egard to the Negro question. We have already pointed
out the futility of this proceeding on our author's part, and suggested
how damaging it might prove to the cause he is striving to uphold.
"Blacks of exceptional quality," like the two gentlemen he has
specially mentioned, "will avail themselves of opportunities to rise."
Most certainly they will, Mr. Froude--but, for the present, only in
America, where those opportunities are really free and open to all.
There no parasitical non-workers are to be found, eager to eat bread,
but in the sweat of other people's brows; no impecunious title-bearers;
no importunate bores, nor other similar characters whom the Government
there would regard it as their duty "to provide for"--by quartering
them on the revenues [137] of Colonial dependencies. But in the
British Crown--or rather "Anglo-West Indian"--governed Colonies, has it
ever been, can it ever be, thus ordered? Our author's description of
the exigencies that compel injustice to be done in order to requite, or
perhaps to secure, Parliamentary support, coupled with his account of
the bitter animus against the coloured race that rankles in the bosom
of his "Englishmen in the West Indies," sufficiently proves the utter
hypocrisy of his recommendation, that the freest opportunities should
be offered to Blacks of the said exceptional order. The very wording
of Mr. Froude's recommendation is disingenuous. It is one stone sped
at two birds, and which, most naturally, has missed them both.

Mr. Froude knew perfectly well that, twenty-five years before he wrote
his book, America had thrown open the way to public advancement to the
Blacks, as it had been previously free to Whites alone. His use of
"should be offered," instead of "are offered," betrays his
consciousness that, at the time he was writing, the offering of any
opportunities of the kind he suggests was a thing still to be desired
under British jurisdiction. The third objection [138] which we shall
take to Mr. Froude's bracketing of the cases of Mr. Fred Douglass and
of Judge Reeves together, is that, when closely examined, the two cases
can be distinctly seen to be not in any way parallel. The applause
which our author indirectly bids for on behalf of British Colonial
liberality in the instance of Mr. Reeves would be the grossest mockery,
if accorded in any sense other than we shall proceed to show. Fred
Douglass was born and bred a slave in one of the Southern Stat