ish, to look to
political changes as a road to an impossible millennium. It has
rekindled hopes which had been long extinguished, that, like their
brothers in Hayti, they were on the way to have the islands to
themselves. It has alienated the English colonists, filled them with the
worst apprehensions, and taught them to look wistfully from their own
country to a union with America. A few elected members in a council
where they may be counterbalanced by an equal number of official members
seems a small thing in itself. So long as the equality was maintained,
my Yankee friend was still willing to risk his capital in Jamaican
enterprises. But the principle has been allowed. The existing
arrangement is a half-measure which satisfies none and irritates all,
and collisions between the representatives of the people and the
nominees of the Government are only avoided by leaving a sufficient
number of official seats unfilled. To have re-entered upon a road where
you cannot stand still, where retreat is impossible, and where to go
forward can only be recommended on the hypothesis that to give a man a
vote will itself qualify him for the use of it, has been one of the
minor achievements of the last Government of Mr. Gladstone, and is
likely to be as successful as his larger exploits nearer home have as
yet proved to be. A supreme court, were we happy enough to possess such
a thing, would forbid these venturous experiments of sanguine statesmen
who may happen, for a moment, to command a trifling majority in the
House of Commons.

I could not say what I felt completely to Sir Henry, who, perhaps, had
been in personal relations with Mr. Gladstone's Government. Perhaps,
too, he was one of those numerous persons of tried ability and
intelligence who have only a faint belief that the connection between
Great Britain and the colonies can be of long continuance. The public
may amuse themselves with the vision of an imperial union; practical
statesmen who are aware of the tendencies of self-governed communities
to follow lines of their own in which the mother country cannot support
them may believe that they know it to be impossible.

As to the West Indies there are but two genuine alternatives: one to
leave them to themselves to shape their own destinies, as we leave
Australia; the other to govern them as if they were a part of Great
Britain with the same scrupulous care of the people and their interests
with which we govern Bengal, Ma