,

As those move easiest who have learnt to dance."

A whole dozen years of bodily sickness and mental tribulation have not

been conducive to that regularity of practice in composition which

alone can ensure the "true ease" spoken of by the poet; and therefore

is it that my style leaves so much to be desired, and exhibits,

perhaps, still, more to be pardoned. Happily, a quarrel such as ours

with the author of "The English in the West Indies" cannot be finally

or even approximately settled on the score of superior literary

competency, whether of aggressor or defender. I feel free to ignore

whatever verdict might be grounded on a consideration so purely

artificial. There ought to be enough, if not in these pages, at any

rate in whatever else I have heretofore published, that should prove me

not so hopelessly stupid and wanting in [19] self-respect, as would be

implied by my undertaking a contest in artistic phrase-weaving with one

who, even among the foremost of his literary countrymen, is confessedly

a master in that craft. The judges to whom I do submit our case are

those Englishmen and others whose conscience blends with their

judgment, and who determine such questions as this on their essential

rightness which has claim to the first and decisive consideration. For

much that is irregular in the arrangement and sequence of the

subject-matter, some blame fairly attaches to our assailant. The

erratic manner in which lie launches his injurious statements against

the hapless Blacks, even in the course of passages which no more led up

to them than to any other section of mankind, is a very notable feature

of his anti-Negro production. As he frequently repeats, very often

with cynical aggravations, his charges and sinister prophecies against

the sable objects of his aversion, I could see no other course open to

me than to take him up on the points whereto I demurred, exactly how,

when, and where I found them.

My purpose could not be attained up without direct mention of, or

reference to, certain public [20] employés in the Colonies whose

official conduct has often been the subject of criticism in the public

press of the West Indies. Though fully aware that such criticism has

on many occasions been much more severe than my own strictures, yet, it

being possible that some special responsibility may attach to what I

here reproduce in a more permanent shape, I most cheerfully accept, in

the interests of public justice, any consequence which may result.

A remark or two concerning the publication of this rejoinder. It has

been hinted to me that the issue of it has been too long delayed to

secure for it any attention in England, owing to the fact that the West

Indies are but little known, and of less interest, to the generality of

English readers. Whilst admitting, as in duty bound, the possible

correctness of this forecast, and regretting the oft-recurring

hindrances which occasioned such frequent and, sometimes, long

suspension of my labour; and noting, too, the additional delay caused

through my unacquaintance with English publishing usages, I must,

notwithstanding, plead guilty to a lurking hope that some small

fraction of Mr. Froude's readers will yet be found, [21] whose interest

in the West Indies will be temporarily revived on behalf of this essay,

owing to its direct bearing on Mr. Froude and his statements relative

to these Islands, contained in his recent book of travels in them.

This I am led to hope will be more particularly the case when it is

borne in mind that the rejoinder has been attempted by a member of that

very same race which he has, with such eloquent recklessness of all

moral considerations, held up to public contempt and disfavour. In

short, I can scarcely permit myself to believe it possible that concern

regarding a popular author, on his being questioned by an adverse

critic of however restricted powers, can be so utterly dead within a

twelvemonth as to be incapable of rekindling. Mr. Froude's "Oceana,"

which had been published long before its author voyaged to the West

Indies, in order to treat the Queen's subjects there in the same more

than questionable fashion as that in which he had treated those of the

Southern Hemisphere, had what was in the main a formal rejoinder to its

misrepresentations published only three months ago in this city. I

venture to believe that no serious work in defence of an [22] important

cause or community can lose much, if anything, of its intrinsic value

through some delay in its issue; especially when written in the

vindication of Truth, whose eternal principles are beyond and above the

influence of time and its changes.

At any rate, this attempt to answer some of Mr. Froude's main

allegations against the people of the West Indies cannot fail to be of

grave importance and lively interest to the inhabitants of those

Colonies. In this opinion I am happy in being able to record the full

concurrence of a numerous and influential body of my fellow-West

Indians, men of various races, but united in detestation of falsehood

and injustice.

J.J.T.

LONDON, June, 1889.

BOOK I: INTRODUCTION

[27] Like the ancient hero, one of whose warlike equipments furnishes

the complementary title of his book, the author of "The English in the

West Indies; or, The Bow of Ulysses," sallied forth from his home to

study, if not cities, at least men (especially black men), and their

manners in the British Antilles.

James Anthony Froude is, beyond any doubt whatever, a very considerable

figure in modern English literature. It has, however, for some time

ceased to be a question whether his acceptability, to the extent which

it reaches, has not been due rather to the verbal attractiveness than

to the intrinsic value and trustworthiness of his opinions and

teachings. In fact, so far as a judgment can be formed from examined

specimens of his writings, it appears that our [28] author is the

bond-slave of his own phrases. To secure an artistic perfection of

style, he disregards all obstacles, not only those presented by the

requirements of verity, but such as spring from any other kind of

consideration whatsoever. The doubt may safely be entertained whether,

among modern British men of letters, there be one of equal capability

who, in the interest of the happiness of his sentences, so cynically

sacrifices what is due not only to himself as a public instructor, but

also to that public whom he professes to instruct. Yet, as the too

evident plaything of an over-permeable moral constitution, he might set

up some plea in explanation of his ethical vagaries. He might urge,

for instance, that the high culture of which his books are all so

redolent has utterly failed to imbue him with the nil admirari

sentiment, which Horace commends as the sole specific for making men

happy and keeping them so. For, as a matter of fact, and with special

reference to the work we have undertaken to discuss, Mr. Froude, though

cynical in his general utterances regarding Negroes-of the male sex, be

it noted-is, in the main, all extravagance and self-abandonment

whenever he [29] brings an object of his arbitrary likes or dislikes

under discussion. At such times he is no observer, much less

worshipper, of proportion in his delineations. Thorough-paced,

scarcely controllable, his enthusiasm for or against admits no degree

in its expression, save and except the superlative. Hence Mr. Froude's

statement of facts or description of phenomena, whenever his feelings

are enlisted either way, must be taken with the proverbial "grain of

salt" by all when enjoying the luxury of perusing his books. So

complete is his self-identification with the sect or individual for the

time being engrossing his sympathy, that even their personal

antipathies are made his own; and the hostile language, often

exaggerated and unjust, in which those antipathies find vent, secures

in his more chastened mode of utterance an exact reproduction none the

less injurious because divested of grossness.

Of this special phase of self-manifestation a typical instance is

afforded at page 164, under the heading of "Dominica," in a passage

which at once embraces and accentuates the whole spirit and method of

the work. To a eulogium of the professional skill and successful [30]

agricultural enterprise of Dr. Nichol, a medical officer of that

Colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his

short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a

gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the

elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the

worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. His want of

success, our author informs his readers, was brought about through Dr.

Nichol "being the only man in the Colony of superior attainments."

Persons acquainted with the stormy politics of that lovely little

island do not require to be informed that the bitterest animosity had

for years been raging between Dr. Nichol and some of the elected

members-a fact which our author chose characteristically to regard as

justifying an onslaught by himself on the whole of that section of

which the foes of his new friend formed a prominent part.

Swayed by the above specified motives, our author also manages to see

much that is, and always has been, invisible to mortal eye, and to fail

to hear what is audible to and remarked upon by every other observer.

[31] Thus we find him (p. 56) describing the Grenada Carenage as being

surrounded by forest trees, causing its waters to present a violet

tint; whilst every one familiar with that locality knows that there are

no forest trees within two miles of the object which they are so

ingeniously made to colour. Again, and aptly illustrating the

influence of his prejudices on his sense of hearing, we will notice

somewhat more in detail the following assertion respecting the speech

of the gentry of Barbados:--

"The language of the Anglo-Barbadians was pure English, the voices

without the smallest transatlantic intonation."

