An honest, hard-working couple, living in one of the outlying

districts, cultivated a plot of ground, upon the produce of which they

depended for their livelihood. After a time these worthy folk, on

getting to their holding in the morning, used to find exasperating

evidence of the plunder overnight of their marketable provisions.

Determined to discover the depredator, they concealed themselves [92]

in the garden late one night, and awaited the result. By that means

they succeeded in capturing the thief, a female, who, not suspecting

their presence, had entered the garden, dug out some of the provisions,

and was about to make off with her booty. In spite of desperate

resistance, she was taken to the police station and there duly charged

with larceny. Meanwhile her son, on hearing of his mother's

incarceration, hastened to find her in her cell, and, after briefly

consulting with her, he decided on entering a countercharge of assault

and battery against both her captors. Whether or not this bold

proceeding was prompted by the knowledge that the dispensing of justice

in the magistrate's court was a mere game of cross-purposes, a cynical

disregard of common sense and elementary equity, we cannot say; but the

ultimate result fully justified this abnormal hardihood of filial

championship.

On the day of the trial, the magistrate heard the evidence on both

sides, the case of larceny having been gone into first. For her

defence, the accused confined herself to simple denials of the

allegations against her, at the [93] same time entertaining the court

with a lachrymose harangue about her rough treatment at the hands of

the accusing parties. Finally, the decision of the magistrate was:

that the prisoner be discharged, and the plundered goods restored to

her; and, as to the countercharge, that the husband and wife be

imprisoned, the former for three and the latter for two months, with

hard labour! When we add that there was, at that time, no Governor or

Chief Justice accessible to the poorer and less intelligent classes, as

is now the case (Sir Henry T. Irving and Sir Joseph Needham having been

respectively superseded by Sir William Robinson and Sir John Gorrie),

one can imagine what scope there was for similar exhibitions of the

protecting energy of British rule.

As we have already said, during Mr. Froude's sojourn in Trinidad the

"sleek, happy, and contented" people, whose condition "admitted of no

improvement," were yet groaning in bitter sorrow, nay, in absolute

despair, under the crushing weight of such magisterial decisions as

those which I have just recorded. Let me add two more [94] typical

cases which occurred during Mr. Mayne's tenure of office in the island.

L. B. was a member of one of those brawling sisterhoods that frequently

disturbed the peace of the town of Port of Spain. She had a "pal" or

intimate chum familiarly known as "Lady," who staunchly stood by her in

all the squabbles that occurred with their adversaries. One particular

night, the police were called to a street in the east of the town, in

consequence of an affray between some women of the sort referred to.

Arriving on the spot, they found the fight already over, but a war of

words was still proceeding among the late combatants, of whom the

aforesaid "Lady" was one of the most conspicuous. A list was duly made

out of the parties found so engaged, and it included the name of L. B.,

who happened not to be there, or even in Port of Spain at all, she

having some days before gone into the country to spend a little time

with some relatives. The inserting of her name was an inferential

mistake on the part of the police, arising from the presence of "Lady"

at the brawl, she being well known by them to be the inseparable ally

of L. B. on such occasions.

[95] It was not unnatural that in the obscurity they should have

concluded that the latter was present with her altera ego, when in

reality she was not there.

The participants in the brawl were charged at the station, and

summonses, including one to L. B., were duly issued. On her return to

Port of Spain a day or two after the occurrence, the wrongly

incriminated woman received from the landlady her key, along with the

magisterial summons that had resulted from the error of the constables.

The day of the trial came on, and L. B. stood before Mr. Mayne, strong

in her innocence, and supported by the sworn testimony of her landlady

as well as of her uncle from the country, with whom and with his family

she had been uninterruptedly staying up to one or two days after the

occurrence in which she had been thus implicated. The evidence of the

old lady, who, like thousands of her advanced age in the Colony, had

never even once had occasion to be present in any court of justice, was

to the following effect: That the defendant, who was a tenant of hers,

had, on a certain morning (naming days before the affray occurred),

[96] come up to her door well dressed, and followed by a porter

carrying her luggage. L. B., she continued, then handed her the key of

the apartment, informing her at the same time that she was going for

some days into the country to her relatives, for a change, and

requesting also that the witness should on no account deliver the key

to any person who should ask for it during her absence. This witness

further deposed to receiving the summons from the police, which she

placed along with the key for delivery to L. B. on the latter's return

home.

The testimony of the uncle was also decisively corroborative of that of

the preceding witness, as to the absence from Port of Spain of L. B.

during the days embraced in the defence. The alibi was therefore

unquestionably made out, especially as none of the police witnesses

would venture to swear to having actually seen L. B. at the brawl. The

magistrate had no alternative but that of acquiescing in the proof of

her innocence; so he dismissed the charge against the accused, who

stood down from among the rest, radiant with satisfaction. The other

defendants were duly [97] convicted, and sentenced to a term of

imprisonment with hard labour. All this was quite correct; but here

comes matter for consideration with regard to the immaculate

dispensation of justice as vaunted so confidently by Mr. Froude.

On receiving their sentence the women all stood down from the dock, to

be escorted to prison, except "Lady," who, by the way, had preserved a

rigid silence, while some of the other defendants had voluntarily and,

it may be added, generously protested that L. B. was not present on the

occasion of this particular row. "Lady," whether out of affection or

from a less respectable motive, cried out to the stipendiary justice.

"But, sir, it ain't fair. How is it every time that L. B. and me come

up before you, you either fine or send up the two of us together, and

to-day you are sending me up alone?" Moved either by the logic or the

pathos of this objurgation, the magistrate, turning towards L. B., who

had lingered after her narrow escape to watch the issue of the

proceedings, thus addressed her:--"L. B., upon second thoughts I order

you to the same term of hard labour at the Royal Gaol with the [98]

others." The poor girl, having neither money nor friends intelligent

enough to interfere on her behalf, had to submit, and she underwent the

whole of this iniquitous sentence.

The last typical case that we shall give illustrates the singular

application by this more than singular judge of the legal maxim caveat

emptor. A free coolie possessed of a donkey resolved to utilize the

animal in carting grass to the market. He therefore called on another

coolie living at some distance from him, whom he knew to own two carts,

a small donkey-cart and an ordinary cart for mule or horse. He

proposed the purchase of the smaller cart, stating his reason for

wishing to have it. The donkey-cart was then shown to the intending

purchaser, who, along with two Creole witnesses brought by him to make

out and attest the receipt on the occasion, found some of the iron

fittings defective, and drew the vendor's attention thereto. He, on

his side, engaged, on receiving the amount agreed to for the cart, to

send it off to the blacksmith for immediate repairs, to be delivered to

the purchaser next morning at the latest. On this understanding the

purchase money was paid down, and the [99] receipt, specifying that the

sum therein mentioned was for a donkey-cart, passed from the vendor to

the purchaser of the little vehicle. Next day at about noon the man

went with his donkey for the cart. Arrived there, his countryman had

the larger of the two carts brought out, and in pretended innocence

said to the purchaser of the donkey-cart, "Here is your cart." On this

a warm dispute arose, which was not abated by the presence and protests

of the two witnesses of the day before, who had hastily been summoned

by the victim to bear out his contention that it was the donkey-cart

and not the larger cart which had been examined, bargained for,

purchased, and promised to be delivered, the day before.

The matter, on account of the sturdiness of the rascal's denials, had

to be referred to a court of law. The complainant engaged an able

solicitor, who laid the case before Mr. Mayne in all its transparent

simplicity and strength. The defendant, although he had, and as a

matter of fact could have, no means of invalidating the evidence of the

two witnesses, and above all of his receipt with his signature, relied

upon the fact that the cart which he [100] offered was much larger than

the one the complainant had actually bought, and that therefore

complainant would be the gainer by the transaction. Incredible as it

may sound, this view of the case commended itself to the magistrate,

who adopted it in giving his judgment against the complainant. In vain

did the solicitor protest that all the facts of the case were centred

in the desire and intention of the prosecutor to have specifically a

donkey-cart, which was abundantly proved by everything that had come

out in the proceedings. In vain also was his endeavour to show that a

man having only a donkey would be hopelessly embarrassed by having a

cart for it which was entirely intended for animals of much larger

size. The magistrate solemnly reiterated his decision, and wound up by

saying that the victim had lost his case through disregard of the legal

maxim caveat emptor--let the purchaser be careful. The rascally

defendant thus gained his case, and left the court in defiant triumph.

The four preceding cases are thoroughly significant of the original

method in which thousands of cases were decided by this model

magistrate, to the great detriment, pecuniary, [101] social, and moral,

during more than ten years, of between 60,000 and 70,000 of the

population within the circle of his judicial authority. What shall we

think, therefore, of the fairness of Mr. Froude or his informants, who,

prompt and eager in imputing unworthy motives to gentlemen with

characters above reproach, have yet been so silent with regard to the

flagrant and frequent abuses of more than one of their countrymen by

whom the honour and fair fame of their nation were for years draggled

in the mire, and whose misdeeds were the theme of every tongue and

thousands of newspaper-articles in the West Indian Colonies?

MR. ARTHUR CHILD, S.J.P.

We now take San Fernando, the next most important magisterial district

after Port of Spain. At the time of Mr. Froude's visit, and for some

time before, the duties of the magistracy there were discharged by Mr.

