the whites of the island should
govern. The relations between the two populations are too embittered,
and equality once established by law, the exclusive privilege of colour
over colour cannot be restored. While slavery continued the whites ruled
effectively and economically; the blacks are now free as they; there are
two classes in the community; their interests are opposite as they are
now understood, and one cannot be trusted with control over the other.
As little can the present order of things continue. The West India
Islands, once the pride of our empire, the scene of our most brilliant
achievements, are passing away out of our hands; the remnant of our own
countrymen, weary of an unavailing struggle, are more and more eager to
withdraw from the scene, because they find no sympathy and no
encouragement from home, and are forbidden to accept help from America
when help is offered them, while under their eyes their quondam slaves
are multiplying, thriving, occupying, growing strong, and every day more
conscious of the changed order of things. One does not grudge the black
man his prosperity, his freedom, his opportunities of advancing himself;
one would wish to see him as free and prosperous as the fates and his
own exertions can make him, with more and more means of raising himself
to the white man's level. But left to himself, and without the white man
to lead him, he can never reach it, and if we are not to lose the
islands altogether, or if they are not to remain with us to discredit
our capacity to rule them, it is left to us only to take the same course
which we have taken in the East Indies with such magnificent success,
and to govern whites and blacks alike on the Indian system. The
circumstances are precisely analogous. We have a population to deal
with, the enormous majority of whom are of an inferior race. Inferior, I
am obliged to call them, because as yet, and as a body, they have shown
no capacity to rise above the condition of their ancestors except under
European laws, European education, and European authority, to keep them
from making war on one another. They are docile, good-tempered,
excellent and faithful servants when they are kindly treated; but their
notions of right and wrong are scarcely even elementary; their
education, such as it may be, is but skin deep, and the old African
superstitions lie undisturbed at the bottom of their souls. Give them
independence, and in a few generations they wil