Now it so happens that no Barbadian born and bred, be he gentle or

simple, can, on opening his lips, avoid the fate of Peter of Galilee

when skulking from the peril of a detected nationality: "Thy speech

bewrayeth thee!" It would, however, be prudent on this point to take

the evidence of other Englishmen, whose testimony is above suspicion,

seeing that they were free from the moral disturbance that affected Mr.

Froude's auditory powers. G. J. Chester, in his "Transatlantic

Sketches" (page 95), deposes as follows--

[32] "But worse, far worse than the colour, both of men and women, is

their voice and accent. Well may Coleridge enumerate among the pains

of the West Indies, 'the yawny-drawny way in which men converse.' The

soft, whining drawl is simply intolerable. Resemble the worst Northern

States woman's accent it may in some degree, but it has not a grain of

its vigour. A man tells you, 'if you can speer it, to send a beerer

with a bottle of bare,' and the clergyman excruciates you by praying in

church, 'Speer us, good Lord.' The English pronunciation of A and E is

in most words transposed. Barbados has a considerable number of

provincialisms of dialect. Some of these, as the constant use of

'Mistress' for 'Mrs.,' are interesting as archaisms, or words in use in

the early days of the Colony, and which have never died out of use.

Others are Yankeeisms or vulgarisms; others, again, such as the

expression 'turning cuffums,' i.e. summersets, from cuffums, a species

of fish, seem to be of local origin."

In a note hereto appended, the author gives a list of English words of

peculiar use and acceptation in Barbados.

[33] To the same effect writes Anthony Trollope:

"But if the black people differ from their brethren of the other

islands, so certainly do the white people. One soon learns to know--a

Bim. That is the name in which they themselves delight, and therefore,

though there is a sound of slang about it, I give it here. One

certainly soon learns to know a Bim. The most peculiar distinction is

in his voice. There is always a nasal twang about it, but quite

distinct from the nasality of a Yankee. The Yankee's word rings sharp

through his nose; not so that of the first-class Bim. There is a soft

drawl about it, and the sound is seldom completely formed. The effect

on the ear is the same as that on the hand when a man gives you his to

shake, and instead of shaking yours, holds his own still, &c., &c."

("The West Indies," p. 207).

From the above and scores of other authoritative testimonies which

might have been cited to the direct contrary of our traveller's tale

under this head, we can plainly perceive that Mr. Froude's love is not

only blind, but adder-deaf as well. We shall now contemplate him under

circumstances where his feelings are quite other than those of a

partisan.

BOOK I: VOYAGE OUT

[34] That Mr. Froude, despite his professions to the contrary, did not

go out on his explorations unhampered by prejudices, seems clear enough

from the following quotation:--

"There was a small black boy among us, evidently of pure blood, for his

hair was wool and his colour black as ink. His parents must have been

well-to-do, for the boy had been to Europe to be educated. The

officers on board and some of the ladies played with him as they would

play with a monkey. He had little more sense than a monkey, perhaps

less, and the gestures of him grinning behind gratings and perching out

his long thin arms between the bars were curiously suggestive of the

original from whom we are told now that all of us came. The worst of

it was that, being lifted above his own people, he had been taught to

despise them. He was spoilt as a black and could not be made into a

white, and this I found afterwards was the invariable and dangerous

consequence whenever a superior negro contrived to raise himself. He

might do well enough himself, but his family feel their blood as

degradation. His [35] children will not marry among their own people,

and not only will no white girl marry a negro, but hardly any dowry can

be large enough to tempt a West Indian white to make a wife of a black

lady. This is one of the most sinister features in the present state

of social life there."

We may safely assume that the playing of "the officers on board and

some of the ladies" with the boy, "as they would play with a monkey,"

is evidently a suggestion of Mr. Froude's own soul, as well as the

resemblance to the simian tribe which he makes out from the frolics of

the lad. Verily, it requires an eye rendered more than microscopic by

prejudice to discern the difference between the gambols of juveniles of

any colour under similar conditions. It is true that it might just be

the difference between the friskings of white lambs and the friskings

of lambs that are not white. That any black pupil should be taught to

despise his own people through being lifted above them by education,

seems a reckless statement, and far from patriotic withal; inasmuch as

the education referred to here was European, and the place from which

it was obtained presumably England. At all events, [36] the difference

among educated black men in deportment towards their unenlightened

fellow-blacks, can be proved to have nothing of that cynicism which

often marks the bearing of Englishmen in an analogous case with regard

to their less favoured countrymen. The statement that a black person

can be "spoilt" for such by education, whilst he cannot be made white,

is one of the silly conceits which the worship of the skin engenders in

ill-conditioned minds. No sympathy should be wasted on the negro

sufferer from mortification at not being able to "change his skin." The

Ethiopian of whatever shade of colour who is not satisfied with being

such was never intended to be more than a mere living figure. Mr.

Froude further confidently states that whilst a superior Negro "might

do well himself," yet "his family feel their blood as a degradation."

If there be some who so feel, they are indeed very much to be pitied;

but their sentiments are not entitled to the serious importance with

which our critic has invested them. But is it at all conceivable that

a people whose sanity has never in any way been questioned would strain

every nerve to secure for their offspring a [37] distinction the

consequence of which to themselves would be a feeling of their own

abasement? The poor Irish peasant who toils and starves to secure for

his eldest son admission into the Catholic priesthood, has a far other

feeling than one of humiliation when contemplating that son eventually

as the spiritual director of a congregation and parish. Similarly, the

laudable ambition which, in the case of a humble Scotch matron, is

expressed in the wish and exertion to see her Jamie or Geordie "wag his

pow in the pou'pit," produces, when realized, salutary effects in the

whole family connection. These effects, which Mr. Froude would

doubtless allow and commend in their case, he finds it creditable to

ignore the very possibility of in the experience of people whose

cuticle is not white. It is, however, but bare justice to say that, as

Negroes are by no means deficient in self-love and the tenderness of

natural affection, such gratifying fulfilment of a family's hopes

exerts an elevating and, in many cases, an ennobling influence on every

one connected with the fortunate household. Nor, from the eminently

sympathetic nature of the African race, are the near friends of a

family [38] unbenefited in a similar way. This is true, and

distinctively human; but, naturally, no apologist of Negro depreciation

would admit the reasonableness of applying to the affairs of Negroes

the principles of common equity, or even of common sense. To sum up

practically our argument on this head, we shall suppose West Indians to

be called upon to imagine that the less distinguished relations

respectively of, say, the late Solicitor-General of Trinidad and the

present Chief Justice of Barbados could be otherwise than legitimately

elated at the conspicuous position won by a member of their own

household.

Mr. Froude further ventures to declare, in this connection, that the

children of educated coloured folk "will not marry among their own

people." Will he tell us, then, whom the daughters marry, or if they

ever do marry at all, since he asserts, with regard to West Indian

Whites, that "hardly any dowry can be large enough to tempt them to

make a wife of a black lady"? Our author evidently does not feel or

care that the suggestion he here induces is a hideous slander against a

large body of respectable people of whose affairs he is absolutely

ignorant. Full [39] of the "go" imparted to his talk by a

consciousness of absolute license with regard to Negroes, our dignified

narrator makes the parenthetical assertion that no white girl (in the

West Indies) will "marry a Negro." But has he been informed that cases

upon cases have occurred in those Colonies, and in very high

"Anglo-West Indian" families too, where the social degradation of being

married to Negroes has been avoided by the alternative of forming base

private connections even with menials of that race?

The marrying of a black wife, on the other hand, by a West Indian White

was an event of frequent occurrence at a period in regard to which our

historian seems to be culpably uninformed. In slavery days, when all

planters, black and white alike, were fused in a common solidarity of

interests, the skin-distinction which Mr. Froude so strenuously

advocates, and would fain risk so much to promote, did not, so far as

matrimony was concerned, exist in the degree that it now does.