Arthur Child, an "English barrister" who, of course, had possessed the

requisite qualification of being hopelessly briefless. For the ideal

justice which Mr. Froude would have Britons believe is meted out to the

weaker classes by their fellow-countrymen [102] in the West Indies, we

may refer the reader to the conduct of the above-named functionary on

the memorable occasion of the slaughter of the coolies under Governor

Freeling, in October, 1884. Mr. Child, as Stipendiary justice, had the

duty of reading the Riot Act to the immigrants, who were marching in

procession to the town of San Fernando, contrary, indeed, to the

Government proclamation which had forbidden it; and he it was who gave

the order to "fire," which resulted fatally to many of the unfortunate

devotees of Hosein. This mandate and its lethal consequences

anticipated by some minutes the similar but far more death-dealing

action of the Chief of Police, who was stationed at another post in the

vicinity of San Fernando. The day after the shooting down of a total

of more than one hundred immigrants, the protecting action of this

magistrate towards the weaker folk under his jurisdiction had a

striking exemplification, to which Mr. Froude is hereby made welcome.

Of course there was a general cry of horror throughout the Colony, and

especially in the San Fernando district, at the fatal outcome of the

proclamation, which had mentioned only "fine" and "imprisonment," [103]

but not Death, as the penalty of disregarding its prohibitions. For

nearly forty years, namely from their very first arrival in the Colony,

the East Indian immigrants had, according to specific agreement with

the Government, invariably been allowed the privilege of celebrating

their annual feast of Hosein, by walking in procession with their

Pagodas through the public roads and streets of the island, without

prohibition or hindrance of any kind from the authorities, save and

except in cases where rival estate pagodas were in danger of getting

into collision on the question of precedence. On such occasions the

police, who always attended the processions, usually gave the lead to

the pagodas of the labourers of estates according to their seniority as

immigrants.

In no case up to 1884, after thirty odd years' inauguration in the

Colony, was the Hosein festival ever pretended to be any cause of

danger, actual or prospective, to any town or building. On the

contrary, business grew brisker and solidly improved at the approach of

the commemoration, owing to the very considerable sale of

parti-coloured paper, velvet, calico, and similar articles used in the

construction [104] of the pagodas. Governor Freeling, however, was, it

may be presumed, compelled to see danger in an institution which had

had nearly forty years' trial, without a single accident happening to

warrant any sudden interposition of the Government tending to its

suppression. At all events, the only action taken in 1884, in prospect

of their usual festival, was to notify the immigrants by proclamation,

and, it is said, also through authorized agents, that the details of

their fête were not to be conducted in the usual manner; and that their

appearance with pagodas in any public road or any town, without special

license from some competent local authority, would entail the penalty

of so many pounds fine, or imprisonment for so many months with hard

labour. The immigrants, to whom this unexpected change on the part of

the authorities was utterly incomprehensible, both petitioned and sent

deputations to the Governor, offering guarantees for the, if possible,

more secure celebration of the Hosein, and praying His Excellency to

cancel the prohibition as to the use of the roads, inasmuch as it

interfered with the essential part of their religious rite, which was

the "drowning," or casting into [105] the sea, of the pagodas. Having

utterly failed in their efforts with the Governor, the coolies resolved

to carry out their religious duty according to prescriptive forms,

accepting, at the same time, the responsibility in the way of fine or

imprisonment which they would thus inevitably incur. A rumour was also

current at the time that, pursuant to this resolution, the head men of

the various plantations had authorized a general subscription amongst

their countrymen, for meeting the contingency of fines in the police

courts. All these things were the current talk of the population of

San Fernando, in which town the leading immigrants, free as well as

indentured, had begun to raise funds for this purpose.

All that the public, therefore, expected would have resulted from the

intended infringement of the Proclamation was an enormous influx of

money in the shape of fines into the Colonial Treasury; as no one

doubted the extreme facility which existed for ascertaining exactly, in

the case of persons registered and indentured to specific plantations,

the names and abodes of at least the chief offenders against the

proclamation. Accordingly, on the [106] occurrence of the bloody

catastrophe related above, every one felt that the mere persistence in

marching all unarmed towards the town, without actually attempting to

force their way into it, was exorbitantly visited upon the coolies by a

violent death or a life-long mutilation. This sentiment few were at

any pains to conceal; but as the poorer and more ignorant classes can

be handled with greater impunity than those who are intelligent and

have the means of self-defence, Mr. Justice Child, the very day after

the tragedy, and without waiting for the pro formâ official inquiry

into the tragedy in which he bore so conspicuous a part, actually

caused to be arrested, sat to try and sent to hard labour, persons whom

the police, in obedience to his positive injunctions, had reported to

him as having condemned the shooting down of the immigrants! Those who

were arrested and thus summarily punished had, of course, no means of

self-protection; and as the case is typical of others, as illustrative

of "justice-made law" applied to "subject races" in a British colony,

Mr. Froude is free to accept it, or not, in corroboration of his

unqualified panegyrics.

[107]

MR. GROVE HUMPHREY CHAPMAN, S.J.P.

As Stipendary Magistrate of this self-same San Fernando district, Grove

Humphrey Chapman, Esquire (another English barrister), was the

immediate predecessor of Mr. Child. More humane than Mr. Mayne, his

colleague and contemporary in Port of Spain, this young magistrate

began his career fairly well. But he speedily fell a victim to the

influences immediately surrounding him in his new position. His head,

which later events proved never to have been naturally strong, began to

be turned by the unaccustomed deference which he met with on all hands,

from high and low, official and non-official, and he himself soon

consummated the addling of his brain by persistent practical revolts

against every maxim of the ancient Nazarenes in the matter of

potations. His decisions at the court, therefore, became perfect

emulations of those of Mr. Mayne, as well in perversity as in

harshness, and many in his case also were the appeals for relief made

to the head of the executive by the inhabitants of the district--but of

course in vain. Governor Irving was at this time in office, and the

unfortunate [108] victims of perverse judgments--occasionally

pronounced by this magistrate in his cups--were only poor Negroes,

coolies, or other persons whose worldly circumstances placed them in

the category of the "weaker" in the community. To these classes of

people that excellent ruler unhappily denied--we dare not say his

personal sympathy, but--the official protection which, even through

self-respect, he might have perfunctorily accorded. Bent, however, on

running through the whole gamut of extravagance, Mr. Chapman--by

interpreting official impunity into implying a direct license for the

wildest of his caprices--plunged headlong with ever accelerating speed,

till the deliverance of the Naparimas became the welcome consequence of

his own personal action. On one occasion it was credibly reported in

the Colony that this infatuated dispenser of British justice actually

stretched his official complaisance so far as to permit a lady not only

to be seated near him on the judicial bench, but also to take a

part--loud, boisterous and abusive--in the legal proceedings of the

day. Meanwhile, as the Governor could not be induced to interfere,

things went [109] on from bad to worse, till one day, as above hinted,

the unfortunate magistrate so publicly committed himself as to be

obliged to be borne for temporary refuge to the Lunatic Asylum, whence

he was clandestinely shipped from the Colony on "six months' leave of

absence," never more to resume his official station.

The removal of two such magistrates as those whose careers we have so

briefly sketched out--Mr. Mayne having died, still a magistrate, since

Mr. Froude's departure--has afforded opportunity for the restoration of

British protecting influence. In the person of Mr. Llewellyn Lewis, as

magistrate of Port of Spain, this opportunity has been secured. He, it

is generally rumoured, strives to justify the expectations of fair play

and even-handed justice which are generally entertained concerning

Englishmen. It is, however, certain that with a Governor so prompt to

hear the cry of the poor as Sir William Robinson has proved himself to

be, and with a Chief Justice so vigilant, fearless, and painstaking as

Sir John Gorrie, the entire magistracy of the Colony must be so

beneficially influenced as to preclude [110] the frequency of appeals

being made to the higher courts, or it may be to the Executive, on

account of scandalously unjust and senseless decisions.

So long, too, as the names of T. S. Warner, Captain Larcom, and F. H.

Hamblin abide in the grateful remembrance of the entire population, as

ideally upright, just, and impartial dispensers of justice, each in his

own jurisdiction, we can only sigh at the temporal dispensation which

renders practicable the appointment and retention in office of such

administrators of the Law as were Mr. Mayne and Mr. Chapman. The

widespread and irreparable mischiefs wrought by these men still affect

disastrously many an unfortunate household; and the execration by the

weaker in the community of their memory, particularly that of Robert

Dawson Mayne, is only a fitting retribution for their abuse of power.

NOTES

85. *A West Indian official superstition professes to believe that a

British barrister must make an exceptionally good colonial S.J.P.,

seeing that he is ignorant of everything, save general English law,

that would qualify him for the post! In this, to acquit oneself

tolerably, some acquaintance with the language, customs, and habits of

thought of the population is everywhere else held to be of prime

importance,--native conscientiousness and honesty of purpose being

definitively presupposed.

BOOK III: SOCIAL REVOLUTION

[113] Never was the Knight of La Mancha more convinced of his imaginary

mission to redress the wrongs of the world than Mr. James Anthony

Froude seems to be of his ability to alter the course of events,

especially those bearing on the destinies of the Negro in the British

West Indies. The doctrinaire style of his utterances, his sublime

indifference as to what Negro opinion and feelings may be, on account

of his revelations, are uniquely charming. In that portion of his book

headed "Social Revolution" our author, with that mixture of frankness

and cynicism which is so dear to the soul of the British esprit fort of

to-day, has challenged a comparison between British Colonial policy on

the [114] one hand, and the Colonial policy of France and Spain on the

other. This he does with an evident recklessness that his approval of

Spain and France involves a definite condemnation of his own country.

However, let us hear him:--

"The English West Indies, like other parts of the world, are going

through a silent revolution. Elsewhere the revolution, as we hope, is

a transition state, a new birth; a passing away of what is old and worn

out, that a fresh and healthier order may rise in its place. In the

West Indies the most sanguine of mortals will find it difficult to

entertain any such hope at all."

