ting men. Gladstone had
never done anything. He had always talked.

"I wonder whether people will ever open their eyes about all this.
The orators go in for virtue, freedom, etc., the cheap cant which
will charm the constituencies. They are generous with what costs
them nothing--Irish land, religious liberty, emancipation of
niggers--sacrificing the dependencies to tickle the vanity of an
English mob and catch the praises of the newspapers. If ever the
tide turns, surely the first step will be to hang the great
misleaders of the people--as the pirates used to be--along the House
of Commons terrace by the river as a sign to mankind, and send the
rest for ever back into silence and impotence."

--
* Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.
--

Whether a man be a pirate is a matter of fact. Whether he be a
misleader of the people is a matter of opinion. "Whom shall we
hang?" would become a party question, and perhaps a general amnesty
for mere debaters is the most practical solution of the problem.

Barbados, which has since suffered severely from the want of a
market for its sugar, seemed to Froude's eyes to present in a sort
of comic picture the summit of human felicity. "Swarms of niggers on
board--delightful fat woman in blue calico with a sailor straw hat,
and a pipe in her mouth. All of them perfectly happy, without a
notion of morality--piously given too--psalm-singing, doing all they
please without scruple, rarely married, for easiness of parting,
looking as if they never knew a care .... Niggerdom perfect
happiness. Schopenhauer should come here." Schopenhauer would
perhaps have said that "niggers" were happier than other men because
they come nearer to the beasts.

As Froude has been accused of injustice to the Church of Rome, it
may be as well to quote an entry from his journal at Trinidad:*
"Went to Roman Catholic Cathedral--saw a few men and women on their
knees at solitary prayers--much better for them than Methodist
addresses on salvation." In another place he says:+ "Religion as a
motive alters the aspect of everything--so much of the world rescued
from Rome and the great enemy. Yet the Roman Church after all is
something. It is a cause and a home everywhere--something to care
for outside oneself--an something which does not change."

--
* January 15th, 1887.
+ February 1st.
--

Again at Barbados, on the 17th of February he writes: "By far the
most prosperous of the upper classes that I have seen in the i