[175] In heedless formulation of his reasons, if such they should be termed, for urging tooth and nail the non-according of reform to the Crown-governed Colonies, our author puts forth this dogmatic deliverance (p. 123):—
"A West Indian self-governing dominion is possible only with a full Negro vote. If the whites are to combine, so will the blacks. It will be a rule by the blacks and for the blacks."
That a constitution for any of our diversely populated Colonies which may be fit for it is possible only with "a full Negro vote" (to the extent within the competence of such voting), goes without saying, as must be the case with every section of the Queen's subjects eligible for the franchise. The duly qualified Spaniard, [176] Coolie, Portuguese, or man of any other non-British race, will each thus have a vote, the same as every Englishman or any other Briton. Why, then, should the vote of the Negro be so especially a bugbear? It is because the Negro is the game which our political sportsman is in full chase of, and determined to hunt down at any cost. Granted, however, for the sake of argument, that black voters should preponderate at any election, what then? We are gravely told by this latter-day Balaam that "If the whites are to combine, so will the blacks," but he does not say for what purpose.
His sentence, therefore, may be legitimately constructed in full for him in the only sense which is applicable to the mutual relations actually existing between those two directly specified sections of British subjects who he would fain have the world believe live in a state of active hostility:—"If the whites are to combine for the Promotion of the general welfare, as many of the foremost of them have done before and are doing now, so will the blacks also combine in the support of such whites, and as staunch auxiliaries equally interested in the furtherance of the same ameliorative [177] objects." Except in the sense embodied in the foregoing sentence, we cannot, in these days, conceive with what intent persons of one section should so specially combine as to compel combination on the part of persons of any other. The further statement that a confederation having a full black voting-power would be a government "by the blacks and for the blacks," is the logical converse of the now obsolete doctrine of Mr. Froude's inspirers—"a government by whites should be only for whites." But this formula, however strenuously insisted on by those who gave it shape, could never, since even before three decades from the first introduction of African slaves, be thoroughly put in practice, so completely had circumstances beyond man's devising or control compelled the altering of men's minds and methods with regard to the new interests which had irresistibly forced themselves into importance as vital items in political arrangements. Nowadays, therefore, that Mr. Froude should desire to create a state of feeling which had, and could have had, no existence with regard to the common interests of the inhabitants for upwards of two full centuries, is [178] evidently an excess of confidence which can only be truly described as amazing. But, after all, what does our author mean by the words "a government by the blacks?" Are we to understand him as suggesting that voting by black electors would be synonymous with electing black representatives? If so, he has clearly to learn much more than he has shown that he lacks, in order to understand and appreciate the vital influences at work in West Indian affairs. Undoubtedly, being the spokesman of few who (secretly) avow themselves to be particularly hostile to Ethiopians, he has done no more than reproduce their sentiments. For, conscious, as these hankerers after the old "institutions" are, of being utterly ineligible for the furthering of modern progressive ideas, they revenge themselves for their supersession on everybody and everything, save and except their own arrogant stolidity. White individuals who have part and lot in the various Colonies, with their hearts and feelings swayed by affections natural to their birth and earliest associations; and Whites who have come to think the land of their adoption as dear to themselves as the land of their birth, entertain no such dread of [179] their fellow-citizens of any other section, whom they estimate according to intelligence and probity, and not according to any accident of exterior physique. Every intelligent black is as shrewd regarding his own interests as our author himself would be regarding his in the following hypothetical case: Some fine day, being a youth and a bachelor, he gets wedded, sets up an establishment, and becomes the owner of a clipper yacht. For his own service in the above circumstances we give him the credit to believe that, on the persons specified below applying among others to him for employment, as chamber-maid and house-servant, and also as hands for the vessel, he would, in preference to any ordinarily recommended white applicants, at once engage the two black servant-girls at President Churchill's in Dominica, the droghermen there as able seamen, and as cabin-boy the lad amongst them whose precocious marine skill he has so warmly and justly extolled. It is not because all these persons are black, but because of the soul-consciousness of the selector, that they each (were they even blue) had a title to preferential consideration, his experience and sense of fitness being [180] their most effectual supporters. Similarly, the Negro voter would elect representatives whom he knew he could trust for competency in the management of his affairs, and not persons whose sole recommendation to him would be the possession of the same kind of skin. Nor, from what we know of matters in the West Indies, do we believe that any white man of the class we have eulogized would hesitate to give his warmest suffrage to any black candidate who he knew would be a fitting representative of his interests. We could give examples from almost every West Indian island of white and coloured men who would be indiscriminately chosen as their candidate by either section. But the enumeration is needless, as the fact of the existence of such men is too notorious to require proof.