As Mr. Froude is speaking dogmatically here of his, or rather our, West

Indies, let us hear him as he proceeds:--

"We have been a ruling power there for two hundred and fifty years; the

whites whom we planted as our representatives are drifting into ruin,

and they regard England and England's policy as the principal cause of

it. The blacks whom, in a fit of virtuous benevolence, we emancipated,

do not feel particularly obliged to us. They think, if they think at

all, that they were [115] ill-treated originally, and have received no

more than was due to them."

Thus far. Now, as to "the whites whom we planted as our

representatives," and who, Mr. Froude avers, are drifting into ruin, we

confess to a total ignorance of their whereabouts in these islands in

this jubilee year of Negro Emancipation. Of the representatives of

Britain immediately before and after Emancipation we happen to know

something, which, on the testimony of Englishmen, Mr. Froude will be

made quite welcome to before our task is ended. With respect to Mr.

Froude's statement as to the ingratitude of the emancipated Blacks, if

it is aimed at the slaves who were actually set free, it is utterly

untrue; for no class of persons, in their humble and artless way, are

more attached to the Queen's majesty, whom they regard as incarnating

in her gracious person the benevolence which Mr. Froude so jauntily

scoffs at. But if our censor's remark under this head is intended for

the present generation of Blacks, it is a pure and simple absurdity.

What are we Negroes of the present day to be grateful for to the US,

personified by Mr. Froude and the Colonial [116] Office exportations?

We really believe, from what we know of Englishmen, that very few

indeed would regard Mr. Froude's reproach otherwise than as a palpable

adding of insult to injury. Obliged to "us," indeed! Why, Mr. Froude,

who speaks of us as dogs and horses, suggests that the same kindliness

of treatment that secures the attachment of those noble brutes would

have the same result in our case. With the same consistency that marks

his utterances throughout his book, he tells his readers "that there is

no original or congenital difference between the capacity of the White

and the Negro races." He adds, too, significantly: "With the same

chances and with the same treatment, I believe that distinguished men

would be produced equally from both races." After this truthful

testimony, which Pelion upon Ossa of evidence has confirmed, does Mr.

Froude, in the fatuity of his skin-pride, believe that educated men,

worthy of the name, would be otherwise than resentful, if not

disgusted, at being shunted out of bread in their own native land,

which their parents' labours and taxes have made desirable, in order to

afford room to blockheads, vulgarians, [117] or worse, imported from

beyond the seas? Does Mr. Froude's scorn of the Negroes' skin extend,

inconsistently on his part, to their intelligence and feelings also?

And if so, what has the Negro to care--if let alone and not wantonly

thwarted in his aspirations? It sounds queer, not to say unnatural and

scandalous, that Englishmen should in these days of light be the

champions of injustice towards their fellow-subjects, not for any

intellectual or moral disqualification, but on the simple account of

the darker skin of those who are to be assailed and thwarted in their

life's career and aspirations. Really, are we to be grateful that the

colour difference should be made the basis and justification of the

dastardly denials of justice, social, intellectual, and moral, which

have characterized the régime of those who Mr. Froude boasts were left

to be the representatives of Britain's morality and fair play? Are the

Negroes under the French flag not intensely French? Are the Negroes

under the Spanish flag not intensely Spanish? Wherefore are they so?

It is because the French and Spanish nations, who are neither of them

inferior in origin or the [118] nobility of the part they have each

played on the historic stage, have had the dignity and sense to

understand the lowness of moral and intellectual consciousness implied

in the subordination of questions of an imperial nature to the

slaveholder's anxiety about the hue of those who are to be benefited or

not in the long run. By Spain and France every loyal and law-abiding

subject of the Mother Country has been a citizen deemed worthy all the

rights, immunities, and privileges flowing from good and creditable

citizenship. Those meriting such distinction were taken into the bosom

of the society which their qualifications recommended them to share,

and no office under the Government has been thought too good or too

elevated for men of their stamp. No wonder, then, that Mr. Froude is

silent regarding the scores of brilliant coloured officials who adorn

the civil service of France and Spain, and whose appointment, in

contrast with what has usually been the case in British Colonies,

reflects an abiding lustre on those countries, and establishes their

right to a foremost place among nations.

Mr. Froude, in speaking of Chief Justice [119] Reeves, ventures upon a

smart truism which we can discuss for him, but of course not in the

sense in which he has meant it. "Exceptions," our author remarks, "are

supposed proverbially to prove nothing, or to prove the very opposite

of what they appear to prove. When a particular phenomenon occurs

rarely, the probabilities are strong against the recurrence of it."

Now, is it in ignorance, or through disingenuousness, that Mr. Froude

has penned this argument regarding exceptions? Surely, in the vast

area of American life, it is not possible that he could see Frederick

Douglass alone out of the cluster of prominent Black Americans who are

doing the work of their country so worthily and so well in every

official department. Anyhow, Mr. Froude's history of the Emancipation

may here be amended for him by a reminder that, in the British

Colonies, it was not Whites as masters, and Blacks as slaves, who were

affected by that momentous measure. In fact, 1838 found in the British

Colonies very nearly as many Negro and Mulatto slave-owners as there

were white. Well then, these black and yellow planters received their

quota, it may be presumed, of [120] the £20,000,000 sterling indemnity.

They were part and parcel of the proprietary body in the Colonies, and

had to meet the crisis like the rest. They were very wealthy, some of

these Ethiopic accomplices of the oppressors of their own race. Their

sons and daughters were sent, like the white planter's children, across

the Atlantic for a European education. These young folk returned to

their various native Colonies as lawyers and doctors. Many of them

were also wealthy planters. The daughters, of course, became in time

the mothers of the new generation of prominent inhabitants. Now, in

America all this was different. No "nigger," however alabaster fair,

was ever allowed the privileges of common citizenship, let alone the

right to hold property in others. If possessed by a weakness to pass

for white men, as very many of them could easily have contrived to do,

woe unto the poor impostors! They were hunted down from city to city

as few felons would be, and finally done to death--"serve them right!"

being the grim commentary regarding their fate for having sought to

usurp the ineffable privilege of whitemanship! All this, Mr. Froude,

was [121] the rule, the practice, in America, with regard to persons of

colour up to twenty-five years ago. Now, sir, what is the phenomenon

which strikes your vision in that mighty Republic to-day, with regard

to those self-same despised, discountenanced, persecuted and harried

descendants of Ham? We shall tell you of the change that has taken

place in their condition, and also some of the reasons of that

beneficent revolution.

The Proclamation of Emancipation on January 1st, 1863, was, by

President Lincoln, frankly admitted to have been a war necessity. No

abstract principle of justice or of morals was of primary consideration

in the matter. The saving of the Union at any cost,--that is, the

stern political emergency forced forth the document which was to be the

social salvation of every descendant of Ham in the United States of

America. Close upon the heels of their emancipation, the

enfranchisement of the Negroes was pushed forward by the thorough-going

American statesmen. They had no sentimentality to defer to. The logic

of events--the fact not only of the coloured race being freedmen, but

also of their having been effective [122] comrades on the fields of

battle, where the blood of eager thousands of them had flowed on the

Union side, pointed out too plainly that men with such claims should

also be partners in the resulting triumph.

Mr. Froude, being so deferential to skin prejudice, will doubtless find

it strange that such a measure as the Civil Rights Bill should have

passed a Congress of Americans. Assuredly with the feeling against the

coloured race which custom and law had engrafted into the very nature

of the vast majority, this was a tremendous call to make on the

national susceptibilities. But it has been exactly this that has

brought out into such vivid contrast the conduct of the British

statesman, loudly professing to be unprejudiced as to colour, and fair

and humane, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the dealings of

the politicians of America, who had, as a matter of fact, sucked in

aversion and contempt towards the Negro together with their mother's

milk. Of course no sane being could expect that feelings so deeply

ingrained and nourished could be rooted out by logic or by any

legislative enactment. But, indeed, it is sublimely creditable to

[123] the American Government that, whatever might be the personal and

private sentiments of its individual members as regards race, palmam

ferat qui meruit--"let him bear the palm who has deserved it"--has been

their motto in dealing generally with the claims of their Ethiopic

fellow-citizens. Hence it is that in only twenty-five years America

can show Negro public officers as thick as blackberries, while Mr.

Froude can mention only Mr. Justice Reeves in FIFTY years as a sample

of the "exceptional" progress under British auspices of a man of

African descent! Verily, if in fifty long years British policy can

recognize only one single exception in a race between which and the

white race there is no original or congenital difference of capacity,

the inference must be that British policy has been not only

systematically, but also too successfully, hostile to the advancement

of the Ethiopians subject thereto; while the "fair field and no favour"

management of the strong-minded Americans has, by its results,

confirmed the culpability of the English policy in its relation to

"subject races."

The very suggestive section of "the English [124] in the West Indies,"

from which we have already given extracts, and which bears the title

"Social Revolution," thus proceeds:--

"But it does not follow that what can be done eventually can be done

immediately, and the gulf which divides the colours is no arbitrary

prejudice, but has been opened by the centuries of training and

discipline which have given us the start in the race" (p. 125 [Froude]).

The reference in the opening clause of the above citation, as to what

is eventually possible not being immediately feasible, is to the

elevation of Blacks to high official posts, such as those occupied by

Judge Reeves in Barbados, and by Mr. F. Douglass in the United States.

We have already disposed by anticipation of the above contention of Mr.

Froude's, by showing that in only twenty-five years America has found

hundreds of eminent Blacks to fill high posts under her government.

