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 ou