Mr. Froude states plainly enough (p. 123) that, whereas a whole thousand years were needed to train and discipline the Anglo-Saxon race, yet "European government, European instruction, continued steadily till his natural tendencies are superseded by a higher instinct, may shorten the probation period of the negro." Let it be supposed that this period of probation [181] for the Negro should extend, under such exceptionally favourable circumstances, to any period less than that which is alleged to have been needed by the Anglo-Saxon to attain his political manhood—what then are the prospects held out by Mr. Froude to us and our posterity on our mastering the training and discipline which he specially recommends for Blacks? Our author, in view, doubtless, of the rapidity of our onward progress, and indeed our actual advancement in every respect, thus answers (pp. 123-4):—"Let a generation or two pass by and carry away with them the old traditions, and an English governor-general will be found presiding over a black council, delivering the speeches made for him by a black prime minister; and how long could this endure? No English gentleman would consent to occupy so absurd a situation."
And again, more emphatically, on the same point (p. 285):—"No Englishman, not even a bankrupt peer, would consent to occupy such position; the blacks themselves would despise him if he did; and if the governor is to be one of their own race and colour, how long would such a connection endure?"
[182] It is plainly to be seen from the above two extracts that the political ethics of our author, being based on race and colour exclusively, would admit of no conceivable chance of real elevation to any descendant of Africa, who, being Ethiopian, could not possibly change his skin. The "old traditions" which Mr. Froude supposes to be carried away by his hypothetical (white) generations who have "passed by," we readily infer from his language, rendered impossible such incarnations of political absurdity as those he depicts. But what should be thought of the sense, if not indeed the sanity, of a grave political teacher who prescribes "European government" and "European education" as the specifics to qualify the Negro for political emancipation, and who, when these qualifications are conspicuously mastered by the Negro who has undergone the training, refuses him the prize, because he is a Negro? We see further that, in spite of being fit for election to council, and even to be prime ministers competent to indite governors' messages, the pigment under our epidermis dooms us to eventual disappointment and a life-long condition of contempt. Even so is it [183] desired by Mr. Froude and his clients, and not without a spice of piquancy is their opinion that for a white ruler to preside and rule over and accept the best assistance of coloured men, qualified as above stated, would be a self-degradation too unspeakable for toleration by any Englishman—"even a bankrupt peer." Unfortunately for Mr. Froude, we can point him to page 56 of this his very book, where, speaking of Grenada and deprecating the notion of its official abandonment, our author says:—
"Otherwise they [Negroes] were quiet fellows, and if the politicians would only let them alone, they would be perfectly contented, and might eventually, if wisely managed, come to some good.... Black the island was, and black it would remain. The conditions were never likely to arise which would bring back a European population; but a governor who was a sensible man, who would reside and use his natural influence, could manage it with perfect ease."