Our author's futile mixture of Judge Reeves' exceptional case with that

of Fred. Douglass, which he cunningly singles out from among so many in

the United States, is nothing but a subterfuge, of the same queer and

flimsy description with which the literature of the cause now

championed [125] by his eloquence has made the world only too familiar.

What can Mr. Froude conceive any sane man should see in common between

the action of British and of American statesmanship in the matter now

under discussion? If his utterance on this point is that of a British

spokesman, let him abide by his own verdict against his own case, as

embodied in the words, "the gulf which divides the two COLOURS is no

arbitrary prejudice," which, coupled with his contention that the

elevation of the Blacks is not immediately feasible, discloses the

wideness of divergence between British and American political opinion

on this identical subject.

Mr. Froude is pathetically eloquent on the colour question. He tells

of the wide gulf between the two colours--we suppose it is as wide as

exists between his white horse and his black horse. Seriously,

however, does not this kind of talk savour only too much of the

slave-pen and the auction-block of the rice-swamp and the cotton-field;

of the sugar-plantation and the driver's lash? In the United States

alone, among all the slave-holding Powers, was the difference of race

and colour invoked openly and boldly to justify all the enormities that

[126] were the natural accompaniments of those "institutions" of the

Past. But is Mr. Froude serious in invoking the ostracizing of

innocent, loyal, and meritorious British subjects on account of their

mere colour? Physical slavery--which was no crime per se, Mr. Froude

tells us--had at least overwhelming brute power, and that silent,

passive force which is even more potential as an auxiliary, viz.,

unenlightened public opinion, whose neutrality is too often a positive

support to the empire of wrong.

But has Mr. Froude, in his present wild propaganda on behalf of

political and, therefore, of social repression, anything analogous to

those two above-specified auxiliaries to rely on? We trow not. Then

why this frantic bluster and shouting forth of indiscreet aspirations

on be half of a minority to whom accomplished facts, when not agreeable

to or manipulated by themselves, are a perpetual grievance, generating

life-long impotent protestations? Presumably there are possibilities

the thoughts of which fascinate our author and his congeners in this,

to our mind, vain campaign in the cause of social retrogression. But,

be the incentives what they may, it might not be amiss on our [127]

part to suggest to those impelled by them that the ignoring of Negro

opinion in their calculations, though not only possible but easily

practised fifty years ago, is a portentous blunder at the present time.

Verbum sapienti.

Mr. Froude must see that he has set about his Negro-repression campaign

in too blundering a fashion. He evidently expects to be able to throw

dust into the eyes of the intelligent world, juggler-wise, through the

agency of the mighty pronoun US, as representing the entire Anglo-Saxon

race, in his advocacy of the now scarcely intelligible pretensions of a

little coterie of Her Majesty's subjects in the West Indies. These

gentry are hostile, he urges, to the presence of progressive Negroes on

the soil of the tropics! Yet are these self-same Negroes not only

natives, but active improvers and embellishers of that very soil. We

cannot help concluding that this impotent grudge has sprung out of the

additional fact that these identical Negroes constitute also a living

refutation of the sinister predictions ventured upon generally against

their race, with frantic recklessness, even within the last three

decades, by affrighted slave-holders, of whose ravings Mr. Froude's

book is only a [128] diluted echo, out of season and outrageous to the

conscience of modern civilization.

It is patent, then, that the matters which Mr. Froude has sought to

force up to the dignity of genetic rivalship, has nothing of that

importance about it. His US, between whom and the Negro subjects of

Great Britain the gulf of colour lies, comprises, as he himself owns,

an outnumbered and, as we hope to prove later on, a not over-creditable

little clique of Anglo-Saxon lineage. The real US who have started

ahead of the Negroes, "through the training and discipline of

centuries," are assuredly not anything like "represented" by the few

pretentious incapables who, instead of conquering predominance, as they

who deserve it always do, like men, are whimpering like babies after

dearly coveted but utterly unattainable enjoyments--to be had at the

expense of the interests of the Negroes whom they, rather amusingly,

affect to despise. When Mr. Froude shall have become able to present

for the world's contemplation a question respecting which the

Anglo-Saxon family, in its grand world-wide predominance, and the

African family, in its yet feeble, albeit promising, incipience of

self-adjustment, shall [129] actually be competitors, then, and only

then, will it be time to accept the outlook as serious. But when, as

in the present case, he invokes the whole prestige of the Anglo-Saxon

race in favour of the untenable pretensions of a few blasés of that

race, and that to the social and political detriment of tens of

thousands of black fellow-subjects, it is high time that the common

sense of civilization should laugh him out of court. The US who are

flourishing, or pining, as the case may be, in the British West

Indies--by favour of the Colonial Office on the former hypothesis, or,

on the second, through the misdirection of their own faculties--do not,

and, in the very nature of things, cannot in any race take the lead of

any set of men endowed with virile attributes, the conditions of the

contest being on all sides identical.

Pass we onward to extract and comment on other passages in this very

engaging section of Mr. Froude's book. On the same page (125) he

says:--

"The African Blacks have been free enough for thousands, perhaps for

ten thousands of years, and it has been the absence of restraint which

has prevented them from becoming civilized."

[130] All this, perhaps, is quite true, and, in the absence of positive

evidence to the contrary of our author's dogmatic assertions, we save

time by allowing him all the benefit he can derive from whatever weight

they might carry.

"Generation has followed generation, and the children are as like their

fathers as the successive generations of apes."

To this we can have nothing to object; especially in view of what the

writer goes on to say, and that on his own side of the hedge--somewhat

qualified though his admission may be:--"The whites, it is likely

enough, succeeded one another with the same similarity for a series of

ages." Our speculator grows profoundly philosophic here; and in this

mood thus entertains his readers in a strain which, though deep, we

shall strive to find clear:--

"It is now supposed that human race has been on the planet for a

hundred thousand years at least; and the first traces of civilization

cannot be thrown back at furthest beyond six thousand. During all this

time mankind went on treading in the same steps, century after century

making no more advance than the birds and beasts."

[131] In all this there is nothing that can usefully be taken exception

to; for speculation and conjecture, if plausible and attractive, are

free to revel whenever written documents and the unmistakable

indications of the earth's crust are both entirely at fault. Warming

up with his theme, Mr. Froude gets somewhat ambiguous in the very next

sentence. Says he:--

"In Egypt or India or one knows not where, accident or natural

development quickened into life our moral and intellectual faculties;

and these faculties have grown into what we now experience, not in the

freedom in which the modern takes delight, but under the sharp rule of

the strong over the weak, of the wise over the unwise."

Our author, as we see, begins his above quoted deliverance quite at a

loss with regard to the agency to which the incipience, growth, and

fructification of man's faculties should be attributed. "Accident,"

"natural development," he suggests, quickened the human faculties into

the progressive achievements which they have accomplished. But then,

wherefore is this writer so forcible, so confident in his prophecies

regarding Negroes and their future temporal condition [132] and

proceedings, since it is "accident," and "accident" only, that must

determine their fulfilment? Has he so securely bound the fickle

divinity to his service as to be certain of its agency in the

realization of his forecasts? And if so, where then would be the

fortuitousness that is the very essence of occurrences that glide,

undesigned, unexpected, unforeseen, into the domain of Fact, and become

material for History? So far as we feel capable of intelligently

meditating on questions of this inscrutable nature, we are forced to

conclude that since "natural development" could be so regular, so

continuous, and withal so efficient, in the production of the

marvellous results that we daily contemplate, there must be existent

and in operation--as, for instance, in the case of the uniformity

characterizing for ages successive generations of mankind, as above

adduced by our philosopher himself--some controlling LAW, according and

subject to which no check has marred the harmonious progression, or

prevented the consummations that have crowned the normal exercise of

human energy, intellectual as well as physical.

The sharp rule of the strong over the [133] weak, is the first clause

of the Carlylean-sounding phrase which embodies the requisite

conditions for satisfactory human development. The terms expressive of

these conditions, however, while certainly suggesting and embracing the

beneficent, elevating influence and discipline of European

civilization, such as we know and appreciate it, do not by any means

exclude the domination of Mr. Legree or any other typical man-monster,

whose power over his fellow-creatures is at once a calamity to the

victims and a disgrace to the community tolerating not only its

exercise, but the very possibility of its existence. The sharp rule of

"the wise over the unwise," is the closing section of the

recommendation to ensure man's effective development. Not even savages

hesitate to defer in all their important designs to the sought-for

guidance of superior judgments. But in the case of us West Indian

Blacks, to whom Mr. Froude's doctrine here has a special reference, is

it suggested by him that the bidders for predominance over us on the

purely epidermal, the white skin, ground, are ipso facto the

monopolists of directing wisdom? It surely cannot be so; for Mr.

Froude's own chapters regarding both the [134] nomination by Downing

Street of future Colonial office-holders and the disorganized mental

and moral condition of the indigenous representatives--as he calls

them!--of his country in these climes, preclude the possibility that

the reference regarding the wise can be to them. Now since this is so,

we really cannot see why the pains should have been taken to indite the

above truism, to the truth whereof, under every normal or legitimate

circumstance, the veriest barbarian, by spontaneously resorting to and

cheerfully abiding by it, is among the first to secure practical effect.