Self-interest often dictated such unions, especially on the part of

in-coming Whites desiring to strengthen their position and to increase

their influence in [40] the land of their adoption by means of

advantageous Creole marriages. Love, too, sheer uncalculating love,

impelled not a few Whites to enter the hymeneal state with the dusky

captivators of their affections. When rich, the white planter not

seldom paid for such gratification of his laudable impulse by accepting

exclusion from "Society"--and when poor, he incurred almost invariably

his dismissal from employment. Of course, in all cases of the sort the

dispensers of such penalties were actuated by high motives which,

nevertheless, did not stand in the way of their meeting, in the

households of the persons thus obnoxious to punishment, the same or

even a lower class of Ethiopic damsels, under the title of

"housekeeper," on whom they lavished a very plethora of caresses.

Perhaps it may be wrong so to hint it, but, judging from indications in

his own book, our author himself would have been liable in those days

to enthralment by the piquant charms that proved irresistible to so

many of his brother-Europeans. It is almost superfluous to repeat that

the skin-discriminating policy induced as regards the coloured subjects

of the Queen since the [41] abolition of slavery did not, and could

not, operate when coloured and white stood on the same high level as

slave-owners and ruling potentates in the Colonies. Of course, when

the administrative power passed entirely into the hands of British

officials, their colonial compatriots coalesced with them, and found no

loss in being in the good books of the dominant personages.

In conclusion of our remarks upon the above extracts, it may be stated

that the blending of the races is not a burning question. "It can

keep," as Mr. Bright wittily said with regard to a subject of similar

urgency. Time and Nature might safely be left uninterfered with to

work out whatever social development of this kind is in store for the

world and its inhabitants.

BOOK I: BARBADOS

[41] Our distinguished voyager visited many of the British West Indies,

landing first at Barbados, his social experience whereof is set forth

in a very agreeable account. Our immediate business, however, is not

with what West Indian hospitality, especially among the well-to-do

classes, can and does accomplish for [42] the entertainment of

visitors, and particularly visitors so eminent as Mr. Froude. We are

concerned with what Mr. Froude has to say concerning our dusky brethren

and sisters in those Colonies. We have, thus, much pleasure in being

able at the outset to extract the following favourable verdict of his

respecting them--premising, at the same time, that the balcony from

which Mr. Froude surveyed the teeming multitude in Bridgetown was that

of a grand hotel at which he had, on invitation, partaken of the

refreshing beverage mentioned in the citation:--

"Cocktail over, and walking in the heat of the sun being a thing not to

be thought of, I sat for two hours in the balcony, watching the people,

who were as thick as bees in swarming time. Nine-tenths of them were

pure black. You rarely saw a white face, but still less would you see

a discontented one, imperturbable good humour and self-satisfaction

being written on the features of every one. The women struck me

especially. They were smartly dressed in white calico, scrupulously

clean, and tricked out with ribands and feathers; but their figures

were so good, and they carried themselves so [43] well and gracefully,

that although they might make themselves absurd, they could not look

vulgar. Like the Greek and Etruscan women, they are trained from

childhood to carry weights on their heads. They are thus perfectly

upright, and plant their feet firmly and naturally on the ground. They

might serve for sculptors' models, and are well aware of it."

Regarding the other sex, Mr. Froude says:--

"The men were active enough, driving carts, wheeling barrows, and

selling flying-fish," &c.

He also speaks with candour of the entire absence of drunkenness and

quarrelling and the agreeable prevalence of good humour and

light-heartedness among them. Some critic might, on reading the above

extract from our author's account of the men, be tempted to ask--"But

what is the meaning of that little word 'enough' occurring therein?" We

should be disposed to hazard a suggestion that Mr. Froude, being

fair-minded and loyal to truth, as far as is compatible with his

sympathy for his hapless "Anglo-West Indians," could not give an

entirely ungrudging testimony in favour of the possible, nay probable,

voters by whose suffrages the supremacy of the Dark [44] Parliament

will be ensured, and the relapse into obeahism, devil-worship, and

children-eating be inaugurated. Nevertheless, Si sic omnia

dixisset--if he had said all things thus! Yes, if Mr. Froude had,

throughout his volume, spoken in this strain, his occasional want of

patience and fairness with regard to our male kindred might have found

condonation in his even more than chivalrous appreciation of our

womankind. But it has been otherwise. So we are forced to try

conclusions with him in the arena of his own selection--unreflecting

spokesman that he is of British colonialism, which, we grieve to learn

through Mr. Froude's pages, has, like the Bourbon family, not only

forgotten nothing, but, unfortunately for its own peace, learnt nothing

also.

BOOK I: ST. VINCENT

[44] The following are the words in which our traveller embodies the

main motive and purpose of his voyage:--

"My own chief desire was to see the human inhabitants, to learn what

they were doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking

about...."

[45] But, alas, with the mercurialism of temperament in which he has

thought proper to indulge when only Negroes and Europeans not of

"Anglo-West Indian" tendencies were concerned, he jauntily threw to the

winds all the scruples and cautious minuteness which were essential to

the proper execution of his project. At Barbados, as we have seen, he

satisfies himself with sitting aloft, at a balcony-window, to

contemplate the movements of the sable throng below, of whose

character, moral and political, he nevertheless professes to have

become a trustworthy delineator. From the above-quoted account of his

impressions of the external traits and deportment of the Ethiopic folk

thus superficially gazed at, our author passes on to an analysis of

their mental and moral idiosyncrasies, and other intimate matters,

which the very silence of the book as to his method of ascertaining

them is a sufficient proof that his knowledge in their regard has not

been acquired directly and at first hand. Nor need we say that the

generally adverse cast of his verdicts on what he had been at no pains

to study for himself points to the "hostileness" of the witnesses whose

[46] testimony alone has formed the basis of his conclusions.

Throughout Mr. Froude's tour in the British Colonies his intercourse

was exclusively with "Anglo-West Indians," whose aversion to the Blacks

he has himself, perhaps they would think indiscreetly, placed on

record. In no instance do we find that he condescended to visit the

abode of any Negro, whether it was the mansion of a gentleman or the

hut of a peasant of that race. The whole tenor of the book indicates

his rigid adherence to this one-sided course, and suggests also that,

as a traveller, Mr. Froude considers maligning on hearsay to be just as

convenient as reporting facts elicited by personal investigation.

Proceed we, however, to strengthen our statement regarding his

definitive abandonment, and that without any apparent reason, of the

plan he had professedly laid down for himself at starting, and failing

which no trustworthy data could have been obtained concerning the

character and disposition of the people about whom he undertakes to

thoroughly enlighten his readers. Speaking of St. Vincent, where he

arrived immediately after leaving Barbados, our author says:--

[47] "I did not land, for the time was short, and as a beautiful

picture the island was best seen from the deck. The characteristics of

the people are the same in all the Antilles, and could be studied

elsewhere."

Now, it is a fact, patent and notorious, that "the characteristics of

the people are" not "the same in all the Antilles." A man of Mr.

Froude's attainments, whose studies have made him familiar with

ethnological facts, must be aware that difference of local surroundings

and influences does, in the course of time, inevitably create

difference of characteristic and deportment. Hence there is in nearly

every Colony a marked dissimilarity of native qualities amongst the

Negro inhabitants, arising not only from the causes above indicated,

but largely also from the great diversity of their African ancestry.

We might as well be told that because the nations of Europe are

generally white and descended from Japhet, they could be studied one by

the light derived from acquaintance with another. We venture to

declare that, unless a common education from youth has been shared by

them, the Hamitic inhabitants of one island have very little in common

with [48] those of another, beyond the dusky skin and woolly hair. In

speech, character, and deportment, a coloured native of Trinidad

differs as much from one of Barbados as a North American black does

from either, in all the above respects.

