He was spoilt as a black and could not be made into a white, and this I found afterwards was the invariable and dangerous consequence whenever a superior negro contrived to raise himself. He might do well enough himself, but his family feel their blood as degradation. His [35] children will not marry among their own people, and not only will no white girl marry a negro, but hardly any dowry can be large enough to tempt a West Indian white to make a wife of a black lady. This is one of the most sinister features in the present state of social life there."

We may safely assume that the playing of "the officers on board and some of the ladies" with the boy, "as they would play with a monkey," is evidently a suggestion of Mr. Froude's own soul, as well as the resemblance to the simian tribe which he makes out from the frolics of the lad. Verily, it requires an eye rendered more than microscopic by prejudice to discern the difference between the gambols of juveniles of any colour under similar conditions. It is true that it might just be the difference between the friskings of white lambs and the friskings of lambs that are not white. That any black pupil should be taught to despise his own people through being lifted above them by education, seems a reckless statement, and far from patriotic withal; inasmuch as the education referred to here was European, and the place from which it was obtained presumably England. At all events, [36] the difference among educated black men in deportment towards their unenlightened fellow-blacks, can be proved to have nothing of that cynicism which often marks the bearing of Englishmen in an analogous case with regard to their less favoured countrymen. The statement that a black person can be "spoilt" for such by education, whilst he cannot be made white, is one of the silly conceits which the worship of the skin engenders in ill-conditioned minds. No sympathy should be wasted on the negro sufferer from mortification at not being able to "change his skin." The Ethiopian of whatever shade of colour who is not satisfied with being such was never intended to be more than a mere living figure. Mr. Froude further confidently states that whilst a superior Negro "might do well himself," yet "his family feel their blood as a degradation." If there be some who so feel, they are indeed very much to be pitied; but their sentiments are not entitled to the serious importance with which our critic has invested them. But is it at all conceivable that a people whose sanity has never in any way been questioned would strain every nerve to secure for their offspring a [37] distinction the consequence of which to themselves would be a feeling of their own abasement? The poor Irish peasant who toils and starves to secure for his eldest son admission into the Catholic priesthood, has a far other feeling than one of humiliation when contemplating that son eventually as the spiritual director of a congregation and parish. Similarly, the laudable ambition which, in the case of a humble Scotch matron, is expressed in the wish and exertion to see her Jamie or Geordie "wag his pow in the pou'pit," produces, when realized, salutary effects in the whole family connection. These effects, which Mr. Froude would doubtless allow and commend in their case, he finds it creditable to ignore the very possibility of in the experience of people whose cuticle is not white. It is, however, but bare justice to say that, as Negroes are by no means deficient in self-love and the tenderness of natural affection, such gratifying fulfilment of a family's hopes exerts an elevating and, in many cases, an ennobling influence on every one connected with the fortunate household. Nor, from the eminently sympathetic nature of the African race, are the near friends of a family [38] unbenefited in a similar way. This is true, and distinctively human; but, naturally, no apologist of Negro depreciation would admit the reasonableness of applying to the affairs of Negroes the principles of common equity, or even of common sense. To sum up practically our argument on this head, we shall suppose West Indians to be called upon to imagine that the less distinguished relations respectively of, say, the late Solicitor-General of Trinidad and the present Chief Justice of Barbados could be otherwise than legitimately elated at the conspicuous position won by a member of their own household.

Mr. Froude further ventures to declare, in this connection, that the children of educated coloured folk "will not marry among their own people." Will he tell us, then, whom the daughters marry, or if they ever do marry at all, since he asserts, with regard to West Indian Whites, that "hardly any dowry can be large enough to tempt them to make a wife of a black lady"? Our author evidently does not feel or care that the suggestion he here induces is a hideous slander against a large body of respectable people of whose affairs he is absolutely ignorant. Full [39] of the "go" imparted to his talk by a consciousness of absolute license with regard to Negroes, our dignified narrator makes the parenthetical assertion that no white girl (in the West Indies) will "marry a Negro." But has he been informed that cases upon cases have occurred in those Colonies, and in very high "Anglo-West Indian" families too, where the social degradation of being married to Negroes has been avoided by the alternative of forming base private connections even with menials of that race?

The marrying of a black wife, on the other hand, by a West Indian White was an event of frequent occurrence at a period in regard to which our historian seems to be culpably uninformed. In slavery days, when all planters, black and white alike, were fused in a common solidarity of interests, the skin-distinction which Mr. Froude so strenuously advocates, and would fain risk so much to promote, did not, so far as matrimony was concerned, exist in the degree that it now does. Self-interest often dictated such unions, especially on the part of in-coming Whites desiring to strengthen their position and to increase their influence in [40] the land of their adoption by means of advantageous Creole marriages. Love, too, sheer uncalculating love, impelled not a few Whites to enter the hymeneal state with the dusky captivators of their affections. When rich, the white planter not seldom paid for such gratification of his laudable impulse by accepting exclusion from "Society"—and when poor, he incurred almost invariably his dismissal from employment. Of course, in all cases of the sort the dispensers of such penalties were actuated by high motives which, nevertheless, did not stand in the way of their meeting, in the households of the persons thus obnoxious to punishment, the same or even a lower class of Ethiopic damsels, under the title of "housekeeper," on whom they lavished a very plethora of caresses. Perhaps it may be wrong so to hint it, but, judging from indications in his own book, our author himself would have been liable in those days to enthralment by the piquant charms that proved irresistible to so many of his brother-Europeans. It is almost superfluous to repeat that the skin-discriminating policy induced as regards the coloured subjects of the Queen since the [41] abolition of slavery did not, and could not, operate when coloured and white stood on the same high level as slave-owners and ruling potentates in the Colonies. Of course, when the administrative power passed entirely into the hands of British officials, their colonial compatriots coalesced with them, and found no loss in being in the good books of the dominant personages.

In conclusion of our remarks upon the above extracts, it may be stated that the blending of the races is not a burning question. "It can keep," as Mr. Bright wittily said with regard to a subject of similar urgency. Time and Nature might safely be left uninterfered with to work out whatever social development of this kind is in store for the world and its inhabitants.

BOOK I: BARBADOS