n prosperity and accepted pretension, formidable
indeed to fight against and overcome. We shudder to think of the petty
cabals, the underbred indignities, direct and indirect, which the
present eminent Judge had to watch against, to brush aside, to smile
at, in course of his epic strides towards the highest local pinnacle of
his profession. But [145] with him, as Time has shown, it was all sure
and safe.

Providence had endowed him with the powers and temperament that break
down, when opportunity offers, every barrier to the progress of the
gifted and strong and brave. That opportunity, in his particular case,
offered itself in the Confederation crisis. Distracted and helpless
"Anglo-West Indians" thronged to him in imploring crowds, praying that
their beloved Charter should be saved by the exertion of his
incomparable abilities. Save and except Dr. Carrington, there was not
a single member of the dominant section in Barbados whom it would not
be absurd to name even as a near second to him whom all hailed as the
Champion of their Liberties. In the contest to be waged the victory
was not, as it never once has been, reserved to the SKIN or pedigree of
the combatants. The above two matters, which in the eyes of the ruling
"Bims" had, throughout long decades of undisturbed security, been
placed before and above all possible considerations, gravitated down to
their inherent insignificance when Intellect and Worth were destined to
fight out the issue. Mr. [146] Reeves, whose possession of the
essential qualifications was admittedly greater than that of every
colleague, stood, therefore, in unquestioned supremacy, lord of the
political situation, with the result above stated.

To what we have already pointed out regarding the absolute
impossibility of such an opportunity ever presenting itself in America
to Mr. Douglass, in a political sense, we may now add that, whereas, in
Barbados, for the intellectual equipment needed at the crisis, Mr.
Reeves stood quite alone, there could, in the bosom of the Union, even
in respect of the gifts in which Mr. Douglass was most brilliant, be no
"walking over the course" by him. It was in the country and time of
Bancroft, Irving, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Bryant, Motley, Henry
Clay, Dan Webster, and others of the laureled phalanx which has added
so great and imperishable a lustre to the literature of the English
tongue.

We proceed here another step, and take up a fresh deliv