BOOK I: GRENADA

[48] In Grenada, the next island he arrived at, our traveller's

procedure with regard to the inhabitants was very similar. There he

landed in the afternoon, drove three or four miles inland to dine at

the house of a "gentleman who was a passing resident," returned in the

dark to his ship, and started for Trinidad. In the course of this

journey back, however, as he sped along in the carriage, Mr. Froude

found opportunity to look into the people's houses along the way,

where, he tells us, he "could see and was astonished to observe signs

of comfort, and even signs of taste--armchairs, sofas, side-boards with

cut-glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon the walls."

As a result of this nocturnal examination, à vol d'oiseau, he has

written paragraph upon paragraph about the people's character [49] and

prospects in the island of Grenada. To read the patronizing terms in

which our historian-traveller has seen fit to comment on Grenada and

its people, one would believe that his account is of some

half-civilized, out-of-the-way region under British sway, and inhabited

chiefly by a horde of semi-barbarian ignoramuses of African descent.

If the world had not by this time thoroughly assessed the intrinsic

value of Mr. Froude's utterances, one who knows Grenada might have felt

inclined to resent his causeless depreciation of the intellectual

capacity of its inhabitants; but considering the estimate which has

been pretty generally formed of his historical judgment, Mr. Froude may

be dismissed, as regards Grenada and its people, with a certain degree

of scepticism. Such scepticism, though lost upon himself, is

unquestionably needful to protect his readers from the hallucination

which the author's singular contempt for accuracy is but too liable to

induce.

Those who know Grenada and its affairs are perfectly familiar with the

fact that all of its chief intellectual business, whether official

(even in the highest degree, such as temporary [50] administration of

the government), legal, commercial, municipal, educational, or

journalistic, has been for years upon years carried on by men of

colour. And what, as a consequence of this fact, has the world ever

heard in disparagement of Grenada throughout this long series of years?

Assuredly not a syllable. On the contrary, she has been the theme of

praise, not only for the admirable foresight with which she avoided the

sugar crisis, so disastrous to her sister islands, but also for the

pluck and persistence shown in sustaining herself through an

agricultural emergency brought about by commercial reverses, whereby

the steady march of her sons in self-advancement was only checked for a

time, but never definitively arrested. In fine, as regards every

branch of civilized employment pursued there, the good people of

Grenada hold their own so well and worthily that any show of patronage,

even from a source more entitled to confidence, would simply be a piece

of obtrusive kindness, not acceptable to any, seeing that it is

required by none.

BOOK II: TRINIDAD / TRINIDAD AND REFORM+

[53] Mr. Froude, crossing the ninety miles of the Caribbean Sea lying

between Grenada and Trinidad, lands next morning in Port of Spain, the

chief city of that "splendid colony," as Governor Irving, its worst

ruler, truly calls it in his farewell message to the Legislature.

Regarding Port of Spain in particular, Mr. Froude is positively

exuberant in the display of the peculiar qualities that distinguish

him, and which we have already admitted. Ecstatic praise and

groundless detraction go hand in hand, bewildering to any one not

possessed of the key to the mystery of the art of blowing hot and cold,

which Mr. Froude so startlingly exemplifies. As it is our purpose to

make what he says concerning this Colony the crucial test of his

veracity as a writer of travels, [54] and also of the value of his

judgments respecting men and things, we shall first invite the reader's

attention to the following extracts, with our discussion thereof:--

"On landing we found ourselves in a large foreign-looking town, Port of

Spain having been built by French and Spaniards according to their

national tendencies, and especially with a view to the temperature,

which is that of a forcing house, and rarely falls below 80°. The

streets are broad, and are planted with trees for shade, each house

where room permits having a garden of its own, with palms and mangoes

and coffee-plants and creepers. Of sanitary arrangements there seemed

to be none. There is abundance of rain, and the gutters which run down

by the footway are flushed almost every day. But they are all open.

Dirt of every kind lies about freely, to be washed into them or left to

putrify as fate shall direct" (p. 64).

Lower down, on the same page, our author, luxuriating in his contempt

for exactitude when the character of other folk only is at stake,

continues:--"The town has between thirty and forty thousand people

living in it, and the [55] rain and Johnny crows between them keep off

pestilence." On page 65 we have the following astounding statement

with respect to one of the trees in the garden in front of the house in

which Mr. Froude was sojourning:--"At the gate stood as sentinel a

cabbage palm a hundred feet high."

The above quotations, in which we have elected to be content with

indicating by typographical differences the points on which attention

should be mostly directed, will suffice, with any one knowing Trinidad,

as examples of Mr. Froude's trustworthiness. But as these are only on

matters of mere detail, involving no question of principle, they are

dismissed without any further comment. It must not be so, however,

with the following remarkable deliverances which occur on page 67 of

his too picturesque work:--"The commonplace intrudes upon the

imaginative. At moments one can fancy that the world is an enchanted

place after all, but then comes generally an absurd awakening. On the

first night of my arrival, before we went to bed, there came an

invitation to me to attend a political meeting which was to be held in

a few days on the Savannah.

[56] "Trinidad is a purely Crown colony, and has escaped hitherto the

introduction of the election virus. The newspapers and certain busy

gentlemen in Port of Spain had discovered that they were living under a

'degrading tyranny,' and they demanded a constitution. They did not

complain that their affairs had been ill-managed. On the contrary,

they insisted that they were the most prosperous of the West Indian

colonies, and alone had a surplus in their treasury. If this was so,

it seemed to me that they had better let well alone. The population,

all told, was but 170,000, less by thirty thousand than that of

Barbados. They were a mixed and motley assemblage of all races and

colours, busy each with their own affairs, and never hitherto troubling

themselves about politics. But it had pleased the Home Government to

set up the beginning of a constitution again in Jamaica; no one knew

why, but so it was; and Trinidad did not choose to be behindhand. The

official appointments were valuable, and had been hitherto given away

by the Crown. The local popularities very naturally wished to have

them for themselves. This was the [57] reality in the thing, so far as

there was a reality. It was dressed up in the phrases borrowed from

the great English masters of the art, about privileges of manhood,

moral dignity, the elevating influence of the suffrage, &c., intended

for home consumption among the believers in the orthodox radical faith."

The passages which we have signalized in the above quotation, and which

occur with more elaboration and heedless assurance on a later page,

will produce a feeling of wonder at the hardihood of him who not only

conceived, but penned and dared to publish them as well, against the

gentlemen whom we all know to be foremost in the political agitation at

which Mr. Froude so flippantly sneers. An emphatic denial may be

opposed to his pretence that "they did not complain that their affairs

had been ill-managed." Why, the very gist and kernel of the whole

agitation, set forth in print through long years of iteration, has been

the scandalous mismanagement of the affairs of the Colony--especially

under the baleful administration of Governor Irving. The Augëan

Stable, miscalled by him "The Public Works Department," and whose

officials he coolly [58] fastened upon the financial vitals of that

long-suffering Colony, baffled even the resolute will of a Des Voeux to

cleanse it. Poor Sir Sanford Freeling attempted the cleansing, but

foundered ignominiously almost as soon as he embarked on that Herculean

enterprise. Sir A. E. Havelock, who came after, must be mentioned by

the historian of Trinidad merely as an incarnate accident in the

succession of Governors to whom the destinies of that maltreated Colony

have been successively intrusted since the departure of Sir Arthur

Hamilton Gordon. The present Governor of Trinidad, Sir William

Robinson, is a man of spirit and intelligence, keenly alive to the

grave responsibilities resting on him as a ruler of men and moulder of

men's destinies. Has he, with all his energy, his public spirit and

indisputable devotion to the furtherance of the Colony's interests,

been able to grapple successfully with the giant evil? Has he

effectually gained the ear of our masters in Downing Street regarding

the inefficiency and wastefulness of Governor Irving's pet department?

