marvellous achievements. To tell
us, therefore, as Mr. Froude does, that the handful of malcontents
whose unrespectable grievance he holds up to public sympathy represents
the Anglo-Saxon race, is a grotesque facon de parler. Taking our
author's "Anglo-West Indians" and the people of Ethiopian descent
respectively, it would not be too much to assert, nor in anywise
difficult to prove by facts and figures, that for every competent
individual of the former section in active civilized employments, the
coloured section can put forward at least twenty thoroughly competent
rivals. Yet are these latter the people whom the classic Mr. [188]
Froude wishes to be immolated, root and branch, in all their highest
and dearest interests, in order to secure the maintenance of "old
traditions" which, he tells us, guaranteed for the dominant cuticle the
sacrifice of the happiness of down-trodden thousands! Referring to his
hypothetical confederation with its black officeholders, our author
scornfully asks:--

"And how long would this endure?"

The answer must be that, granting the existence of such a state of
things, its duration would be not more nor less than under white
functionaries. For according to himself (p. 124): "There is no
original or congenital difference of capacity between" the white and
black races, and "with the same chances and the same treatment, ...
distinguished men would be produced equally from both races."

If, therefore, the black ministers whose hue he so much despises do
possess the training and influence rendering them eligible and securing
their election to the situations we are considering, it must follow
that their tenure of office would be of equal duration with that of
individuals of the white race under the same conditions. Not content
with making himself [189] the mouthpiece of English gentlemen in this
matter, our author, with characteristic hardihood, obtrudes himself
into the same post on behalf of Negroes; saying that, in the event of
even a bankrupt peer accepting the situation of governor-general over
them, "The blacks themselves would despise him"!

Mr. Froude may pertinently be asked here the source whence he derived
his certainty on this point, inasmuch as it is absolutely at variance
with all that is sensible and natural; for surely it is both foolish
and monstrous to suppose that educated men would infer the degradation
of any one from the fact of such a one consenting to govern an