ortunities of coming into
contact, both in and out of England, with natives of Great Britain, not
of the agricultural order alone, but very often of the artisan class,
whose ignorance of the commonest matters was as dense as it was
discreditable to the land of their birth and breeding. Are these
people included (on account of having his favourite sine qua non of a
fair skin) in the US of this apostle of skin-worship, in the
indefeasible right to political power which is denied to Blacks by
reason, or rather non-reason, of their complexion?

The fact is, that, judging by his own sentiments and those of his
Anglo-West Indian friends, Mr. Froude calculated on producing an
impression in favour of their discreditable views by purposely keeping
out of sight the numerous European and other sufferers under the yoke
[158] which he sneers at seeing described by its proper appellation of
"a degrading tyranny." The prescriptive unfavourable forecast of our
author respecting political power in the hands of the Blacks may, in
our opinion, be hailed as a warrant for its bestowal by those in whose
power that bestowal may be. As a pro-slavery prophecy, equally dismal
and equally confident with the hundreds that preceded it, this new
vaticination may safely be left to be practically dealt with by the
Race, victimized and maligned, whose real genius and character are
purposely belied by those who expect to be gainers by the process.
Invested with political power, the Negroes, Mr. Froude goes on to
assure his readers, "will slide back into their old condition, and the
chance will be gone of lifting them to the level to which we have no
right to say they are incapable of rising." How touchingly
sympathetic! How transcendently liberal and righteous! But, to speak
the truth, is not this solicitude of our cynical defamer on our behalf,
after all, a useless waste of emotion on his part? Timeo Danaos et
dona ferentes.+ The tears of the crocodile are most copious in close
view of the banquet on his prey. This [159] reiterated twaddle of Mr.
Froude, in futile and unseasonable echo of the congenial predictions of
his predecessors in the same line, might be left to receive not only
the answer of his own book to the selfsame talk of the slavers fifty
years ago, but also that of the accumulated refutations which America
has furnished for the last twenty-five years as to the retrograde
tendency so falsely imputed. But, taking it as a serious c