l peel off such
civilisation as they have learnt as easily and as willingly as their
coats and trousers.

Govern them as we govern India, with the same conscientious care, with
the same sense of responsibility, with the same impartiality, the same
disinterested attention to the well-being of our subjects in its
highest and most honourable sense, and we shall give the world one more
evidence that while Englishmen can cover the waste places of it with
free communities of their own blood, they can exert an influence no less
beneficent as the guides and rulers of those who need their assistance,
and whom fate and circumstances have assigned to their care. Our kindred
far away will be more than ever proud to form part of a nation which has
done more for freedom than any other nation ever did, yet is not a slave
to formulas, and can adapt its actions to the demands of each community
which belongs to it. The most timid among us may take courage, for it
would cost us nothing save the sacrifice of a few official traditions,
and an abstinence for the future from doubtful uses of colonial
patronage. The blacks will be perfectly happy when they are satisfied
that they have nothing to fear for their persons or their properties. To
the whites it would be the opening of a new era of hope. Should they be
rash enough to murmur, they might then be justly left to the
consequences of their own folly.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Passage to Cuba--A Canadian commissioner--Havana--The Moro--The city
and harbour--Cuban money--American visitors--The cathedral--Tomb of
Columbus--New friends--The late rebellion--Slave emancipation--Spain
and progress--A bull fight.

I had gone to the West Indies to see our own colonies, but I could not
leave those famous seas which were the scene of our ocean duels with the
Spaniards without a visit to the last of the great possessions of Philip
II. which remained to his successors. I ought not to say the last, for
Puerto Rico is Spanish also, but this small island is insignificant and
has no important memories connected with it. Puerto Rico I had no
leisure to look at and did not care about, and to see Cuba as it ought
to be seen required more time than I could afford; but Havana was so
interesting, both from its associations and its present condition, that
I could not be within reach of it and pass it by. The body of Columbus
lies there for one thing, unless a trick was played when the remains