Here, then, we see that the governor of an entirely black population may be a sensible man, and yet hold the post. Our author, indeed, gives the Blacks over whom this sensible governor would hold rule as being in number [184] just 40,000 souls; and we are therefore bound to accept the implied suggestion that the dishonour of holding supremacy over persons of the odious colour begins just as their number begins to count onward from 40,000! There is quite enough in the above verbal vagaries of our philosopher to provoke a volume of comment. But we must pass on to further clauses of this precious paragraph. Mr. Froude's talent for eating his own words never had a more striking illustration than here, in his denial of the utility of native experience as the safest guide a governor could have in the administration of Colonial affairs. At page 91 he says:—"Among the public servants of Great Britain there are persons always to be found fit and willing for posts of honour and difficulty, if a sincere effort be made to find them."
A post of honour and difficulty, we and all other persons in the British dominions had all along understood was regarded as such in the case of functionaries called upon to contend with adverse forces in the accomplishment of great ends conceived by their superiors. But we find that, according to Mr. Froude, all the credit that has hitherto redounded to those [185] who had succeeded in such tasks has been in reality nothing more than a gilding over of disgrace, whenever the exertions of such officials had been put forth amongst persons not wearing a European epidermis. The extension of British influence and dominion over regions inhabited by races not white is therefore, on the part of those who promote it, a perverse opening of arenas for the humiliation and disgrace of British gentlemen, nay, even of those titled members of the "black sheep" family—bankrupt peers! As we have seen, however, ample contradiction and refutation have been considerately furnished by the same objector in this same volume, as in his praises of the governor just quoted.
The cavil of Mr. Froude about English gentlemen reading messages penned by black prime ministers applies with double force to English barristers (who are gentlemen by statute) receiving the law from the lips of black Judges.
For all that, however, an emergency arose so pressing as to compel even the colonialism of Barbados to practically and completely refute this doctrine, by praying for, and submitting with gratitude to, the supreme headship of a [186] man of the race which our author so finically depreciates. In addition it may be observed that for a governor to even consult his prime minister in the matter of preparing his messages might conceivably be optional, whilst it is obligatory on all barristers, whether English or otherwise, to defer to the judge's interpretation of the law in every case—appeal afterwards being the only remedy. As to the dictum that "the two races are not equal and will not blend," it is open to the fatal objection that, having himself proved, with sympathizing pathos, how the West Indies are now well-nigh denuded of their Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, Mr. Froude would have us also understand that the miserable remnant who still complainingly inhabit those islands must, by doing violence to the understanding, be taken as the whole of the world-pervading Anglo-Saxon family. The Negroes of the West Indies number a good deal more than two million souls. Does this suggester of extravagances mean that the prejudices and vain conceit of the few dozens whom he champions should be made to override and overbear, in political arrangements, the serious and solid interests of so many [187] hundreds of thousands? That "the two races are not equal" is a statement which no sane man would dispute, but acquiescence in its truth involves also a distinct understanding that the word race, as applied in the present case by our author, is a simple accommodation of terms—a fashion of speech having a very restricted meaning in this serious discussion.
The Anglo-Saxon race pervades Great Britain, its cradle, and the Greater Britain extending almost all over the face of the earth, which is the arena of its activities and marvellous achievements. To tell us, therefore, as Mr. Froude does, that the handful of malcontents whose unrespectable grievance he holds up to public sympathy represents the Anglo-Saxon race, is a grotesque façon de parler. Taking our author's "Anglo-West Indians" and the people of Ethiopian descent respectively, it would not be too much to assert, nor in anywise difficult to prove by facts and figures, that for every competent individual of the former section in active civilized employments, the coloured section can put forward at least twenty thoroughly competent rivals. Yet are these latter the people whom the classic Mr. [188] Froude wishes to be immolated, root and branch, in all their highest and dearest interests, in order to secure the maintenance of "old traditions" which, he tells us, guaranteed for the dominant cuticle the sacrifice of the happiness of down-trodden thousands! Referring to his hypothetical confederation with its black officeholders, our author scornfully asks:—
"And how long would this endure?"