We presume that his success has been but very partial, for otherwise it

is difficult to conceive the motive for [59] retaining the army of

officials radiating from that office, with the chief under whose

supervision so many architectural and other scandals have for so long

been the order of the day. The Public Works Department is costly

enough to have been a warning to the whole of the West Indies. It is

true that the lavish squandering of the people's money by that

department has been appreciably checked since the advent of the present

head of the Government. The papers no longer team with accounts, nor

is even the humblest aesthetic sense, offended now, as formerly, with

views of unsightly, useless and flimsy erections, the cost of which, on

an average, was five times more than that of good and reputable

structures.

This, however, has been entirely due to the personal influence of the

Governor. Sir William Robinson, not being the tool, as Sir Henry

Irving owned that he was, of the Director of Public Works, could not be

expected to be his accomplice or screener in the cynical waste of the

public funds. Here, then, is the personal rectitude of a ruler

operating as a safeguard to the people's interests; and we gladly

confess our entire agreement with [60] Mr. Froude on the subject of the

essential qualifications of a Crown Governor. Mr. Froude contends, and

we heartily coincide with him, that a ruler of high training and noble

purposes would, as the embodiment of the administrative authority, be

the very best provision for the government of Colonies constituted as

ours are. But he has also pointed out, and that in no equivocal terms,

that the above are far from having been indispensable qualifications

for the patronage of Downing Street. He has shown that the Colonial

Office is, more often than otherwise, swayed in the appointment of

Colonial Governors by considerations among which the special fitness of

the man appointed holds but a secondary place. On this point we have

much gratification in giving Mr. Froude's own words (p. 91):--"Among

the public servants of Great Britain there are persons always to be

found fit and willing for posts of honour and difficulty if a sincere

effort be made to find them. Alas! in times past we have sent persons

to rule our Baratarias to whom Sancho Panza was a sage--troublesome

members of Parliament, younger brothers of powerful families,

impecunious peers; favourites, [61] with backstairs influence, for whom

a provision was to be found; colonial clerks bred in the office who had

been obsequious and useful!" Now then, applying these facts to the

political history of Trinidad, with which we are more particularly

concerned at present, what do we find? We find that in the person of

Sir A. H. Gordon (1867-1870) that Colony at length chanced upon a ruler

both competent and eager to advance her interests, not only materially,

but in the nobler respects that give dignity to the existence of a

community. Of course, he was opposed--ably, strenuously, violently,

virulently--but the metal of which the man was composed was only fused

into greater firmness by being subjected to such fiery tests. On

leaving Trinidad, this eminent ruler left as legacies to the Colony he

had loved and worked for so heartily, laws that placed the persons and

belongings of the inhabitants beyond the reach of wanton aggression;

the means by which honest and laborious industry could, through

agriculture, benefit both itself and the general revenue. He also left

an educational system that opened (to even the humblest) a free pathway

to knowledge, to [62] distinction, and, if the objects of its

beneficence were worthy of the boon, to serviceableness to their native

country. Above all, he left peace among the jarring interests which,

under the badge of Englishman and of Creole, under the badge of

Catholic and under the badge of Protestant, and so many other forms of

sectional divergence, had too long distracted Trinidad. This he had

effected, not by constituting himself a partisan of either section, but

by inquiring with statesmanlike appreciation, and allowing the

legitimate claims of each to a certain scope of influence in the

furtherance of the Colony's welfare. Hence the bitter rivalry of

jarring interests was transformed into harmonious co-operation on all

sides, in advancing the common good of the common country.

The Colonial Office, knowing little and caring less about that noble

jewel in the British Crown, sent out as successor to so brilliant and

successful an administrator--whom? One Sir James Robert Longden, a

gentleman without initiative, without courage, and, above all, with a

slavish adherence to red-tape and a clerk-like dread of compromising

his berth. Having served for a long series of years in subordinate

posts in [63] minor dependencies, the habit of being impressed and

influenced by colonial magnates grew and gathered strength within him.

Such a ruler, of course, the serpents that had only been "scotched, but

not killed," by the stern procedures of Governor Gordon, could wind

round, beguile, and finally cause to fall. Measure after measure of his

predecessor which he could in any way neutralize in the interests of

the colonial clique, was rendered of none effect. In fact, he was

subservient to the wishes of those who had all long objected to those

measures, but had not dared even to hint their objections to the

beneficent autocrat who had willed and given them effect for the

general welfare. After Governor Longden came Sir Henry Turner Irving,

a personage who brought to Trinidad a reputation for all the vulgar

colonial prejudices which, discreditable enough in ordinary folk, are,

in the Governor of a mixed community, nothing less than calamitous.

More than amply did he justify the evil reports with which rumour had

heralded his coming. Abler, more astute, more daring than Sir James

Longden, who was, on the whole, only a constitutionally timid man,

Governor Irving threw [64] himself heart and soul into the arms of the

Sugar Interest, by whom he had been helped into his high office, and

whose belief he evidently shared, that sugar-growers alone should be

possessors of the lands of the West Indies. It would be wearisome to

detail the methods by which every act of Sir Arthur Gordon's to benefit

the whole population was cynically and systematically undone by this

his native-hating successor. In short, the policy of reaction which

Sir James Longden began, found in Governor Irving not only a consistent

promoter, but, as it were, a sinister incarnation. It is true that he

could not, at the bidding and on the advice of his planter-friends,

shut up the Crown Lands of the Colony against purchasers of limited

means, because they happened to be mostly natives of colour, but he

could annul the provision by which every Warden in the rural districts,

on the receipt of the statutory fees, had to supply a Government title

on the spot to every one who purchased any acreage of Crown Lands.

Every intending purchaser, therefore, whether living at Toco,

Guayaguayare, Monos, or Icacos, the four extreme points of the Island

of Trinidad, was compelled to go to Port of [65] Spain, forty or fifty

miles distant, through an almost roadless country, to compete at the

Sub-Intendant's auction sales, with every probability of being outbid

in the end, and having his long-deposited money returned to him after

all his pains. Lieutenant-Governor Des Voeux told the Legislature of

Trinidad that the monstrous Excise imposts of the Colony were an

incentive to smuggling, and he thought that the duties, licenses, &c.,

should be lowered in the interest of good and equitable government.

Sir Henry Turner Irving, however, besides raising the duties on

spirituous liquors, also enacted that every distillery, however small,

must pay a salary to a Government official stationed within it to

supervise the manufacture of the spirits. This, of course, was the

death-blow to all the minor competition which had so long been

disturbing the peace of mind of the mighty possessors of the great

distilleries. Ahab was thus made glad with the vineyard of Naboth.

In the matter of official appointments, too, Governor Irving was

consistent in his ostentatious hostility to Creoles in general, and to

coloured Creoles in particular. Of the fifty-six appointments which

that model Governor [66] made in 1876, only seven happened to be

natives and coloured, out of a population in which the latter element

is so preponderant as to excite the fears of Mr. Froude. In

educational matters, though he could not with any show of sense or

decency re-enact the rule which excluded students of illegitimate birth

from the advantages of the Royal College, he could, nevertheless,

pander to the prejudices of himself and his friends by raising the

standard of proficiency while reducing the limit of the age for free

admission to that institution--boys of African descent having shown an

irrepressible persistency in carrying off prizes.

