mate according to intelligence and probity, and
not according to any accident of exterior physique. Every intelligent
black is as shrewd regarding his own interests as our author himself
would be regarding his in the following hypothetical case: Some fine
day, being a youth and a bachelor, he gets wedded, sets up an
establishment, and becomes the owner of a clipper yacht. For his own
service in the above circumstances we give him the credit to believe
that, on the persons specified below applying among others to him for
employment, as chamber-maid and house-servant, and also as hands for
the vessel, he would, in preference to any ordinarily recommended white
applicants, at once engage the two black servant-girls at President
Churchill's in Dominica, the droghermen there as able seamen, and as
cabin-boy the lad amongst them whose precocious marine skill he has so
warmly and justly extolled. It is not because all these persons are
black, but because of the soul-consciousness of the selector, that they
each (were they even blue) had a title to preferential consideration,
his experience and sense of fitness being [180] their most effectual
supporters. Similarly, the Negro voter would elect representatives
whom he knew he could trust for competency in the management of his
affairs, and not persons whose sole recommendation to him would be the
possession of the same kind of skin. Nor, from what we know of matters
in the West Indies, do we believe that any white man of the class we
have eulogized would hesitate to give his warmest suffrage to any black
candidate who he knew would be a fitting representative of his
interests. We could give examples from almost every West Indian island
of white and coloured men who would be indiscriminately chosen as their
candidate by either section. But the enumeration is needless, as the
fact of the existence of such men is too notorious to require proof.

Mr. Froude states plainly enough (p. 123) that, whereas a whole
thousand years were needed to train and discipline the Anglo-Saxon
race, yet "European government, European instruction, continued
steadily till his natural tendencies are superseded by a higher
instinct, may shorten the probation period of the negro." Let it be
supposed that this period of probation [181] for the Negro should
extend, under such exceptionally favourable circumstances, to any
period less than that which is alleged to have been needed by the
Anglo-Saxon to