in governs unjustly and corruptly; the Cubans will not rest till they
are free from her, and if once independent they will throw themselves on
American protection.

We will not govern our islands at all, but leave them to drift. Jamaica
and the Antilles, given over to the negro majorities, can only become
like Hayti and St. Domingo; and the nature of things will hardly permit
so fair a part of the earth which has been once civilised and under
white control to fall back into barbarism.

To England the loss of the West Indies would not itself be serious; but
in the life of nations discreditable failures are not measured by their
immediate material consequences. To allow a group of colonies to slide
out of our hands because we could not or would not provide them with a
tolerable government would be nothing less than a public disgrace. It
would be an intimation to all the world that we were unable to maintain
any longer the position which our fathers had made for us; and when the
unravelling of the knitted fabric of the Empire has once begun the
process will be a rapid one.

'But what would you do?' I am asked impatiently. 'We send out peers or
gentlemen against whose character no direct objection can be raised; we
assist them with local councils partly chosen by the people themselves.
We send out bishops, we send out missionaries, we open schools. What can
we do more? We cannot alter the climate, we cannot make planters prosper
when sugar will not pay, we cannot convert black men into whites, we
cannot force the blacks to work for the whites when they do not wish to
work for them. "Governing," as you call it, will not change the natural
conditions of things. You can suggest no remedy, and mere fault-finding
is foolish and mischievous.'

I might answer a good many things. Government cannot do everything, but
it can do something, and there is a difference between governors against
whom there is nothing to object and men of special and marked capacity.
There is a difference between governors whose hands are tied by local
councils and whose feet are tied by instructions from home, and a
governor with a free hand and a wise head left to take his own measures
on the spot. I presume that no one can seriously expect that an orderly
organised nation can be made out of the blacks, when, in spite of your
schools and missionaries, sixty per cent. of the children now born among
them are illegitimate. You can do for the West Indies,