, and even the life of
their fellow-men. These men, honourable by instinct and of independent
spirit, depend on their own resources for self-advancement in the
world--on their capital either of money in their pockets or of
serviceable brains in their heads, energy in their limbs, and on these
alone, either singly or more or less in combination. These reputable
specimens of manhood have created homes dear to them in these favoured
climes; and they, at any rate, being on the very best terms with all
sections of the community in which their lot is cast, have a common
cause as fellow-sufferers under the regime of Mr. Froude's official
"birds of passage." The agitation in Trinidad tells its own tale.
There is not a single black man--though there should have been
many--among the leaders of the movement for Reform. Nevertheless the
honourable [156] and truthful author of "The English in the West
Indies," in order to invent a plausible pretext for his sinister
labours of love on behalf of the poor pro-slavery survivals, and
despite his knowledge that sturdy Britons are at the head of the
agitation, coolly tells the world that it is a struggle to secure
"negro domination."

The further allegation of our author respecting the black man is
curious and, of course, dismally prophetic. As the reader may perhaps
recollect, it is to the effect that granting political power to the
Negroes as a body, equal in scope "to that claimed by Us" (i.e., Mr.
Froude and his friends), would certainly result in the use of these
powers by the Negroes to their own injury. And wherefore? If Mr.
Froude professes to believe--what is a fact--that there is "no original
or congenital difference of capacity" between the white and the African
races, where is the consistency of his urging a contention which
implies inferiority in natural shrewdness, as regards their own
affairs, on the part of black men? Does this blower of the two
extremes of temperature in the same breath pretend that the average
British voter is better informed, can see more clearly what is for his
own advantage, [157] is better able to assess the relative merits of
persons to be entrusted with the spending of his taxes, and the general
management of his interests? If Mr. Froude means all this, he is at
issue not only with his own specific declaration to the contrary, but
with facts of overwhelming weight and number showing precisely the
reverse. We have personally had frequent opp