in time of war; while they, in consequence of their
connection, would be liable to attack. The sooner, therefore, the
connection was ended, the better for them and for us.

By the constitutions which had been conferred upon them, Australia and
Canada, New Zealand and the Cape, were assumed to be practically gone.
The same measures were to be taken with the West Indies. They were not
prosperous. They formed no outlet for British emigration; the white
population was diminishing; they were dissatisfied; they lay close to
the great American republic, to which geographically they more properly
belonged. Representative assemblies under the Crown had failed to
produce the content expected from them or to give an impulse to
industry. The free negroes could not long be excluded from the
franchise. The black and white races had not amalgamated and were not
inclining to amalgamate. The then recent Gordon riots had been followed
by the suicide of the old Jamaican constitution. The government of
Jamaica had been flung back upon the Crown, and the Crown was impatient
of the addition to its obligations. The official of whom I speak
informed me that a decision had been irrevocably taken. The troops were
to be withdrawn from the islands, and Jamaica, Trinidad, and the English
Antilles were to be masters of their own destiny, either to form into
free communities like the Spanish American republics, or to join the
United States, or to do what they pleased, with the sole understanding
that we were to have no more responsibilities.

I do not know how far the scheme was matured. To an outside spectator it
seemed too hazardous to have been seriously meditated. Yet I was told
that it had not been meditated only but positively determined upon, and
that further discussion of a settled question would be fruitless and
needlessly irritating.

Politicians with a favourite scheme are naturally sanguine. It seemed to
me that in a West Indian Federation the black race would necessarily be
admitted to their full rights as citizens. Their numbers enormously
preponderated, and the late scenes in Jamaica were signs that the two
colours would not blend into one, that there might be, and even
inevitably would be, collisions between them which would lead to actions
which we could not tolerate. The white residents and the negroes had not
been drawn together by the abolition of slavery, but were further apart
than ever. The whites, if by superior intelligence