f
reconciliation with the old spiritual organisation which was shattered
in the sixteenth century, and has since shown no unwillingness to adapt
itself to modern forms of thought. The Olympian gods survived for seven
centuries after Aristophanes with the help of allegory and 'economy.'
The Church of Rome may survive as long after Calvin and Luther. Carlyle
mocked at the possibility when I ventured to say so to him. Yet Carlyle
seemed to think that the mass was the only form of faith in Europe which
had any sincerity remaining in it.

A religion, at any rate, which will keep the West Indian blacks from
falling into devil worship is still to seek. Constitutions and belief in
progress may satisfy Europe, but will not answer in Jamaica. In spite of
the priests, child murder and cannibalism have reappeared in Hayti; but
without them things might have been worse than they are, and the
preservation of white authority and influence in any form at all may be
better than none.

White authority and white influence may, however, still be preserved in
a nobler and better way. Slavery was a survival from a social order
which had passed away, and slavery could not be continued. It does not
follow that _per se_ it was a crime. The negroes who were sold to the
dealers in the African factories were most of them either slaves already
to worse masters or were _servi_, servants in the old meaning of the
word, prisoners of war, or else criminals, _servati_ or reserved from
death. They would otherwise have been killed; and since the slave trade
has been abolished are again killed in the too celebrated 'customs.' The
slave trade was a crime when the chiefs made war on each other for the
sake of captives whom they could turn into money. In many instances,
perhaps in most, it was innocent and even beneficent. Nature has made us
unequal, and Acts of Parliament cannot make us equal. Some must lead and
some must follow, and the question is only of degree and kind. For
myself, I would rather be the slave of a Shakespeare or a Burghley than
the slave of a majority in the House of Commons or the slave of my own
folly. Slavery is gone, with all that belonged to it; but it will be an
ill day for mankind if no one is to be compelled any more to obey those
who are wiser than himself, and each of us is to do only what is right
in our own eyes. There may be authority, yet not slavery: a soldier is
not a slave, a sailor is not a slave, a child is not a slav