trageous to the
conscience of modern civilization.

It is patent, then, that the matters which Mr. Froude has sought to
force up to the dignity of genetic rivalship, has nothing of that
importance about it. His US, between whom and the Negro subjects of
Great Britain the gulf of colour lies, comprises, as he himself owns,
an outnumbered and, as we hope to prove later on, a not over-creditable
little clique of Anglo-Saxon lineage. The real US who have started
ahead of the Negroes, "through the training and discipline of
centuries," are assuredly not anything like "represented" by the few
pretentious incapables who, instead of conquering predominance, as they
who deserve it always do, like men, are whimpering like babies after
dearly coveted but utterly unattainable enjoyments--to be had at the
expense of the interests of the Negroes whom they, rather amusingly,
affect to despise. When Mr. Froude shall have become able to present
for the world's contemplation a question respecting which the
Anglo-Saxon family, in its grand world-wide predominance, and the
African family, in its yet feeble, albeit promising, incipience of
self-adjustment, shall [129] actually be competitors, then, and only
then, will it be time to accept the outlook as serious. But when, as
in the present case, he invokes the whole prestige of the Anglo-Saxon
race in favour of the untenable pretensions of a few blases of that
race, and that to the social and political detriment of tens of
thousands of black fellow-subjects, it is high time that the common
sense of civilization should laugh him out of court. The US who are
flourishing, or pining, as the case may be, in the British West
Indies--by favour of the Colonial Office on the former hypothesis, or,
on the second, through the misdirection of their own faculties--do not,
and, in the very nature of things, cannot in any race take the lead of
any set of men endowed with virile attributes, the conditions of the
contest being on all sides identical.

Pass we onward to extract and comment on other passages in this very
engaging section of Mr. Froude's book. On the same page (125) he
says:--

"The African Blacks have been free enough for thousands, perhaps for
ten thousands of years, and it has been the absence of restraint which
has prevented them from becoming civilized."

[130] All this, perhaps, is quite true, and, in the absence of positive
evidence to the contrary of our author's dogmatic as