The answer must be that, granting the existence of such a state of things, its duration would be not more nor less than under white functionaries. For according to himself (p. 124): "There is no original or congenital difference of capacity between" the white and black races, and "with the same chances and the same treatment, ... distinguished men would be produced equally from both races."
If, therefore, the black ministers whose hue he so much despises do possess the training and influence rendering them eligible and securing their election to the situations we are considering, it must follow that their tenure of office would be of equal duration with that of individuals of the white race under the same conditions. Not content with making himself [189] the mouthpiece of English gentlemen in this matter, our author, with characteristic hardihood, obtrudes himself into the same post on behalf of Negroes; saying that, in the event of even a bankrupt peer accepting the situation of governor-general over them, "The blacks themselves would despise him"!
Mr. Froude may pertinently be asked here the source whence he derived his certainty on this point, inasmuch as it is absolutely at variance with all that is sensible and natural; for surely it is both foolish and monstrous to suppose that educated men would infer the degradation of any one from the fact of such a one consenting to govern and co-operate with themselves for their own welfare. He further asks on the same subject:—
"And if the governor is to be one of their own race and colour, how long could such a connection endure?"
Our answer must be the same as with regard to the duration of the black council and black prime minister carrying out the government under the same conditions. It must be regretted that no indication in his book, so far as it professes to deal with facts and with [190] persons not within the circle of his clients, would justify a belief that its wanton misstatements have filtrated through a mind entitled to declare, with the authority of self-consciousness, what a gentleman would or would not do under given circumstances.
In reiteration of his favourite doctrine of the antagonism between the black and white races, our author continues on the same page to say:—
"No one, I presume, would advise that the whites of the island should govern. The relations between the two populations are too embittered, and equality once established by law, the exclusive privilege of colour over colour cannot be restored. While slavery continued, the whites ruled effectively and economically; the blacks are now as they."
As far as could possibly be endeavoured, every proof has been crowded into this book in refutation of this favourite allegation of Mr. Froude's. It is only an idle waste of time to be thus harping on his colour topic. No one can deserve to govern simply because he is white, and no one is bound to be subject simply because he is black. The whole of West [191] Indian history, even after the advent of the attorney-class, proves this, in spite of the efforts to secure exclusive white domination at a time when crude political power might have secured it.
"The relations between the two populations are too embittered," says Mr. Froude. No doubt his talk on this point would be true, had any such skin-dominancy as he contemplates been officially established; but as at present most officials are appointed (locally at least) according to their merit, and not to their epidermis, nothing is known of the embittered relations so constantly dinned into our ears. Whatever bitterness exists is in the minds of those gentry who would like to be dominant on the cheap condition of showing a simple bodily accident erected by themselves into an evidence and proof of superiority.
"The exclusive privilege of colour over colour cannot be restored." Never in the history of the British West Indies—must we again state—was there any law or usage establishing superiority in privileges for any section of the community on account of colour. This statement of fact is also and again an answer to, and refutation of, the succeeding allegation [192] that, "While slavery continued, the whites ruled effectively and economically." It will be yet more clearly shown in a later part of this essay that during slavery, in fact for upwards of two centuries after its introduction, the West Indies were ruled by slave-owners, who happened to be of all colours, the means of purchasing slaves and having a plantation being the one exclusive consideration in the case. It is, therefore, contrary to fact to represent the Whites exclusively as ruling, and the Blacks indiscriminately as subject.