"Our own Anglo-Saxon race," continues our author, "has been capable of

self-government only after a thousand years of civil and spiritual

authority. European government, European instruction, continued

steadily till his natural tendencies are superseded by higher

instincts, may shorten the probation period of the negro. Individual

blacks of exceptional quality, like Frederick Douglass in America, or

the Chief Justice of Barbados, will avail themselves of opportunities

to rise, and the freest opportunity OUGHT TO BE offered them." Here we

are reminded of the dogma laid down by a certain [135] class of

ethnologists, to the effect that intellectuality, when displayed by a

person of mixed European and African blood, must always be assigned to

the European side of the parentage; and in the foregoing citation our

author speaks of two personages undoubtedly belonging to the class

embraced in the above dogma. Three specific objections may, therefore,

be urged against the statements which we have indicated in the above

quotation. First and foremost, neither Judge Reeves nor Mr. Fred

Douglass is a black man, as Mr. Froude inaccurately represents each of

them to be. The former is of mixed blood, to what degree we are not

adepts enough to determine; and the latter, if his portrait and those

who have personally seen him mislead us not, is a decidedly fair man.

We, of course, do not for a moment imagine that either of those eminent

descendants of Ham cares a jot about the settlement of this question,

which doubtless would appear very trivial to both. But as our author's

crusade is against the Negro--by which we understand the undiluted

African descendant, the pure Negro, as he singularly describes Chief

Justice Reeves--our anxiety is to show that there exist, both [136] in

the West Indies and in the United States, scores of genuine black men

to whom neither of these two distinguished patriots would, for one

instant, hesitate to concede any claim to equality in intellectual and

social excellence. The second exception which we take is, as we have

already shown in a previous page, to the persistent lugging in of

America by Mr. Froude, doubtless to keep his political countrymen in

countenance with regard to the Negro question. We have already pointed

out the futility of this proceeding on our author's part, and suggested

how damaging it might prove to the cause he is striving to uphold.

"Blacks of exceptional quality," like the two gentlemen he has

specially mentioned, "will avail themselves of opportunities to rise."

Most certainly they will, Mr. Froude--but, for the present, only in

America, where those opportunities are really free and open to all.

There no parasitical non-workers are to be found, eager to eat bread,

but in the sweat of other people's brows; no impecunious title-bearers;

no importunate bores, nor other similar characters whom the Government

there would regard it as their duty "to provide for"--by quartering

them on the revenues [137] of Colonial dependencies. But in the

British Crown--or rather "Anglo-West Indian"--governed Colonies, has it

ever been, can it ever be, thus ordered? Our author's description of

the exigencies that compel injustice to be done in order to requite, or

perhaps to secure, Parliamentary support, coupled with his account of

the bitter animus against the coloured race that rankles in the bosom

of his "Englishmen in the West Indies," sufficiently proves the utter

hypocrisy of his recommendation, that the freest opportunities should

be offered to Blacks of the said exceptional order. The very wording

of Mr. Froude's recommendation is disingenuous. It is one stone sped

at two birds, and which, most naturally, has missed them both.

Mr. Froude knew perfectly well that, twenty-five years before he wrote

his book, America had thrown open the way to public advancement to the

Blacks, as it had been previously free to Whites alone. His use of

"should be offered," instead of "are offered," betrays his

consciousness that, at the time he was writing, the offering of any

opportunities of the kind he suggests was a thing still to be desired

under British jurisdiction. The third objection [138] which we shall

take to Mr. Froude's bracketing of the cases of Mr. Fred Douglass and

of Judge Reeves together, is that, when closely examined, the two cases

can be distinctly seen to be not in any way parallel. The applause

which our author indirectly bids for on behalf of British Colonial

liberality in the instance of Mr. Reeves would be the grossest mockery,

if accorded in any sense other than we shall proceed to show. Fred

Douglass was born and bred a slave in one of the Southern States of the

Union, and regained his freedom by flight from bondage, a grown man,

and, of course, under the circumstances, solitary and destitute. He

reached the North at a period when the prejudice of the Whites against

men of his race was so rampant as to constitute a positive mania.

The stern and cruelly logical doctrine, that a Negro had no rights

which white men were bound to respect, was in full blast and practical

exemplification. Yet amidst it all, and despite of it all, this gifted

fugitive conquered his way into the Temple of Knowledge, and became

eminent as an orator, a writer, and a lecturer on political and general

subjects. Hailed abroad [139] as a prodigy, and received with

acclamation into the brotherhood of intelligence, abstract justice and

moral congruity demanded that such a man should no longer be subject to

the shame and abasement of social, legal, and political proscription.

The land of his birth proved herself equal to this imperative call of

civilized Duty, regardless of customs and the laws, written as well as

unwritten, which had doomed to life-long degradation every member of

the progeny of Ham. Recognizing in the erewhile bondman a born leader

of men, America, with the unflinching directness that has marked her

course, whether in good or in evil, responded with spontaneous loyalty

to the inspiration of her highest instincts. Shamed into compunction

and remorse at the solid fame and general sympathy secured for himself

by a son of her soil, whom, in the wantonness of pride and power, she

had denied all fostering care (not, indeed, for any conscious offending

on his part, but by reason of a natural peculiarity which she had

decreed penal), America, like a repentant mother, stooped from her

august seat, and giving with enthusiasm both hands to the outcast, she

helped him to stand forward and erect, [140] in the dignity of

untrammeled manhood, making him, at the same time, welcome to a place

of honour amongst the most gifted, the worthiest and most favoured of

her children.

Chief Justice Reeves, on the other hand, did not enter the world, as

Douglass had done, heir to a lot of intellectual darkness and legalized

social and political proscription. Associated from adolescence with S.

J. Prescod, the greatest leader of popular opinion whom Barbados has

yet produced, Mr. Reeves possessed in his nature the material to

assimilate and reflect in his own principles and conduct the salient

characteristics of his distinguished Mentor. Arrived in England to

study law, he had there the privilege of the personal acquaintance of

Lord Brougham, then one of the Nestors of the great Emancipation

conflict. On returning to his native island, which he did immediately

after his call to the bar, Mr. Reeves sprung at once into the foremost

place, and retained his precedence till his labours and aspirations

were crowned by his obtaining the highest judicial post in that Colony.

For long years before becoming Chief Justice, Mr. Reeves had conquered

for himself the respect and confidence [141] of all Barbadians--even

including the ultra exclusive "Anglo-West-Indians" of Mr. Froude--by

the manful constitutional stand which, sacrificing official place, he

had successfully made against the threatened abrogation of the Charter

of the Colony, which every class and colour of natives cherish and

revere as a most precious, almost sacred, inheritance. The successful

champion of their menaced liberties found clustering around him the

grateful hearts of all his countrymen, who, in their hour of dread at

the danger of their time-honoured constitution, had clung in despair to

him as the only leader capable of heading the struggle and leading the

people, by wise and constitutional guidance, to the victory which they

desired but could not achieve for themselves.

Sir William Robinson, who was sent out as pacificator, saw and took in

at a glance the whole significance of the condition of affairs,

especially in their relation to Mr. Reeves, and vice versâ. With the

unrivalled pre-eminence and predominant personal influence of the

latter, the Colonial Office had possessed more than ample means of

being perfectly familiar. What, then, could be more natural and

consonant with [142] sound policy than that the then acknowledged, but

officially unattached, head of the people (being an eminent lawyer),

should, on the occurrence of a vacancy in the highest juridical post,

be appointed to co-operate with the supreme head of the Executive? Mr.

Reeves was already the chief of the legal body of the Colony; his

appointment, therefore, as Chief Justice amounted to nothing more than

an official ratification of an accomplished and unalterable fact. Of

course, it was no fault of England's that the eminent culture,

political influence, and unapproached legal status of Mr. Reeves should

have coincided exactly with her political requirements at that crisis,

nor yet that she should have utilized a coincidence which had the

double advantage of securing the permanent services, whilst realizing

at the same time the life's aspiration, of a distinguished British

subject. But that Mr. Froude should be dinning in our ears this case

of benefited self-interest, gaining the amplest reciprocity, both as to

service and serviceableness, with the disinterested spontaneity of

America's elevation of Mr. Douglass, is but another proof of the

obliquity of the moral medium through [143] which he is wont to survey

mankind and their concerns.

The distinction between the two marvellous careers which we have been

discussing demands, as it is susceptible of, still sharper

accentuation. In the final success of Reeves, it is the man himself

who confronts one in the unique transcendency and victoriousness of

personal merit. On the other hand, a million times the personal merit

of Reeves combined with his own could have availed Douglass absolutely

nothing in the United States, legal and social proscript that he was,

with public opinion generally on the side of the laws and usages

against him. The very little countries of the world are proverbial for

the production of very great men. But, on the other hand, narrowness

of space favours the concentration and coherence of the adverse forces

that might impede, if they fail of utterly thwarting, the success which

may happen to be grudged by those possessing the will and the power for

its obstruction. In Barbados, so far as we have heard, read, and seen

ourselves of the social ins and outs of that little sister-colony, the

operation of the above mentioned [144] influences has been, may still

be, to a certain extent, distinctly appreciable. Although in English

jurisprudence there is no law ordaining the proscription, on the ground

of race or colour, of any eligible candidate for social or political

advancement, yet is it notorious that the ethics and practices of the

"Anglo-West Indians"--who, our author has dared to say, represent the

higher type of Englishmen--have, throughout successive generations,

effectually and of course detrimentally operated, as though by a

positive Medo-Persian edict, in a proscriptive sense. It therefore

demanded extraordinary toughness of constitutional fibre, moral,

mental, and, let us add, physical too, to overcome the obstacles

opposed to the progress of merit, too often by persons in intelligence

below contempt, but, in prosperity and accepted pretension, formidable

indeed to fight against and overcome. We shudder to think of the petty

cabals, the underbred indignities, direct and indirect, which the

present eminent Judge had to watch against, to brush aside, to smile

at, in course of his epic strides towards the highest local pinnacle of

his profession. But [145] with him, as Time has shown, it was all sure

and safe.

