special
jubilee, the butler apologised for them when he came to call me, and
laughed as at the best of jokes when I said they did not mean any harm.
The great feature of the day was five cats, with blue eyes and
spotlessly white, who walked in regularly at breakfast, ranged
themselves on their tails round their mistress's chair, and ate their
porridge and milk like reasonable creatures. Within and without all was
orderly. The gardens were in perfect condition; fields were being
inclosed and planted; the work of the place went on of itself, with the
eye of the mistress on it, and her voice, if necessary, heard in
command; but black and white were all friends together. What could man
ask for, more than to live all his days in such a climate and with such
surroundings? Why should a realised ideal like this pass away? Why may
it not extend itself till it has transformed the features of all our
West Indian possessions? Thousand of English families might be living in
similar scenes, happy in themselves and spreading round them a happy,
wholesome English atmosphere. Why not indeed? Only because we are
enchanted. Because in Jamaica and Barbadoes the white planters had a
constitution granted them two hundred years ago, therefore their
emancipated slaves must now have a constitution also. Wonderful logic of
formulas, powerful as a witches' cauldron for mischief as long as it is
believed in. The colonies and the Empire! If the colonies were part
indeed of the Empire, if they were taken into partnership as the
Americans take theirs, and were members of an organised body, if an
injury to each single limb would be felt as an injury to the whole, we
should not be playing with their vital interests to catch votes at home.
Alas! at home we are split in two, and party is more than the nation,
and famous statesmen, thinly disguising their motives under a mask of
policy, condemn to-day what they approved of yesterday, and catch at
power by projects which they would be the first to denounce if suggested
by their adversaries. Till this tyranny be overpast, to bring into one
the scattered portions of the Empire is the idlest of dreams, and the
most that is to be hoped for is to arrest any active mischief. Happy
Americans, who have a Supreme Court with a code of fundamental laws to
control the vagaries of politicians and check the passions of
fluctuating electoral majorities! What the Supreme Court is to them, the
Crown ought to be for us; but