He goes on to say, "There are two classes in the community; their interests are opposite as they are now understood." As regards the above, Mr. Froude's attention may be called to the fact that classification in no department of science has ever been based on colour, but on relative affinity in certain salient qualities. To use his own figure, no horse or dog is more or less a horse or dog because it happens to be white or black. No teacher marshals his pupils into classes according to any outward physical distinction, but according to intellectual approximation. In like manner there has been wealth for hundreds of men of Ethiopic origin, [193] and poverty for hundreds of men of Caucasian origin, and the reverse in both cases. We have, therefore, had hundreds of black as well as white men who, under providential dispensation, belonged to the class, rich men; while, on the other hand, we have had hundreds of white men who, under providential dispensation, belonged to the class, poor men. Similarly, in the composition of a free mixed community, we have hundreds of both races belonging to the class, competent and eligible; and hundreds of both races belonging to the class, incompetent and ineligible: to both of which classes all possible colours might belong. It is from the first mentioned that are selected those who are to bear the rule, to which the latter class is, in the very nature of things, bound to be subject. There is no government by reason merely of skins. The diversity of individual intelligence and circumstances is large enough to embrace the possibility of even children being, in emergencies, the most competent influencers of opinion and action.
But let us analyse this matter for just a while more. The fatal objection to all Mr. Froude's advocacy of colour-domination is that [194] it is futile from being morally unreasonable. In view of the natural and absolute impossibility of reviving the same external conditions under which the inordinate deference and submission to white persons were both logically and inevitably engendered and maintained, his efforts to talk people into a frame of mind favourable to his views on this subject are but a melancholy waste of well-turned sentences. Man's estimate of his fellow-man has not and never can have any other standard, save and except what is the outcome of actual circumstances influencing his sentiment. In the primitive ages, when the fruits of the earth formed the absorbing object of attention and interest, the men most distinguished for successful culture of the soil enjoyed, as a consequence, a larger share than others of popular admiration and esteem. Similarly, among nomadic tribes, the hunters whose courage coped victoriously with the wild and ferocious denizens of the forest became the idols of those who witnessed and were preserved by such sylvan exploits. When men came at length to venture in ships over the trackless deep in pursuit of commerce and its gains, the mariner grew important in [195] public estimation. The pursuit of commerce and its gains led naturally to the possession of wealth. This, from the quasi-omnipotence with which it invests men—enabling them not only to command the best energies, but also, in many cases, to subvert the very principles of their fellows—has, in the vast majority of cases, an overpowering sway on human opinion: a sway that will endure till the Millennium shall have secured for the righteous alone the sovereignty of the world. Likewise, as cities were founded and constitutions established, those who were foremost as defenders of the national interests, on the field of bodily conflict or in the intellectual arena, became in the eyes of their contemporaries worthiest of appreciation—and so on of other circumstances through which particular personal distinctions created claims to preference.
In the special case of the Negroes kidnapped out of Africa into foreign bondage, the crowning item in their assessment of their alien enslavers was the utter superiority, over their most redoubtable "big men," which those enslavers displayed. They actually subjugated and put in chains, like the commonest peasants, native [196] potentates at whose very names even the warriorhood of their tribes had been wont to blench. But far surpassing even this in awful effect was the doom meted out to the bush-handlers, the medicine-men, the rain-compellers, erewhile so inscrutably potent for working out the bliss or the bale of friend or enemy. "Lo, from no mountain-top, from no ceiba-hollow in the forest recesses, has issued any interposing sign, any avenging portent, to vindicate the Spirit of Darkness so foully outraged in the hitherto inviolate person of his chosen minister! Verily, even the powers of the midnight are impotent against these invaders from beyond the mighty salt-water! Here, huddled together in confused, hopeless misery and ruin, lie, fettered and prostrate, even priest as well as potentate, undistinguishable victims of crude, unblenching violence, with its climax of nefarious sacrilege. We, common mortals, therefore, can hope for no deliverance from, or even succour in, the woful plight thus dismally contrived for us all by the fair-skinned race who have now become our masters." Such was naturally the train of thought that ran through those forlorn bosoms. The formidable death-dealing guns [197] of the invaders, the ships which had brought them to the African shores, and much besides in startling contrast to their own condition of utter helplessness, the Africans at once interpreted to themselves as the manifestation and inherent attributes of beings of a higher order than man. Their skin, too, the difference whereof from their own had been accentuated by many calamitous incidents, was hit upon as the reason of so crushing an ascendency.
