, and moral, would most assuredly be brought about by the
granting of full elective rights to dependencies thus inhabited.
Enlightened statesmanship should at once perceive the immense benefit
that would ultimately result from such refusal of the franchise. The
cardinal recommendation of that refusal is that it would avert
definitively the political domination of the Blacks, which must
inevitably be the outcome of any concession of the modicum of right so
earnestly desired. The exclusion of the Negro vote being inexpedient,
if not impossible, the exercise of electoral powers by the Blacks must
lead to their returning candidates of their own race to the local
legislatures, and that, too, in numbers preponderating according to the
majority of the Negro electors. The Negro legislators thus supreme in
the councils of the Colonies would straightway proceed to pass
vindictive and retaliatory laws against their white fellow- [7]
colonists. For it is only fifty years since the White man and the
Black man stood in the reciprocal relations of master and slave.
Whilst those relations subsisted, the white masters inflicted, and the
black slaves had to endure, the hideous atrocities that are inseparable
from the system of slavery. Since Emancipation, the enormous strides
made in self-advancement by the ex-slaves have only had the effect of
provoking a resentful uneasiness in the bosoms of the ex-masters. The
former bondsmen, on their side, and like their brethren of Hayti, are
eaten up with implacable, blood-thirsty rancour against their former
lords and owners. The annals of Hayti form quite a cabinet of
political and social object lessons which, in the eyes of British
statesmen, should be invaluable in showing the true method of dealing
with Ethiopic subjects of the Crown. The Negro race in Hayti, in order
to obtain and to guard what it calls its freedom, has outraged every
humane instinct and falsified every benevolent hope. The slave-owners
there had not been a whit more cruel than slave-owners in the other
islands. But, in spite of this, how ferocious, how sanguinary, [8] how
relentless against them has the vengeance of the Blacks been in their
hour of mastery! A century has passed away since then, and,
notwithstanding that, the hatred of Whites still rankles in their
souls, and is cherished and yielded to as a national creed and guide of
conduct. Colonial administrators of the mighty British Empire, the
lesson which