FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90  
91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   >>   >|  
e West Indies were rarely inhuman. Lord Rodney says: 'I have been often in all the West India Islands, and I have often made my observations on the treatment of the negro slaves, and can aver that I never knew the least cruelty inflicted on them, but that in general they lived better than the honest day-labouring man in England, without doing a fourth part of his work in a day, and I am fully convinced that the negroes in our islands are better provided for and live better than when in Guinea.' Rodney, it is true, was a man of facts and was defective in sentiment. Let us suppose him wrong, let us believe the worst horrors of the slave trade or slave usage as fluent tongue of missionary or demagogue has described them, yet nevertheless, when we consider what the lot of common humanity has been and is, we shall be dishonest if we deny that the balance has been more than redressed; and the negroes who were taken away out of Africa, as compared with those who were left at home, were as the 'elect to salvation,' who after a brief purgatory are secured an eternity of blessedness. The one condition is the maintenance of the authority of the English crown. The whites of the islands cannot equitably rule them. They have not shaken off the old traditions. If, for the sake of theory or to shirk responsibility, we force them to govern themselves, the state of Hayti stands as a ghastly example of the condition into which they will then inevitably fall. If we persist, we shall be sinning against light--the clearest light that was ever given in such affairs. The most hardened believers in the regenerating effects of political liberty cannot be completely blind to the ruin which the infliction of it would necessarily bring upon the race for whose interests they pretend particularly to care. The Pitch Lake I resisted all exhortations to visit, but the days in the forest were delightful--pre-eminently a day which we spent at the 'Blue Basin,' a pool scooped out in the course of ages by a river falling through a mountain gorge; blue, not from any colour in the water, which is purely transparent, but from a peculiar effect of sky reflection through an opening in the overhanging trees. As it was far off, we had to start early and encounter the noonday heat. We had to close the curtains of the carriage to escape the sun, and in losing the sun we shut out the wind. All was well, however, when we turned into the hills. Thenceforward the r
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90  
91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
negroes
 

islands

 

condition

 

Rodney

 

necessarily

 
delightful
 
completely
 

infliction

 
interests
 

resisted


forest

 

pretend

 
liberty
 

exhortations

 
believers
 

inevitably

 
persist
 
sinning
 

stands

 

ghastly


inhuman

 

hardened

 

regenerating

 

effects

 

affairs

 

clearest

 

political

 

noonday

 

curtains

 

encounter


carriage

 
escape
 

turned

 

Thenceforward

 

losing

 
overhanging
 

opening

 
falling
 

rarely

 
scooped

mountain
 

peculiar

 
transparent
 
effect
 

reflection

 

purely

 
Indies
 

colour

 
eminently
 

horrors