Providence had endowed him with the powers and temperament that break

down, when opportunity offers, every barrier to the progress of the

gifted and strong and brave. That opportunity, in his particular case,

offered itself in the Confederation crisis. Distracted and helpless

"Anglo-West Indians" thronged to him in imploring crowds, praying that

their beloved Charter should be saved by the exertion of his

incomparable abilities. Save and except Dr. Carrington, there was not

a single member of the dominant section in Barbados whom it would not

be absurd to name even as a near second to him whom all hailed as the

Champion of their Liberties. In the contest to be waged the victory

was not, as it never once has been, reserved to the SKIN or pedigree of

the combatants. The above two matters, which in the eyes of the ruling

"Bims" had, throughout long decades of undisturbed security, been

placed before and above all possible considerations, gravitated down to

their inherent insignificance when Intellect and Worth were destined to

fight out the issue. Mr. [146] Reeves, whose possession of the

essential qualifications was admittedly greater than that of every

colleague, stood, therefore, in unquestioned supremacy, lord of the

political situation, with the result above stated.

To what we have already pointed out regarding the absolute

impossibility of such an opportunity ever presenting itself in America

to Mr. Douglass, in a political sense, we may now add that, whereas, in

Barbados, for the intellectual equipment needed at the crisis, Mr.

Reeves stood quite alone, there could, in the bosom of the Union, even

in respect of the gifts in which Mr. Douglass was most brilliant, be no

"walking over the course" by him. It was in the country and time of

Bancroft, Irving, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Bryant, Motley, Henry

Clay, Dan Webster, and others of the laureled phalanx which has added

so great and imperishable a lustre to the literature of the English

tongue.

We proceed here another step, and take up a fresh deliverance of our

author's in reference to the granting of the franchise to the black

population of these Colonies. "It is," says Mr. James Anthony Froude,

who is just as prophetic [147] as his prototypes, the slave-owners of

the last half-century, "it is as certain as anything future can be,

that if we give the negroes as a body the political privileges which we

claim for ourselves, they will use them only to their own injury." The

forepart of the above citation reads very much as if its author wrote

it on the principle of raising a ghost for the mere purpose of laying

it. What visionary, what dreamer of impossible dreams, has ever asked

for the Negroes as a body the same political privileges which are

claimed for themselves by Mr. Froude and others of his countrymen, who

are presumably capable of exercising them? No one in the West Indies

has ever done so silly a thing as to ask for the Negroes as a body that

which has not, as everybody knows, and never will be, conceded to the

people of Great Britain as a body. The demand for Reform in the Crown

Colonies--a demand which our author deliberately misrepresents--is made

neither by nor for the Negro, Mulatto, White, Chinese, nor East Indian.

It is a petition put forward by prominent responsible colonists--the

majority of whom are Whites, and mostly Britons besides.

[148] Their prayer, in which the whole population in these Colonies

most heartily join, is simply and most reasonably that we, the said

Colonies, being an integral portion of the British Empire, and having,

in intelligence and every form of civilized progress, outgrown the

stage of political tutelage, should be accorded some measure of

emancipation therefrom. And thereby we--White, Black, Mulatto, and all

other inhabitants and tax-payers--shall be able to protect ourselves

against the self-seeking and bold indifference to our interests which

seem to be the most cherished expression of our rulers' official

existence. It may be possible (for he has attempted it), that our new

instructor in Colonial ethics and politics, under the impulsion of

skin-superiority, and also of confidence in the probable success of

experiments successfully tried fifty years before, does really believe

in the sensibleness of separating COLOURS, and representing the wearers

of them as being generally antagonistic to one another in Her Majesty's

West Indian Dominions. How is it then, we may be permitted to ask Mr.

Froude, that no complaint of the sort formulated by him as against the

Blacks has ever been put [149] forward by the thousands of Englishmen,

Scotchmen, Irishmen, and other Europeans who are permanent inhabitants,

proprietors, and tax-payers of these Colonies? The reason is that

Anglo-West Indianism, or rather Colonialism, is the creed of a few

residents sharply divisible into two classes in the West Indies.

Labouring conjointly under race-madness, the first believes that, as

being of the Anglo-Saxon race, they have a right to crow and dominate

in whatever land they chance to find themselves, though in their own

country they or their forefathers had had to be very dumb dogs indeed.

The Colonial Office has for a long time been responsible for the

presence in superior posts of highly salaried gentry of this category,

who have delighted in showing themselves off as the unquestionable

masters of those who supply them with the pay that gives them the

livelihood and position they so ungratefully requite. These fortunate

folk, Mr. Froude avers, are likely to leave our shores in a huff,

bearing off with them the civilizing influences which their presence so

surely guarantees. Go tell to the marines that the seed of Israel

flourishing in the borders of [150] Misraim will abandon their

flourishing district of Goshen through sensitiveness on account of the

idolatry of the devotees of Isis and Osiris!

The second and less placable class of "Englishmen in the West Indies,"

whose final departure our author would have us to believe would

complete the catastrophe to progress in the British Antilles, is very

impalpable indeed. We cannot feel them. We have failed to even see

them. True, Mr. Froude scouts on their behalf the bare notion of their

condescending to meet, on anything like equality, us, whom he and they

pretend (rather anachronistically, at least) to have been their former

slaves, or servants. But where, in the name of Heaven, where are these

sortis de la cuisse de Jupiter, Mr. Froude? If they are invisible,

mourning in impenetrable seclusion over the impossibility of having, as

their fathers had before them, the luxury of living at the Negroes'

expense, shall we Negroes who are in the sunshine of heaven, prepared

to work and win our way, be anywise troubled in our Jubilee by the

drivelling ineptitude which insanely reminds us of the miseries of

those who went before us? We have thus arrived at the cardinal, [151]

essential misrepresentation, out of scores which compose "The Bow of

Ulysses," and upon which its phrases mainly hinge. Semper

eadem--"Always the same"--has been the proud motto of the mightiest

hierarchy that has controlled human action and shaped the destinies of

mankind, no less in material than in ghostly concerns. Yet is a vast

and very beneficial change, due to the imperious spirit of the times,

manifest in the Roman Church. No longer do the stake, the sword, and

the dismal horrors of the interdict figure as instruments for assuring

conformity and submission to her dogmas. She is now content to rest

her claims on herbeneficence in the past, as attested by noble and

imperishable memorials of her solicitude for the poor and the ignorant,

and in proclaiming the gospel without those ghastly coercives to its

acceptance. Surely such a change, however unpalatable to those who

have been compelled to make it, is most welcome to the outside world at

large. "Always the same" is also, or should be, the device of the

discredited herd whose spokesman Mr. Froude is so proud to be. In

nothing has their historical character, as shown in the published

literature of their [152] cause up to 1838, exhibited any sign of

amelioration. It cannot be affected by the spirit and the lessons of

the times. Mendacity and a sort of judicial blindness seem to be the

two most salient characteristics by which are to be distinguished these

implacable foes and would-be robbers of human rights and liberty. But,

gracious heavens! what can tempt mortals to incur this weight of

infamy? Wealth and Power? To be (very improbably) a Croesus or (still

more improbably) a Bonaparte, and to perish at the conventional age,

and of vulgar disease, like both? Turpitudes on the part of sane men,

involving the sacrifice of the priceless attributes of humanity, can be

rendered intelligible by the supreme temporal gains above indicated,

but only if exemption from the common lot of mankind--in the shape of

care, disease, and death--were accompaniments of those prizes.

In favour of slavery, which has for so many centuries desolated the

African family and blighted its every chance of indigenous progress--of

slavery whose abolition our author so ostentatiously regrets--only one

solitary permanent result, extending in every case over [153] a natural

human life, has been paraded by him as a respectable justification. At

page 246, speaking of Negroes met by him during a stroll which he took

at Mandeville, Jamaica, he tells us:--

"The people had black faces; but even they had shaped their manners in

the old English models. The men touched their hats respectfully (as

they eminently did not in Kingston and its environs). The women smiled

and curtsied, and the children looked shy when one spoke to them. The

name of slavery is a horror to us; but there must have been something

human and kindly about it, too, when it left upon the character the

marks of courtesy and good breeding"!

Alas for Africa and the sufferings of her desolated millions, in view

of so light-hearted an assessment as this! Only think of the ages of

outrage, misery, and slaughter--of the countless hecatombs that Mammon

is hereby absolved from having directly exacted, since the sufficing

expiatory outcome of it all has been only "marks of courtesy and good

breeding"! Marks that are displayed, forsooth, by the survivors of the

ghastly experiences or by [154] their descendants! And yet, granting

the appreciable ethical value of the hat-touching, the smirking and

curtseyings of those Blacks to persons whom they had no reason to

suspect of unfriendliness, or whose white face they may in the white

man's country have greeted with a civility perhaps only prudential, we

fail to discover the necessity of the dreadful agency we have adverted

to, for securing the results on manners which are so warmly commended.

African explorers, from Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley, have all

borne sufficient testimony to the world regarding the natural

friendliness of the Negro in his ancestral home, when not under the

influence of suspicion, anger, or dread.

It behoves us to repeat (for our detractor is a persistent repeater)

that the cardinal dodge by which Mr. Froude and his few adherents

expect to succeed in obtaining the reversal of the progress of the

coloured population is by misrepresenting the elements, and their real

attitude towards one another, of the sections composing the British

West Indian communities. Everybody knows full well that Englishmen,

Scotchmen, and Irishmen (who are not officials), as [155] well as

Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, and other nationalities, work

in unbroken harmony and, more or less, prosper in these Islands. These

are no cherishers of any vain hankering after a state of things in

which men felt not the infamy of living not only on the unpaid labour,

but at the expense of the sufferings, the blood, and even the life of

their fellow-men. These men, honourable by instinct and of independent

spirit, depend on their own resources for self-advancement in the

world--on their capital either of money in their pockets or of

serviceable brains in their heads, energy in their limbs, and on these

alone, either singly or more or less in combination. These reputable

specimens of manhood have created homes dear to them in these favoured

climes; and they, at any rate, being on the very best terms with all

sections of the community in which their lot is cast, have a common

cause as fellow-sufferers under the régime of Mr. Froude's official

"birds of passage." The agitation in Trinidad tells its own tale.