White skin therefore became, in those disconsolate eyes, the symbol of fearful irresistible power: which impression was not at all weakened afterwards by the ineffable atrocities of the "middle-passage." Backed ultimately by their absolute and irresponsible masterhood at home over the deported Blacks, the European abductors could easily render permanent in the minds of their captives the abject terror struck into them by the enormities of which they had been the victims. Now, the impressions we touched upon before bringing forward the case of the Negro slaves were mainly produced by pleasurable circumstances. But of a contrary nature and much more deeply graven are those sentiments which are the outcome of hopeless terror [198] and pain. For whilst impressions of the former character glide into the consciousness through accesses no less normal than agreeable, the infusion of fear by means of bodily suffering is a process too violent to be forgotten by minds tortured and strained to unnatural tension thereby. Such tension, oft-recurrent and scarcely endurable, leaves behind it recollections which are in themselves a source of sadness. But time, favoured by a succession of pleasurable experiences, is a sovereign anodyne to remembrances of this poignant class. No wonder, then, from our foregoing detail of facts, that whiteness of skin was both redoubted and tremblingly crouched to by Negroes on whom Europeans had wrought such unspeakable calamities. Time, however, and the action of circumstances, especially in countries subject to Catholic dominion, soon began to modify the conditions under which this sentiment of terror had been maintained, and, with those conditions, the very sentiment itself. For it was not long in the life of many of the expatriated Africans before numbers of their own race obtained freedom, and, eventually, wealth sufficient for purchasing black slaves on their [199] own account. In other respects, too (outwardly at least), the prosperous career of such individual Blacks could not fail to induce a revulsion of thought, whereby the attribution of unapproachable powers exclusively to the Whites became a matter earnestly reconsidered by the Africans. Centuries of such reconsideration have produced the natural result in the West Indies. With the daily competition in intelligence, refinement, and social and moral distinction, which time and events have brought about between individuals of the two races, nothing, surely, has resulted, nor has even been indicated, to re-infuse the ancient colour-dread into minds which had formerly been forced to entertain it; and still less to engender it in bosoms to which such a feeling cannot, in the very nature of things, be an inborn emotion. Now, can Mr. Froude show us by what process he would be able to infuse in the soul of an entire population a sentiment which is both unnatural and beyond compulsion?
The foregoing remarks roughly apply to preeminence given to outward distinction, and the conditions under which mainly it impresses and is accepted by men not yet arrived at the [200] essentially intellectual stage. In the spiritual domain the conditions have ever been quite different. A belief in the supernatural being inborn in man, the professors of knowledge and powers beyond natural attainment were by common consent accorded a distinct and superior consideration, deemed proper to the sacredness of their progression. Hence the supremacy of the priestly caste in every age and country of the world. Potentate as well as peasant have bowed in reverence before it, as representing and declaring with authority the counsels of that Being whom all, priest, potentate and peasant alike, acknowledge and adore, each according to the measure of his inward illumination.
[201] The laziness, the incurable idleness, of the Negro, was, both immediately before their emancipation in 1838, and for long years after that event, the cuckoo-cry of their white detractors. It was laziness, pure and simple, which hindered the Negro from exhausting himself under a tropical sun, toiling at starvation wages to ensure for his quondam master the means of being an idler himself, with the additional luxury of rolling in easily come-by wealth. Within the last twenty years, however, the history of the Black Man, both in the West Indies and, better still, in the United States of America, has been a succession of achievements which have converted the charge of laziness into a baseless and absurd calumny. The repetition of the charge referred to is, in these [202] waning days of the nineteenth century, a discredited anachronism, which, however, has no deterring features for Mr. Froude. As the running down of the Negro was his cue, he went in boldly for the game, with what result we shall presently see. At page 239, our author, speaking of the Negro garden-farms in Jamaica, says:—
"The male proprietors were lounging about smoking. Their wives, as it was market-day, were tramping into Kingston with their baskets on their heads. We met them literally in thousands, all merry and light-hearted, their little ones with little baskets trudging at their side. Of the lords of the creation we saw, perhaps, one to each hundred of the women, and he would be riding on mule or donkey, pipe in mouth and carrying nothing. He would be generally sulky too, while the ladies, young and old, had a civil word for us, and curtsied under their loads. Decidedly if there is to be a black constitution I will give my vote to the women."
