; but the power had
not been acted on and was not perhaps designed to continue, and a
restless hope was said to have revived among the negroes that the day
was not far off when Jamaica would be as Hayti and they would have the
island to themselves.

To a person like myself, to whom the preservation of the British Empire
appeared to be the only public cause in which just now it was possible
to feel concern, the problem was extremely interesting. I had no
prejudice against self-government. I had seen the Australian colonies
growing under it in health and strength with a rapidity which rivalled
the progress of the American Union itself. I had observed in South
Africa that the confusions and perplexities there diminished exactly in
proportion as the Home Government ceased to interfere. I could not hope
that as an outsider I could see my way through difficulties where
practised eyes were at a loss. But it was clear that the West Indies
were suffering, be the cause what it might. I learnt that a party had
risen there at last which was actually in favour of a union with
America, and I wished to find an answer to a question which I had long
asked myself to no purpose. My old friend Mr. Motley was once speaking
to me of the probable accession of Canada to the American republic. I
asked him if he was sure that Canada would like it. 'Like it?' he
replied. 'Would I like the house of Baring to take me into partnership?'
To be a partner in the British Empire appeared to me to be at least as
great a thing as to be a State under the stars and stripes. What was it
that Canada, what was it that any other colony, would gain by exchanging
British citizenship for American citizenship? What did America offer to
those who joined her which we refused to give or neglected to give? Was
it that Great Britain did not take her colonies into partnership at all?
was it that while in the United States the blood circulated freely from
the heart to the extremities, so that 'if one member suffered all the
body suffered with it,' our colonies were simply (as they used to be
called) 'plantations,' offshoots from the old stock set down as
circumstances had dictated in various parts of the globe, but vitally
detached and left to grow or to wither according to their own inherent
strength?

At one time the West Indian colonies had been more to us than such
casual seedlings. They had been precious regarded as jewels, which
hundreds of thousands of English liv