There is not a single black man--though there should have been

many--among the leaders of the movement for Reform. Nevertheless the

honourable [156] and truthful author of "The English in the West

Indies," in order to invent a plausible pretext for his sinister

labours of love on behalf of the poor pro-slavery survivals, and

despite his knowledge that sturdy Britons are at the head of the

agitation, coolly tells the world that it is a struggle to secure

"negro domination."

The further allegation of our author respecting the black man is

curious and, of course, dismally prophetic. As the reader may perhaps

recollect, it is to the effect that granting political power to the

Negroes as a body, equal in scope "to that claimed by Us" (i.e., Mr.

Froude and his friends), would certainly result in the use of these

powers by the Negroes to their own injury. And wherefore? If Mr.

Froude professes to believe--what is a fact--that there is "no original

or congenital difference of capacity" between the white and the African

races, where is the consistency of his urging a contention which

implies inferiority in natural shrewdness, as regards their own

affairs, on the part of black men? Does this blower of the two

extremes of temperature in the same breath pretend that the average

British voter is better informed, can see more clearly what is for his

own advantage, [157] is better able to assess the relative merits of

persons to be entrusted with the spending of his taxes, and the general

management of his interests? If Mr. Froude means all this, he is at

issue not only with his own specific declaration to the contrary, but

with facts of overwhelming weight and number showing precisely the

reverse. We have personally had frequent opportunities of coming into

contact, both in and out of England, with natives of Great Britain, not

of the agricultural order alone, but very often of the artisan class,

whose ignorance of the commonest matters was as dense as it was

discreditable to the land of their birth and breeding. Are these

people included (on account of having his favourite sine quâ non of a

fair skin) in the US of this apostle of skin-worship, in the

indefeasible right to political power which is denied to Blacks by

reason, or rather non-reason, of their complexion?

The fact is, that, judging by his own sentiments and those of his

Anglo-West Indian friends, Mr. Froude calculated on producing an

impression in favour of their discreditable views by purposely keeping

out of sight the numerous European and other sufferers under the yoke

[158] which he sneers at seeing described by its proper appellation of

"a degrading tyranny." The prescriptive unfavourable forecast of our

author respecting political power in the hands of the Blacks may, in

our opinion, be hailed as a warrant for its bestowal by those in whose

power that bestowal may be. As a pro-slavery prophecy, equally dismal

and equally confident with the hundreds that preceded it, this new

vaticination may safely be left to be practically dealt with by the

Race, victimized and maligned, whose real genius and character are

purposely belied by those who expect to be gainers by the process.

Invested with political power, the Negroes, Mr. Froude goes on to

assure his readers, "will slide back into their old condition, and the

chance will be gone of lifting them to the level to which we have no

right to say they are incapable of rising." How touchingly

sympathetic! How transcendently liberal and righteous! But, to speak

the truth, is not this solicitude of our cynical defamer on our behalf,

after all, a useless waste of emotion on his part? Timeo Danaos et

dona ferentes.+ The tears of the crocodile are most copious in close

view of the banquet on his prey. This [159] reiterated twaddle of Mr.

Froude, in futile and unseasonable echo of the congenial predictions of

his predecessors in the same line, might be left to receive not only

the answer of his own book to the selfsame talk of the slavers fifty

years ago, but also that of the accumulated refutations which America

has furnished for the last twenty-five years as to the retrograde

tendency so falsely imputed. But, taking it as a serious contention,

we find that it involves a suggestion that the according of electoral

votes to citizens of a certain complexion would, per se and ipso facto,

produce a revulsion and collapse of the entire prevailing organization

and order of a civilized community.

What talismanic virtue this prophet of evil attributes to a vote in the

hand of a Negro out of Barbados, where for years the black man's vote

has been operating, harmlessly enough, Heaven knows, we cannot imagine.

At all events, as sliding back on the part of a community is a matter

which would require some appreciable time, however brief, let us hope

that the authorities charged "to see that the state receive no

detriment" would be vigilant enough and in time to arrest the evil and

vindicate [160] the efficiency of the civilized methods of

self-preservation.

Our author concludes by another reference to Chief Justice Reeves: "Let

British authority die away, and the average black nature, such as it

now is, be left free to assert itself, there will be no more negroes

like him in Barbadoes or anywhere." How the dying away of British

authority in a British Colony is to come to pass, Mr. Froude does not

condescend here explicitly to state. But we are left free to infer

from the whole drift of "The English in the West Indies" that it will

come through the exodus en masse said to be threatened by his

"Anglo-West Indians." Mr. Froude sympathetically justifies the disgust

and exasperation of these reputable folk at the presence and progress

of the race for whose freedom and ultimate elevation Britain was so

lavish of the wealth of her noblest intellects, besides paying the

prodigious money-ransom of TWENTY MILLION pounds sterling. With regard

to our author's talk about "the average black nature, such as it now

exists, being left free to assert itself," and the dire consequences

therefrom to result, we can only feel pity at the desperate straits to

[161] which, in his search for a pretext for gratuitous slander, a man

of our author's capacity has been so ignominiously reduced. All we can

say to him with reference to this portion of his violent suppositions

is that "the average black nature, such as it now exists," should NOT,

in a civilized community, be left free to assert itself, any more than

the average white, the average brown, the average red, or indeed any

average colour of human nature whatsoever. As self-defence is the

first law of nature, it has followed that every condition of organized

society, however simple or primitive, is furnished with some recognized

means of self-protection against the free assertion of itself by the

average nature of any of its members.

Of course, if things should ever turn out according to Mr. Froude's

desperate hypothesis, it may also happen that there will be no more

Negroes like Mr. justice Reeves in Barbados. But the addition of the

words "or anywhere" to the above statement is just another of those

suppressions of the truth which, absolutely futile though they are,

constitute the only means by which the policy he writes to promote can

possibly be made to [162] appear even tolerable. The assertion of our

author, therefore, standing as it actually does, embracing the whole

world, is nothing less than an audacious absurdity, for there stand the

United States, the French and Spanish islands--not to speak of the

Central and South American Republics, Mexico, and Brazil--all thronged

with black, mixed blood, and even half-breed high officials, staring

him and the whole world in the face.

The above noted suppression of the truth to the detriment of the

obnoxious population recalls a passage wherein the suggestion of what

is not the truth has been resorted to for the same purpose. At page

123 we read: "The disproportion of the two races--always dangerously

large--has increased with ever-gathering velocity since the

emancipation. It is now beyond control on the old lines." The use of

the expletive "dangerously," as suggestive of the truculence of the

people to whom it refers, is critically allowable in view of the main

intention of the author. But what shall we say of the suggestion

contained in the very next sentence, which we have italicized? We are

required by it to understand that in slavery-time the [163] planters

had some organized method, rendered impracticable by the Emancipation,

of checking, for their own personal safety, the growth of the coloured

population. If we, in deference to the superior mental capacity of our

author, admit that self-interest was no irresistible motive for

promoting the growth of the human "property" on which their prosperity

depended, we are yet at liberty to ask what was the nature of the "old

lines" followed for controlling the increase under discussion. Was it

suffocation of the babes by means of sulphur fumes, the use of

beetle-paste, or exposure on the banks of the Caribbean rivers? In the

later case History evidently lost a chance of self-repetition in the

person of some leader like Moses, the Hebra-Egyptian Spartacus, arising

to avenge and deliver his people.

We now shall note how he proceeds to descant on slavery

itself:--"Slavery," says he, "was a survival from a social order which

had passed away, and slavery could not be continued. IT DOES NOT

FOLLOW THAT per se IT WAS A CRIME. The negroes who were sold to the

dealers in the factories were most of them either slaves already to

worse masters or were servi, servants [164] in the old meaning of the

word, or else criminals, servati or reserved from death. They would

otherwise have been killed, and since the slave trade has been

abolished, are again killed in the too celebrated customs...."

Slavery, as Mr. Froude and the rest of us are bound to discuss it at

present, is by no means susceptible of the gloss which he has

endeavoured, in the above extract, to put on it. The British nation,

in 1834, had to confront and deal with the only species of slavery

which was then within the cognizance of public morals and practical

politics. Doubtless our author, learned and erudite as he is, would

like to transport us to those patriarchal ages when, under theocratic

decrees, the chosen people were authorized to purchase (not to kidnap)

slaves, and keep them as an everlasting inheritance in their posterity.

The slaves so purchased, we know, became members of the families to

which their lot was attached, and were hedged in from cruel usage by

distinct and salutary regulations. This is the only species of slavery

which--with the addition of the old Germanic self-enslavements and the

generally prevailing ancient custom of pledging one's personal services

[165] in liquidation of indebtedness--can be covered by the singular

verdict of noncriminality which our author has pronounced. He, of

course, knows much better than we do what the condition of slaves was

in Greece as well as in Rome. He knows, too, that the "wild and guilty

phantasy that man could hold property in man," lost nothing of its

guilt or its wildness with the lapse of time and the changes of

circumstances which overtook and affected those reciprocal relations.