To the above direct imputation of indolence, heartlessness, and moroseness, Mr. Froude appends the following remarks on other moral characteristics of certain sable peasants at [203] Mandeville, Jamaica, given on the authority of a police official, who, our author says, described them as—
"Good-humoured, but not universally honest. They stole cattle, and would not give evidence against each other. If brought into Court, they held a pebble in their mouth, being under the impression that when they were so provided, perjury did not count. Their education was only skin-deep, and the schools which the Government provided had not touched their characters at all."
But how could the education so provided be otherwise than futile when the administration of its details is entirely in the hands of persons unsympathizing with and utterly despising the Negro? But of this more anon and elsewhere. We resume Mr. Froude's evidence respecting the black peasantry. Our author proceeds to admit, on the same subject, that his informant's duties (as a police official) "brought him in contact with the unfavourable specimens." He adds:—
"I received a far pleasanter impression from a Moravian minister.... I was particularly glad to see this gentleman, for of the Moravians [204] every one had spoken well to me. He was not the least enthusiastic about his poor black sheep, but he said that if they were not better than the average English labourer, he did not think them worse. They were called idle; they would work well enough if they had fair wages and if the wages were paid regularly; but what could be expected when women servants had but three shillings a week and found themselves, when the men had but a shilling a day and the pay was kept in arrear in order that if they came late to work, or if they came irregularly, it may be kept back or cut down to what the employer choose to give? Under such conditions ANY man of ANY colour would prefer to work for himself if he had a garden, or would be idle if he had none."
Take, again, the following extract regarding the heroism of the emigrants to the Canal:—
"I walked forward" (on the steamer bound to Jamaica), "after we had done talking. We had five hundred of the poor creatures on their way to the Darien pandemonium. The vessel was rolling with a heavy beam sea. I found the whole mass of them reduced to the condition of the pigs who used to occupy the fore decks on the Cork and 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.
[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. But worse than in his treatment of purely mundane subjects, his attitude here is marked by a nonchalant levity which excites our wonder that even he should have touched upon the spiritual side of his thesis at all. The idea of the dove sent forth from the ark fluttering over the heaving swells of the deluge, in vain endeavour to secure a rest for the soles of its feet, represents not inaptly the unfortunate predicament of his spirit with regard to a solid [208] faith on which to repose amid the surges of doubt by which it is so evidently beset. Yet although this is his obvious plight with regard to a satisfying belief, he nevertheless undertakes, with characteristic confidence, to suggest a creed for the moralization of West Indian Negroes. His language is:—
"A religion, at any rate, which will keep the West Indian blacks from falling back into devil-worship is still to seek. In spite of the priests, child-murder and cannibalism have re-appeared in Hayti, but without them things might have been much worse than they are, and the preservation of white authority and influence in any form at all may be better than none."
We discern in the foregoing citation the exercise of a charity that is unquestionably born of fetish-worship, which, whether it be obeah generally, or restricted to a mere human skin, can be so powerful an agent in the formation and retention of beliefs. Hence we see that our philosopher relies here, in the domain of morals and spiritual ethics, on a white skin as implicitly as he does on its sovereign potency in secular politics. The curiousness of the matter lies mainly in its application to natives [209] of Hayti, of all people in the world. As a matter of fact we have had our author declaring as follows, in climax to his oft-repeated predictions about West Indian Negroes degenerating into the condition of their fellow-Negroes in the "Black Republic" (p. 285):—
"Were it worth while, one might draw a picture of an English governor, with a black parliament and a black ministry, recommending, by advice of his constitutional ministers, some measure like the Haytian Land Law."
