in these islands, the two millions of these
brothers-in-law of ours are the most perfectly contented specimens of
the human race to be found upon the planet.... If happiness be the
satisfaction of every conscious desire, theirs is a condition that
admits of no improvement: were they independent, they might quarrel
among themselves, and the weaker become the bondsmen of the stronger;
under the beneficent despotism of the English Government, which knows
no difference of colour and permits no oppression, they can sleep,
lounge, and laugh away their lives as they please, fearing no danger,"
&c.

Now, then, let us examine for a while this roseate picture of Arcadian
blissfulness said to be enjoyed by British West Indian Negroes in
general, and by the Negroes of Trinidad in particular. "No distinction
of colour" under the British rule, and, better still, absolute
protection of the weaker against the stronger! This latter
consummation especially, [84] Mr. Froude tells us, has been happily
secured "under the beneficent despotism" of the Crown Colony system.
However, let the above vague hyperboles be submitted to the test of
practical experience, and the abstract government analysed in its
concrete relations with the people.

Unquestionably the actual and direct interposition of the shielding
authority above referred to, between man and man, is the immediate
province of the MAGISTRACY. All other branches of the Government,
having in themselves no coercive power, must, from the supreme
executive downwards, in cases of irreconcilable clashing of interests,
have ultimate recourse to the magisterial jurisdiction. Putting aside,
then, whatever culpable remissness may have been manifested by
magistrates in favour of powerful malfeasants, we would submit that the
fact of stipendiary justices converting the tremendous, far-reaching
powers which they wield into an engine of systematic oppression, ought
to dim by many a shade the glowing lustre of Mr. Froude's encomiums.
Facts, authentic and notorious, might be adduced in hundreds,
especially with respect to [85] the Port of Spain and San Fernando
magistracies (both of which, since the administration of Sir J. R.
Longden, have been exclusively the prizes of briefless English
barristers*), to prove that these gentry, far from being bulwarks to
the weaker as against the stronger, have, in their own persons, been
the direst scourges that the poor, particularly when coloured, have
been a