Every possibility of deterioration, every circumstance wherein man's

fallen nature could revel in its worst inspirations, reached

culmination at the period when the interference of the world, decreed

by Providence, was rendered imperative by the sufferings of the

bondsmen. It is this crisis of the history of human enslavement that

Mr. Froude must talk about, if he wishes to talk to any purpose on the

subject at all. His scoffs at British "virtuous benevolence," and his

imputation of ingratitude to the Negro in respect of that self-same

benevolence, do not refer to any theocratic, self-contracted, abstract,

or idyllic condition of servitude. They pin his meaning down [166] to

that particular phase when slavery had become not only "the sum," but

the very quintessence, "of all human villainies."

At its then phase, slavery had culminated into being a menace,

portentous and far encroaching, to not only the moral life but the very

civilization of the higher types of the human family, so debasing and

blighting were its effects on those who came into even tolerating

contact with its details. The indescribable atrocities practised on

the slaves, the deplorable sapping of even respectable principles in

owners of both sexes--all these stood forth in their ineffable

hideousness before the uncorrupted gaze of the moral heroes, sons of

Britain and America, and also of other countries, who, buckling on the

armour of civilization and right, fought for the vindication of them

both, through every stern vicissitude, and won the first grand,

ever-memorable victory of 1838, whereof we so recently celebrated the

welcome Jubilee! Oh! it was a combat of archangels against the legions

that Mammon had banded together and incited to the conflict. But

though it was Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and the rest [167] of that

illustrious host of cultured, lofty-souled, just, merciful, and

beneficent men, who were thus the saviours, as well as the servants, of

society, yet have we seen it possible for an Englishman of to-day to

mouth against their memory the ineptitudes of their long-vanquished

foes, and to flout the consecrated dead in their graves, as the

Boeotian did the living Pericles in the market-place of Athens!

Why waste words and time on this defamer of his own countrymen, who, on

account of the material gain and the questionable martial glory of the

conquest, eulogizes Warren Hastings, the viceregal plunderer of India,

whilst, in the same breath, he denounces Edmund Burke for upholding the

immutable principles of right and justice! These principles once, and

indubitably now, so precious in their fullest integrity to the normal

British conscience, must henceforth, say Mr. Froude and his

fellow-colonialists, be scored off the moral code of Britain, since

they "do not pay" in tangible pelf, in self-aggrandisement, or in

dazzling prestige.

The statement that many negroes who were sold to the dealers in the

factories were "slaves [168] already to worse masters" is, in the face

of facts which could not possibly have been unknown to him, a piece of

very daring assertion. But this should excite no wonder, considering

that precise and scrupulous accuracy would be fatal to the

discreditable cause to which he so shamelessly proclaims his adhesion.

As being familiar since early childhood with members of almost every

tribe of Africans (mainly from or arriving by way of the West Coast)

who were brought to our West Indies, we are in a position to contradict

the above assertion of Mr. Froude's, its unfaltering confidence

notwithstanding. We have had the Madingoes, Foulahs, Houssas, Calvers,

Gallahs, Karamenties, Yorubas, Aradas, Cangas, Kroos, Timnehs, Veis,

Eboes, Mokoes, Bibis, and Congoes, as the most numerous and important

of the tribal contribution of Africa to the population of these

Colonies. Now, from what we have intimately learned of these people

(excepting the Congoes, who always appeared to us an inferior tribe to

all the others), we unhesitatingly deny that even three in ten of the

whole number were ever slaves in their own country, in the sense of

having been born under any organized [169] system of servitude. The

authentic records relating to the enslavement of Africans, as a regular

systematized traffic, do not date further back than five centuries ago.

It is true that a great portion of ancient literature and many

monuments bear distinct evidence, all the more impressive because

frequently only casual, that, from the earliest ages, the Africans had

shared, in common with other less civilized peoples, the doom of having

to furnish the menial and servile contingents of the more favoured

sections of the human family. Now, dating from, say, five hundred

years ago, which was long indeed after the disappearance of the old

leading empires of the world, we have (save and except in the case of

Arab incursionists into the Eastern and Northern coasts) no reliable

authority for saying, or even for supposing, that the tribes of the

African interior suffered from the molestations of professional

man-hunters.

It was the organization of the West Coast slave traffic towards the

close of the sixteenth century, and the extermination of the Caribbean

aborigines by Spain, soon after Columbus had discovered the Western

Continent, which [170] gave cohesion, system, impetus, and

aggressiveness to the trade in African flesh and blood. Then the

factory dealers did not wait at their seaboard mart, as our author

would have us suppose, for the human merchandize to be brought down to

them. The auri sacra fames, the accursed craving for gain, was too

imperious for that. From the Atlantic border to as far inland as their

emissaries could penetrate, their bribes, in every species of

exchangeable commodities, were scattered among the rapacious chiefs on

the river banks; while these latter, incited as well by native ferocity

as by lust of gain, rushed forth to "make war" on their neighbours, and

to kidnap, for sale to the white purchaser, every man, woman, and child

they could capture amidst the nocturnal flames, confusion, tumult, and

terror resulting from their unexpected irruption. That the poor people

thus captured and sold into foreign on age were under worse masters

than those under whom they, on being actually bought and becoming

slaves, were doomed to experience all the atrocities that have thrilled

with horror the conscience of the civilized Christian world, is a

statement of worse than [171] childish absurdity. Every one, except

Mr. Froude and his fellow-apologists for slavery, knows that the

cruelty of savage potentates is summary, uncalculating, and, therefore,

merciful in its ebullitions. A head whisked off, brains dashed out, or

some other short form of savage dispatch, is the preferential method of

destruction. With our author's better masters, there was the long,

dreary vicissitude, beginning from the horrors of the capture, and

ending perhaps years upon years after, in some bush or under the lash

of the driver. The intermediate stages of the starvation life of

hunger, chains, and hideous exposure at the barancoon, the stowing away

like herrings on board the noisome ship, the suffocation, the

deck-sores wrought into the body by the attrition of the bonier parts

of the system against the unyielding wood--all these, says Mr. Froude,

were more tolerable than the swift doing away with life under an

African master! Under such, at all events, the care and comfort

suitable to age were strictly provided for, and cheered the advanced

years of the faithful bondsman.

After a good deal of talk, having the same logical value, our author,

in his enthusiasm for [172] slavery, delivers himself thus: "For

myself, I would rather be the slave of a Shakespeare or a Burghley,

than the slave of a majority in the House of Commons, or the slave of

my own folly." Of the four above specified alternatives of

enslavement, it is to be regretted that temperament, or what is more

likely, perhaps, self-interest, has driven him to accept the fourth, or

the latter of the two deprecated yokes, his book being an irrefutable

testimony to the fact. For, most assuredly, it has not been at the

prompting of wisdom that a learned man of unquestionably brilliant

talents and some measure of accorded fame could have prostituted those

talents and tarnished that fame by condescending to be the literary

spokesman of the set for whose miserable benefit he recommends the

statesmen of his country to perjure and compromise themselves,

regardless of inevitable consequences, which the value of the sectional

satisfaction to be thereby given would but very poorly compensate.

Possibly a House of Commons majority, whom this dermatophilist

evidently rates far lower than his "Anglo-West Indians," might, if he

were their Slave, have protected their own self- [173] respect by

restraining him from vicariously scandalizing them by his effusions.

After this curious boast about his preferences as a hypothetic

bondsman, Mr. Froude proceeds gravely to inform his readers that "there

may be authority yet not slavery; a soldier is not a slave, a wife is

not a slave..." and he continues, with a view of utilizing these

platitudes against the obnoxious Negro, by telling us that persons

sustaining the above specified and similar relations "may not live by

their own wills, or emancipate themselves at their own pleasure from

positions in which nature has placed them, or into which they have

themselves voluntarily entered. The negroes of the West Indies are

children, and not yet disobedient children.... If you enforce

self-government upon them when they are not asking for it, you may ...

wilfully drive them back into the condition of their ancestors, from

which the slave-trade was the beginning of their emancipation."! The

words which we have signalized by italics in the above extract could

have been conceived only by a bigot--such an atrocious sentiment being

possible only as the product of mind or morals [174] wrenched

hopelessly out of normal action. All the remainder of this hashing up

of pointless commonplaces has for its double object a suggestio falsi

against us Negroes as a body, and a diverting of attention, as we have

proved before, from the numerous British claimants of Reform, whose

personality Mr. Froude and his friends would keep out of view, provided

their crafty policy has the result of effectually repressing the

hitherto irrepressible, and, as such, to the "Anglo-West Indian," truly

detestable Negro.

NOTES

158. +Translation: "I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts."

BOOK III: WEST INDIAN CONFEDERATION

[175] In heedless formulation of his reasons, if such they should be

termed, for urging tooth and nail the non-according of reform to the

Crown-governed Colonies, our author puts forth this dogmatic

deliverance (p. 123):--

"A West Indian self-governing dominion is possible only with a full

Negro vote. If the whites are to combine, so will the blacks. It will

be a rule by the blacks and for the blacks."

That a constitution for any of our diversely populated Colonies which

may be fit for it is possible only with "a full Negro vote" (to the

extent within the competence of such voting), goes without saying, as

must be the case with every section of the Queen's subjects eligible

for the franchise. The duly qualified Spaniard, [176] Coolie,

Portuguese, or man of any other non-British race, will each thus have a

vote, the same as every Englishman or any other Briton. Why, then,

should the vote of the Negro be so especially a bugbear? It is because

the Negro is the game which our political sportsman is in full chase

of, and determined to hunt down at any cost. Granted, however, for the

sake of argument, that black voters should preponderate at any

election, what then? We are gravely told by this latter-day Balaam

that "If the whites are to combine, so will the blacks," but he does

not say for what purpose.