Every one acquainted with Trinidad politics knows very well the

ineffably low dodges and subterfuges under which the Arima Railway was

prevented from having its terminus in the centre of that town. The

public was promised a saving of Eight Thousand Pounds by their

high-minded Governor for a diversion of the line "by only a few yards"

from the originally projected terminus. In the end it was found out

not only that the terminus of the railway was nearly a whole mile

outside of the town of Arima, but also that Twenty [67] Thousand Pounds

"Miscellaneous" had to be paid up by the good folk of Trinidad, in

addition to gulping down their disappointment at saving no Eight

Thousand Pounds, and having to find by bitter experience, especially in

rainy weather, that their Governor's few yards were just his

characteristic way of putting down yards which he well knew were to be

counted by hundreds. Then, again, we have the so-called San Fernando

Waterworks, an abortion, a scandal for which there is no excuse, as the

head of the Public Works Department went his own way despite the

experience of those who knew better than he, and the protests of those

who would have had to pay. Seventeen Thousand Pounds represent the

amount of debt with which Governor Irving's pet department has saddled

the town of San Fernando for water, which half the inhabitants cannot

get, and which few of the half who do get it dare venture to drink.

Summa fastigia rerum secuti sumus. If in the works that were so

prominent before the public gaze these enormous abuses could flourish,

defiant of protest and opposition, what shall we think of the nooks and

corners of that same squandering department, which of [68] course must

have been mere gnats in the eyes of a Governor who had swallowed so

many monstrous camels! The Governor was callous. Trinidad was a

battening ground for his friends; but she had in her bosom men who were

her friends, and the struggle began, constitutionally of course, which,

under the leadership of the Mayor of San Fernando, has continued up to

now, culminating at last in the Reform movement which Mr. Froude

decries, and which his pupil, Mr. S. H. Gatty, is, from what has

appeared in the Trinidad papers, doing his "level best" to render

abortive.

Sir Sanford Freeling, by the will and pleasure of Downing Street, was

the next successor, after Governor Irving, to the chief ruler-ship of

Trinidad. Incredible as it may sound, he was a yet more

disadvantageous bargain for the Colony's £4000 a year. A better man in

many respects than his predecessor, he was in many more a much worse

Governor. The personal affability of a man can be known only to those

who come into actual contact with him--the public measures of a ruler

over a community touches it, mediately or immediately, throughout all

its sections. The bad boldness of [69] Governor Irving achieved much

that the people, especially in the outlying districts, could see and

appreciate. For example, he erected Rest-houses all over the remoter

and more sparsely peopled quarters of the Colony, after the manner of

such provisions in Oriental lands. The population who came in contact

with these conveniences, and to whom access to them--for a

consideration--had never been denied, saw with their own eyes tangible

evidence of the Governor's activity, and inferred therefrom a

solicitude on his part for the public welfare. Had they, however, been

given a notion of the bill which had had to be paid for those frail,

though welcome hostelries, they would have stood aghast at the

imbecility, or, if not logically that, the something very much worse,

through which five times the actual worth of these buildings had been

extracted from the Treasury. Sir Sanford Freeling, on the other hand,

while being no screener of jobbery and peculation, had not the strength

of mind whereof jobbers and peculators do stand in dread. In evidence

of that poor ruler's infirmity of purpose, we would only cite the

double fact that, whereas in 1883 he was the first to enter a practical

protest against the housing [70] of the diseased and destitute in the

then newly finished, but most leaky, House of Refuge on the St. Clair

Lands, by having the poor saturated inmates carried off in his presence

to the Colonial Hospital, yet His Excellency was the very man who, in

the very next year, 1884, not only sanctioned the shooting down of

Indian immigrants at their festival, but actually directed the use of

buck-shot for that purpose! Evidently, if these two foregoing

statements are true, Mr. Froude must join us in thinking that a man

whose mind could be warped by external influences from the softest

commiseration for the sufferings of his kind, one year, into being the

cold-blooded deviser of the readiest method for slaughtering unarmed

holiday-makers, the very next year, is not the kind of ruler whom he

and we so cordially desiderate. We have already mentioned above how

ignominious Governor Freeling's failure was in attempting to meddle

with the colossal abuses of the Public Works Department.

Sir Arthur Elibank Havelock next had the privilege of enjoying the

paradisaic sojourn at Queen's House, St. Ann's, as well as the four

thousand pounds a year attached to the [71] right of occupying that

princely residence. Save as a dandy, however, and the harrier of

subordinate officials, the writer of the annals of Trinidad may well

pass him by. So then it may be seen what, by mere freaks of

Chance--the ruling deity at Downing Street--the administrative

experience of Trinidad had been from the departure of that true king in

Israel,--Sir Arthur Gordon, up to the visit of Mr. Froude. First, a

slave to red-tape, procrastination, and the caprices of pretentious

colonialists; next, a daring schemer, confident of the support of the

then dominant Sugar Interest, and regarding and treating the resources

of the Island as free booty for his friends, sycophants, and

favourites; then, an old woman, garbed in male attire, having an

infirmity of purpose only too prone to be blown about by every wind of

doctrine, alternating helplessly between tenderness and truculence, the

charity of a Fry and the tragic atrocity of Medea. After this dismal

ruler, Trinidad, by the grace of the Colonial Office, was subjected to

the manipulation of an unctuous dandy. This successor of Gordon, of

Elliot, and of Cairns, durst not oppose high-placed official

malfeasants, but [72] was inexorable with regard to minor delinquents.

In the above retrospect we have purposely omitted mentioning such

transient rulers as Mr. Rennie, Sir G. W. Des Voeux, and last, but by

no means least, Sir F. Barlee, a high-minded Governor, whom death so

suddenly and inscrutably snatched away from the good work he had

loyally begun. Every one of the above temporary administrators was a

right good man for a post in which brain power and moral back-bone are

essential qualifications. But the Fates so willed it that Trinidad

should never enjoy the permanent governance of either. In view of the

above facts; in view also of the lessons taught the inhabitants of

Trinidad so frequently, so cruelly, what wonder is there that, failing

of faith in a probability, which stands one against four, of their

getting another worthy ruler when Governor Robinson shall have left

them, they should seek to make hay while the sun shines, by providing

against the contingency of such Governors as they know from bitter

experience that Downing Street would place over their destinies, should

the considerations detailed by Mr. Froude or any other equally [73]

unworthy counsellor supervene? That the leading minds of Trinidad

should believe in an elective legislature is a logical consequence of

the teachings of the past, when the Colony was under the manipulation

of the sort of Governors above mentioned as immediately succeeding Sir

Arthur Gordon.

This brings us to the motives, the sordid motives, which Mr. Froude,

oblivious of the responsibility of his high literary status, has

permitted himself gratuitously, and we may add scandalously, to impute

to the heads of the Reform movement in Trinidad. It was perfectly

competent that our author should decline, as he did decline, to have

anything to do, even as a spectator, at a meeting with the object of

which he had no sympathy. But our opinion is equally decided that Mr.

Froude has transgressed the bounds of decent political antagonism, nay,

even of common sense, when he presumes to state that it was not for any

other object than the large salaries of the Crown appointments, which

they covet for themselves, that the Reform leaders are contending.

This is not criticism: it is slander. To make culpatory statements

against others, [74] without ability to prove them, is, to say the

least, hazardous; but to make accusations to formulate which the

accuser is forced, not only to ignore facts, but actually to deny them,

is, to our mind, nothing short of rank defamation.

Mr. Froude is not likely to impress the world (of the West Indies, at

any rate) with the transparently silly, if not intentionally malicious,

ravings which he has indulged in on the subject of Trinidad and its

politics. Here are some of the things which this "champion of

Anglo-West Indians" attempts to force down the throats of his readers.

