the black constituencies. It has been
so construed in the other islands, and was the occasion of the agitation
in Trinidad which I observed when I was there.

My own opinion as to the wisdom of such an experiment matters little:
but I have a right to say that neither blacks nor whites have asked for
it; that no one who knows anything of the West Indies and wishes them to
remain English sincerely asked for it; that no one has agitated for it
save a few newspaper writers and politicians whom it would raise into
consequence. If tried at all, it will be tried either with a deliberate
intention of cutting Jamaica free from us altogether, or else in
deference to English political superstitions, which attribute
supernatural virtues to the exercise of the franchise, and assume that a
form of self-government which suits us tolerably at home will be equally
beneficial in all countries and under all conditions.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] This has been angrily denied. A gentleman whose veracity I cannot
doubt assured me that he had himself seen a dead body lying unburied
among some bushes. When he returned to the place a month after it was
still there. The frightful mortality among the labourers, at least in
the early years of the undertaking, is too notorious to be called in
question.

CHAPTER XIII.

The English mails--Irish agitation--Two kinds of colonies--Indian
administration--How far applicable in the West Indies--Land at
Kingston--Government House--Dinner party--Interesting
officer--Majuba Hill--Mountain station--Kingston
curiosities--Tobacco--Valley in the Blue Mountains.

I am reminded as I write of an adventure which befell Archbishop Whately
soon after his promotion to the see of Dublin. On arriving in Ireland he
saw that the people were miserable. The cause, in his mind, was their
ignorance of political economy, of which he had himself written what he
regarded as an excellent manual. An Irish translation of this manual he
conceived would be the best possible medicine, and he commissioned a
native Scripture reader to make one. To insure correctness he required
the reader to retranslate to him what he had written line by line. He
observed that the man as he read turned sometimes two pages at a time.
The text went on correctly, but his quick eye perceived that something
was written on the intervening leaves. He insisted on knowing what it
was, and at last extorted an explanation, 'Your Grace, me