not done, or suspect them,
indeed, of any purpose at all. They act from day to day under the
pressure of each exigency as it rises, and they choose the course which
is least directly inconvenient. But the result is to have created in the
Antilles and Jamaica so many fresh Irelands, and I believe that British
colonists the world over will feel together in these questions. They
will not approve; rather they will combine to condemn the betrayal of
their own fellow-countrymen. If England desires her colonies to rally
round her, she must deserve their affection and deserve their respect.
She will find neither one nor the other if she carelessly sacrifices her
own people in any part of the world to fear or convenience. The
magnetism which will bind them to her must be found in herself or
nowhere.

Perhaps nowhere! Perhaps if we look to the real origin of all that has
gone wrong with us, of the policy which has flung Ireland back into
anarchy, which has weakened our influence abroad, which has ruined the
oldest of our colonies, and has made the continuance under our flag of
the great communities of our countrymen who are forming new nations in
the Pacific a question of doubt and uncertainty, we shall find it in our
own distractions, in the form of government which is fast developing
into a civil war under the semblance of peace, where party is more than
country, and a victory at the hustings over a candidate of opposite
principles more glorious than a victory in the field over a foreign foe.
Society in republican Rome was so much interested in the faction fights
of Clodius and Milo that it could hear with apathy of the destruction of
Crassus and a Roman army. The senate would have sold Caesar to the Celtic
chiefs in Gaul, and the modern English enthusiast would disintegrate the
British Islands to purchase the Irish vote. Till we can rise into some
nobler sphere of thought and conduct we may lay aside the vision of a
confederated empire.

Oh, England, model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What might'st thou do that honour would thee do
Were all thy children kind and natural!

FOOTNOTES:

[17] I believe this to be the true meaning of [Greek: eummelies]. It is
usually rendered, 'armed with a stout spear.'

KELLY & CO., Printers, Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, W.C.; and
Kingston-on-Thames.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The English in the West Indies, by