He would have us believe that Mr. Francis Damian, the Mayor of Port of

Spain, and one of the wealthiest of the native inhabitants of Trinidad,

a man who has retired from an honourable and lucrative legal practice,

and devotes his time, his talents, and his money to the service of his

native country; that Mr. Robert Guppy, the venerable and venerated

Mayor of San Fernando, with his weight of years and his sufficing

competence, and with his long record of self-denying services to the

public; that Mr. George Goodwille, one of the most successful merchants

in the Colonies; that Mr. Conrad [75] F. Stollmeyer, a gentleman

retired, in the evening of his days, on his well-earned ample means,

are open to the above sordid accusation. In short, that those and

such-like individuals who, on account of their private resources and

mental capabilities, as well as the public influence resulting

therefrom, are, by the sheer logic of circumstances, forced to be at

the head of public movements, are actuated by a craving for the few

hundred pounds a year for which there is such a scramble at Downing

Street among the future official grandees of the West Indies! But

granting that this allegation of Mr. Froude's was not as baseless as we

have shown it to be, and that the leaders of the Reform agitation were

impelled by the desire which our author seeks to discredit them with,

what then? Have they who have borne the heat and the burden of the day

in making the Colonies what they are no right to the enjoyment of the

fruits of their labours? The local knowledge, the confidence and

respect of the population, which such men enjoy, and can wield for good

or evil in the community, are these matters of small account in the

efficient government of the Colony? Our author, in [76] specifying the

immunities of his ideal Governor, who is also ours, recommends, amongst

other things, that His Excellency should be allowed to choose his own

advisers. By this Mr. Froude certainly does not mean that the advisers

so chosen must be all pure-blooded Englishmen who have rushed from the

destitution of home to batten on the cheaply obtained flesh-pots of the

Colonies.

At any rate, whatever political fate Mr. Froude may desire for the

Colonies in general, and for Trinidad in particular, it is nevertheless

unquestionable that he and the scheme that he may have for our future

governance, in this year of grace 1888, have both come into view

entirely out of season. The spirit of the times has rendered

impossible any further toleration of the arrogance which is based on

historical self-glorification. The gentlemen of Trinidad, who are

struggling for political enfranchisement, are not likely to heed,

except as a matter for indignant contempt, the obtrusion by our author

of his opinion that "they had best let well alone." On his own

showing, the persons appointed to supreme authority in the Colonies

are, more usually than not, entirely unfit for [77] holding any

responsible position whatever over their fellows. Now, can it be

doubted that less care, less scruple, less consideration, would be

exercised in the choice of the satellites appointed to revolve, in

these far-off latitudes, around the central luminaries? Have we not

found, are we not still finding every day, that the

brain-dizziness--Xenophon calls it kephalalgeia+--induced by sudden

promotion has transformed the abject suppliants at the Downing Street

backstairs into the arrogant defiers of the opinions, and violators of

the rights, of the populations whose subjection to the British Crown

alone could have rendered possible the elevation of such folk and their

impunity in malfeasance? The cup of loyal forbearance reached the

overflowing point since the trickstering days of Governor Irving, and

it is useless now to believe in the possibility of a return of the

leading minds of Trinidad to a tame acquiescence as regards the

probabilities of their government according to the Crown system. Mr.

Froude's own remarks point out definitely enough that a community so

governed is absolutely at the mercy, for good or for evil, of the man

who happens to be invested with [78] the supreme authority. He has

also shown that in our case that supreme authority is very often

disastrously entrusted. Yet has he nothing but sneers for the efforts

of those who strive to be emancipated from liability to such

subjection. Mr. Froude's deftly-worded sarcasms about "degrading

tyranny," "the dignity of manhood," &c., are powerless to alter the

facts. Crown Colony Government--denying, as it does to even the wisest

and most interested in a community cursed with it all participation in

the conduct of their own affairs, while investing irresponsible and

uninterested "birds of passage" (as our author aptly describes them)

with the right of making ducks and drakes of the resources wrung from

the inhabitants--is a degrading tyranny, which the sneers of Mr. Froude

cannot make otherwise. The dignity of manhood, on the other hand, we

are forced to admit, runs scanty chance of recognition by any being,

however masculine his name, who could perpetrate such a literary and

moral scandal as "The Bow of Ulysses." Yet the dignity of manhood

stands venerable there, and whilst the world lasts shall gain for its

possessors the right of record on the roll of [79] those whom the

worthy of the world delight to honour.

All of a piece, as regards veracity and prudence, is the further

allegation of Mr. Froude's, to the effect that there was never any

agitation for Reform in Trinidad before that which he passes under

review. It is, however, a melancholy fact, which we are ashamed to

state, that Mr. Froude has written characteristically here also, either

through crass ignorance or through deliberate malice. Any respectable,

well-informed inhabitant of Trinidad, who happened not to be an

official "bird of passage," might, on our author's honest inquiry, have

informed him that Trinidad is the land of chronic agitation for Reform.

Mr. Froude might also have been informed that, even forty-five years

ago, that is in 1843, an elective constitution, with all the electoral

districts duly marked out, was formulated and transmitted by the

leading inhabitants of Trinidad to the then Secretary of State for the

Colonies. He might also have learnt that on every occasion that any of

the shady Governors, whom he has so well depicted, manifested any

excess of his undesirable qualities, there has been a movement [80]

among the educated people in behalf of changing their country's

political condition.

We close this part of our review by reiterating our conviction that,

come what will, the Crown Colony system, as at present managed, is

doomed. Britain may, in deference to the alleged wishes of her

impalpable "Anglo-West Indians"--whose existence rests on the authority

of Mr. Froude alone--deny to Trinidad and other Colonies even the small

modicum prayed for of autonomy, but in doing so the Mother Country will

have to sternly revise her present methods of selecting and appointing

Governors. As to the subordinate lot, they will have to be worth their

salt when there is at the head of the Government a man who is truly

deserving of his.

NOTES

53. +It is not clear from the original text exactly where the brief

chapter "Trinidad" ends and where the longer one entitled "Reform in

Trinidad" begins. (The copy indicates that the "Trinidad" chapter ends

at page 54, but the relevant page contains no subheading.) I have,

therefore, chosen to fuse the two chapters since they form a logical

unit.

77. +Since there is little Greek in this work, I have simply

transliterated it.

BOOK II: NEGRO FELICITY IN THE WEST INDIES

[81] We come now to the ingenious and novel fashion in which Mr. Froude

carries out his investigations among the black population, and to his

dogmatic conclusions concerning them. He says:--

"In Trinidad, as everywhere else, my own chief desire was to see the

human inhabitants, to learn what they were doing, how they were living,

and what they were thinking about, and this could best be done by

drives about the town and neighbourhood."

"Drives about the town and neighbourhood," indeed! To learn and be

able to depict with faithful accuracy what people "were doing, how they

were living, and what they were thinking about"--all this being best

done (domestic circumstances, nay, soul-workings and all!) through

fleeting glimpses of shifting [82] panoramas of intelligent human

beings! What a bright notion! We have here the suggestion of a

capacity too superhuman to be accepted on trust, especially when, as in

this case, it is by implication self-arrogated. The modesty of this

thaumaturgic traveller in confining the execution of his detailed

scrutiny of a whole community to the moderate progression of some

conventional vehicle, drawn by some conventional quadruped or the

other, does injustice to powers which, if possessed at all, might have

compassed the same achievement in the swifter transit of an express

train, or, better still perhaps, from the empyrean elevation of a

balloon! Yet is Mr. Froude confident that data professed to be thus

collected would easily pass muster with the readers of his book! A

confidence of this kind is abnormal, and illustrates, we think most

fully, all the special characteristics of the man. With his passion

for repeating, our author tells us in continuation of a strange

rhapsody on Negro felicity:--

"Once more, the earth does not contain any peasantry so well off, so

well-cared for, so happy, so sleek and contented, as the sons [83] and

daughters of the emancipated slaves in the English West Indian Islands."

