Bristol packets.
They were [205] lying in a confused heap together, helpless, miserable,
without consciousness, apparently, save a sense in each that he was
wretched. Unfortunate brothers-in-law! following the laws of political
economy, and carrying their labour to the dearest market, where, before
a year was out, half of them were to die. They had souls, too, some of
them, and honest and kindly hearts."

It surely is refreshing to read the revelation of his first learning of
the possession of a soul by a fellow-human being, thus artlessly
described by one who is said to be an ex-parson. But piquancy is Mr.
Froude's strong point, whatever else he may be found wanting in.

Still, apart from Mr. Froude's direct testimony to the fact that from
year to year, during a long series of years, there has been a
continuous, scarcely ever interrupted emigration of Negroes to the
Spanish mainland, in search of work for a sufficing livelihood for
themselves and their families--and that in the teeth of physical
danger, pestilence, and death--there would be enough indirect
exoneration of the Black Man from that indictment in the wail of Mr.
Froude and his friends regarding the alarming absorption of the lands
of Grenada [206] and Trinidad by sable proprietors. Land cannot be
bought without money, nor can money be possessed except through labour,
and the fact that so many tens of thousand Blacks are now the happy
owners of the soil whereon, in the days so bitterly regretted by our
author, their forefathers' tears, nay, very hearts' blood, had been
caused to flow, ought to silence for ever an accusation, which, were it
even true, would be futile, and, being false, is worse than
disgraceful, coming from the lips of the Eumolpids who would fain
impose a not-to-be-questioned yoke on us poor helots of Ethiopia. It
is said that lying is the vice of slaves; but the ethics of West Indian
would-be mastership assert, on its behalf, that they alone should enjoy
the privilege of resorting to misrepresentation to give colour, if not
solidity, to their pretensions.

BOOK III: RELIGION FOR NEGROES

[207] Mr. Froude's passing on from matters secular to matters spiritual
and sacred was a transition to be expected in the course of the grave
and complicated discussion which he had volunteered to initiate. It
was, therefore, not without curiosity that his views in the direction
above indicated were sought for and earnestly scrutinized by us.