ourselves from the reproach of slaveholding. At any rate, the
tendencies now in operation are loosening the hold which we possess on
the islands, and the longer they last the looser that hold will become.
French influence is in no danger of dying out in Martinique and
Guadaloupe. The Spanish race is not dying in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
England will soon be no more than a name in Barbadoes and the Antilles.
Having acquitted our conscience by emancipation, we have left our West
Indian interest to sink or swim. Our principle has been to leave each
part of our empire (except the East Indies) to take care of itself: we
give the various inhabitants liberty, and what we understand by fair
play; that we have any further moral responsibilities towards them we do
not imagine, even in our dreams, when they have ceased to be of
commercial importance to us; and we assume that the honour of being
British subjects will suffice to secure their allegiance. It will not
suffice, as we shall eventually discover. We have decided that if the
West Indies are to become again prosperous they must recover by their
own energy. Our other colonies can do without help; why not they? We
ought to remember that they are not like the other colonies. We occupied
them at a time when slavery was considered a lawful institution,
profitable to ourselves and useful to the souls of the negroes, who were
brought by it within reach of salvation.[9] We became ourselves the
chief slave dealers in the world. We peopled our islands with a
population of blacks more dense by far in proportion to the whites than
France or Spain ever ventured to do. We did not recognise, as the French
and Spaniards did, that if our western colonies were permanently to
belong to us, we must occupy them ourselves. We thought only of the
immediate profit which was to be gathered out of the slave gangs; and
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 scanty whites are told that they
must work out their own salvation on equal terms with their old
servants. The relation is an impossible one. The independent energy
which we may fairly look for in Australia and New Zealand is not to be
looked for in Jamaica and Barbadoes; and the problem must have a new
solution.

Confederation is to be the remedy, we are told. Let the islands be
combined under a constitution. The w