r accomplishing themselves in all the
graces of womanhood, returned to the island to become the concubines of
white men. Hitherto this vice has swept over the colored community,
gathering its repeated conscriptions of beauty and innocence from the
highest as well as the lowest families. Colored ladies have been taught
to believe that it was more honorable, and quite as virtuous, to be the
kept mistresses of _white gentlemen_, than the lawfully wedded wives of
_colored men_. We repeat the remark, that the actual progress which the
colored people of Barbadoes have made, while laboring under so many
depressing influences, should excite our astonishment, and, we add, our
admiration too. Our acquaintance with this people was at a very
interesting period--just when they were beginning to be relieved from
these discouragements, and to feel the regenerating spirit of a new era.
It was to us like walking through a garden in the early spring. We could
see the young buds of hope, the first bursts of ambition, the early
up-shoots of confident aspiration, and occasionally the opening bloom of
assurance. The star of hope had risen upon the colored people, and they
were beginning to realize that _their_ day had come. The long winter of
their woes was melting into "glorious summer." Civil immunities and
political privileges were just before them, the learned professions were
opening to them, social equality and honorable domestic connections
would soon be theirs. Parents were making fresh efforts to establish
schools for the children, and to send the choicest of their sons and
daughters to England. They rejoiced in the privileges they were
securing, and they anticipated with virtuous pride the free access of
their children to all the fields of enterprise, all the paths of honest
emulation, and all the eminences of distinction.

We remark in conclusion, that the forbearance of the colored people of
Barbadoes under their complicated wrongs is worthy of all admiration.
Allied, as many of them are, to the first families of the island, and
gifted as they are with every susceptibility to feel disgrace, it is a
marvel that they have not indignantly cast off the yoke and demanded
their political rights. Their wrongs have been unprovoked on their part,
and unnatural on the part of those who have inflicted them--in many
cases the guilty authors of their being. The patience and endurance of
the sufferers under such circumstances are unexampled, ex