ites diminishes and must diminish. The English peasant
immigration which enthusiasts have believed in is a dream, a dream which
passed through the ivory gate, a dream which will never turn to a waking
reality; and unless under the Indian system, which our rulers will never
try unless the democracy orders them to adopt it, the English interest
will come to an end.

The English have proved in India that they can play a great and useful
part as rulers over recognised inferiors. Even in the West Indies the
planters were a real something. Like the English in Ireland, they
produced a remarkable breed of men: the Codringtons, the Warners, and
many illustrious names besides. They governed cheaply on their own
resources, and the islands under their rule were so profitable that we
fought for them as if our Empire was at stake. All that is gone. The
days of ruling races are supposed to be numbered. Trade drifts away to
the nearest market--to New York or New Orleans--and in a money point of
view the value of such possessions as Trinidad will soon be less than
nothing to us.

As long as the present system holds, there will be an appreciable
addition to the sum of human (coloured human) happiness. Lighter-hearted
creatures do not exist on the globe. But the continuance of it depends
on the continuance of the English rule. The peace and order which they
benefit by is not of their own creation. In spite of schools and
missionaries, the dark connection still maintains itself with Satan's
invisible world, and modern education contends in vain with Obeah
worship. As it has been in Hayti, so it must be in Trinidad if the
English leave the blacks to be their own masters.

Scene after scene passes by on the magic slide. The man-eating Caribs
first, then Columbus and his Spaniards, the French conquest, the English
occupation, but they have left behind them no self-quickening seed of
healthy civilisation, and the prospect darkens once more. It is a pity,
for there is no real necessity that it should darken. The West Indian
negro is conscious of his own defects, and responds more willingly than
most to a guiding hand. He is faithful and affectionate to those who are
just and kind to him, and with a century or two of wise administration
he might prove that his inferiority is not inherent, and that with the
same chances as the white he may rise to the same level. I cannot part
with the hope that the English people may yet insist that the chance