Again:--

"Under the rule of England, in these islands, the two millions of these

brothers-in-law of ours are the most perfectly contented specimens of

the human race to be found upon the planet.... If happiness be the

satisfaction of every conscious desire, theirs is a condition that

admits of no improvement: were they independent, they might quarrel

among themselves, and the weaker become the bondsmen of the stronger;

under the beneficent despotism of the English Government, which knows

no difference of colour and permits no oppression, they can sleep,

lounge, and laugh away their lives as they please, fearing no danger,"

&c.

Now, then, let us examine for a while this roseate picture of Arcadian

blissfulness said to be enjoyed by British West Indian Negroes in

general, and by the Negroes of Trinidad in particular. "No distinction

of colour" under the British rule, and, better still, absolute

protection of the weaker against the stronger! This latter

consummation especially, [84] Mr. Froude tells us, has been happily

secured "under the beneficent despotism" of the Crown Colony system.

However, let the above vague hyperboles be submitted to the test of

practical experience, and the abstract government analysed in its

concrete relations with the people.

Unquestionably the actual and direct interposition of the shielding

authority above referred to, between man and man, is the immediate

province of the MAGISTRACY. All other branches of the Government,

having in themselves no coercive power, must, from the supreme

executive downwards, in cases of irreconcilable clashing of interests,

have ultimate recourse to the magisterial jurisdiction. Putting aside,

then, whatever culpable remissness may have been manifested by

magistrates in favour of powerful malfeasants, we would submit that the

fact of stipendiary justices converting the tremendous, far-reaching

powers which they wield into an engine of systematic oppression, ought

to dim by many a shade the glowing lustre of Mr. Froude's encomiums.

Facts, authentic and notorious, might be adduced in hundreds,

especially with respect to [85] the Port of Spain and San Fernando

magistracies (both of which, since the administration of Sir J. R.

Longden, have been exclusively the prizes of briefless English

barristers*), to prove that these gentry, far from being bulwarks to

the weaker as against the stronger, have, in their own persons, been

the direst scourges that the poor, particularly when coloured, have

been afflicted by in aggravation of the difficulties of their lot.

Only typical examples can here be given out of hundreds upon hundreds

which might easily be cited and proved against the incumbents of the

abovementioned chief stipendiary magistracies. One such example was a

matter of everyday discussion at the time of Mr. Froude's visit. The

inhabitants were even backed in their complaints by the Governor, who

had, in response to their cry of distress, forwarded their prayer [86]

to the home authorities for relief from the hard treatment which they

alleged themselves to be suffering at the hands of the then magistrate.

Our allusion here is to the chief town, Port of Spain, the magistracy

of which embraces also the surrounding districts, containing a total

population of between 60,000 and 70,000 souls. Mr. R. D. Mayne filled

this responsible office during the latter years of Sir J. R. Longden's

governorship. He was reputed, soon after his arrival, to have

announced from the bench that in every case he would take the word of a

constable in preference to the testimony of any one else. The

Barbadian rowdies who then formed the major part of the constabulary of

Trinidad, and whose bitter hatred of the older residents had been not

only plainly expressed, but often brutally exemplified, rejoiced in the

opportunity thus afforded for giving effect to their truculent

sentiments. At that time the bulk of the immigrants from Barbados were

habitual offenders whom the Government there had provided with a free

passage to wherever they elected to betake themselves. The more

intelligent of the men flocked to the Trinidad [87] police ranks, into

which they were admitted generally without much inquiry into their

antecedents. On this account they were shunned by the decent

inhabitants, a course which they repaid with savage animosity.

Perjuries the most atrocious and crushing, especially to the

respectable poor, became the order of the day. Hundreds of innocent

persons were committed to gaol and the infamy of convict servitude,

without the possibility of escape from, or even mitigation of, their

ignominious doom. A respectable woman (a native of Barbados, too, who

in the time of the first immigration of the better sort of her

compatriots had made Trinidad her home) was one of the first victims of

this iniquitous state of affairs.

The class of people to which she belonged was noted as orderly,

industrious and law-abiding, and, being so, it had identified itself

entirely with the natives of the land of its adoption. This fact alone

was sufficient to involve these immigrants in the same lot of

persecution which their newly arrived countrymen had organized and were

carrying out against the Trinidadians proper. It happened that, on the

occasion to which we wish particularly [88] to refer, the woman in

question was at home, engaged in her usual occupation of ironing for

her honest livelihood. Suddenly she heard a heavy blow in the street

before her door, and almost simultaneously a loud scream, which, on

looking hastily out, she perceived to be the cry of a boy of some ten

or twelve years of age, who had been violently struck with the fist by

another youth of larger size and evidently his senior in age. The

smaller fellow had laid fast hold of his antagonist by the collar, and

would not let go, despite the blows which, to extricate himself and in

retaliation of the puny buffets of his youthful detainer, he "showered

thick as wintry rain."

The woman, seeing the posture of affairs, shouted to the combatants to

desist, but to no purpose, rage and absorption in their wrathful

occupation having deafened both to all external sounds. Seized with

pity for the younger lad, who was getting so mercilessly the worst of

it, the woman, hastily throwing a shawl over her shoulders, sprang into

the street and rushed between the juvenile belligerents. Dexterously

extricating the hand of the little fellow from the collar of his

antagonist, she hurried the former [89] into her gateway, shouting out

to him at the same time to fasten the door on the inside. This the

little fellow did, and no doubt gladly, as this surcease from actual

conflict, short though it was, must have afforded space for the natural

instinct of self-preservation to reassert itself. Hereupon the elder

of the two lads, like a tiger robbed of his prey, sprang furiously to

the gate, and began to use frantic efforts to force an entrance.

Perceiving this, the woman (who meanwhile had not been idle with

earnest dissuasions and remonstrances, which had all proved futile)

pulled the irate youngster back, and interposed her body between him

and the gate, warding him off with her hands every time that he rushed

forward to renew the assault. At length a Barbadian policeman hove in

sight, and was hastily beckoned to by the poor ironer, who, by this

time, had nearly come to the end of her strength. The uniformed "Bim"

was soon on the spot; but, without asking or waiting to hear the cause

of the disturbance, he shouted to the volunteer peacemaker, "I see you

are fighting: you are my prisoner!" Saying this, he clutched the poor

thunderstruck creature by the wrist, and there [90] and then set about

hurrying her off towards the police station. It happened, however,

that the whole affair had occurred in the sight of a gentleman of

well-known integrity. He, seated at a window overlooking the street,

had witnessed the whole squabble, from its beginning in words to its

culmination in blows; so, seeing that the woman was most unjustly

arrested, he went out and explained the circumstances to the guardian

of order. But to no purpose; the poor creature was taken to the

station, accompanied by the gentleman, who most properly volunteered

that neighbourly turn. There she was charged with "obstructing the

policeman in the lawful execution of his duty." She was let out on

bail, and next day appeared to answer the charge.

Mr. Mayne, the magistrate, presided. The constable told his tale

without any material deviation from the truth, probably confident, from

previous experience, that his accusation was sufficient to secure a

conviction. On the defendant's behalf, the gentleman referred to, who

was well known to the magistrate himself, was called, and he related

the facts as we have above given them. Even Mr. Mayne [91] could see

no proof of the information, and this he confessed in the following

qualified judgment:--

"You are indeed very lucky, my good woman, that the constable has

failed to prove his case against you; otherwise you would have been

sent to hard labour, as the ordinance provides, without the option of a

fine. But as the case stands, you must pay a fine of £2"!!!

Comment on this worse than scandalous decision would be superfluous.

Another typical case, illustrative of the truth of Mr. Froude's boast

of the eminent fair play, nay, even the stout protection, that Negroes,

and generally, "the weaker," have been wont to receive from British

magistrates, may be related.