Now, as the West Indies degenerating into so many white-folk-detesting Haytis, under our prophet's dreaded supremacy of the Blacks, is the burden of his book; and as the Land Law in question distinctly forbids the owning by any white person of even one inch of the soil of the Republic, it might, but for the above explanation, have seemed unaccountable, in view of the implacable distrust, not to say hatred, which this stern prohibition so clearly discloses, that our author should, nevertheless, rely on the efficacy of white authority and influence over Haytians.
In continuation of his religious suggestions, he goes on to descant upon slavery in the [210] fashion which we have elsewhere noticed, but it may still be proper to add a word or two here regarding this particular disquisition of his. This we are happy in being able to do under the guidance of an anterior and more reliable exponent of ecclesiastical as well as secular obedience on the part of all free and enlightened men in the present epoch of the world's history:—
"Dogma and Descent, potential twinWhich erst could rein submissive millions in,Are now spent forces on the eddying surgeOf Thought enfranchised. Agencies emergeUnhampered by the incubus of dreadWhich cramped men's hearts and clogged their onward tread.Dynasty, Prescription! spectral in these daysWhen Science points to Thought its surest ways,And men who scorn obedience when not freeDemand the logic of Authority!The day of manhood to the world is here,And ancient homage waxes faint and drear.. . . . . .Vision of rapture! See Salvation's plan'Tis serving God through ceaseless toil for man!"
The lines above quoted are by a West Indian Negro, and explain in very concise form the attitude of the educated African mind [211] with reference to the matters they deal with. Mr. Froude is free to perceive that no special religion patched up from obsolete creeds could be acceptable to those with whose sentiments the thoughts of the writer just quoted are in true racial unison. It is preposterous to expect that the same superstition regarding skin ascendency, which is now so markedly played out in our Colonies in temporal matters, could have any weight whatsoever in matters so momentous as morals and religion. But granting even the possibility of any code of worldly ethics or of religion being acceptable on the dermal score so strenuously insisted on by him, it is to be feared that, through sheer respect for the fitness of things, the intelligent Negro in search of guidance in faith and morals would fail to recognize in our author a guide, philosopher, and friend, to be followed without the most painful misgivings. The Catholic and the Dissenting Churches which have done so much for the temporal and spiritual advancement of the Negro, in spite of hindrance and active persecution wherever these were possible, are, so far as is visible, maintaining their hold on the adhesion of those who belong to them.
[212] And it cannot be pretended that, among enlightened Africans as compared with other enlightened people, there have been more grievous failings off from the scriptural standard of deportment. Possible it certainly is that considerations akin to, or even identical with, those relied upon by Mr. Froude might, on the first reception of Christianity in their exile, have operated effectually upon the minds of the children of Africa. At that time the evangelizers whose converts they so readily became possessed the recommendation of belonging to the dominant caste. Therefore, with the humility proper to their forlorn condition, the poor bondsmen requited with intense gratitude such beneficent interest on their behalf, as a condescension to which people in their hapless situation could have had no right. But for many long years, the distinction whether of temporal or of spiritual superiority has ceased to be the monopoly of any particular class. The master and employer has for far more than a century and a half been often represented in the West Indies by some born African or his descendant; and so also has the teacher and preacher. It is not too much to say that [213] the behaviour of the liberated slaves throughout the British Antilles, as well as the deportment of the manumitted four million slaves of the Southern United States later on, bore glorious testimony to the humanizing effects which the religion of charity, clutched at and grasped in fragments, and understood with childlike incompleteness, had produced within those suffering bosoms.
Nothing has occurred to call for a remodelling of the ordinary moral and spiritual machinery for the special behoof of Negroes. Religion, as understood by the best of men, is purely a matter of feeling and action between man and man—the doing unto others as we would they should do unto us; and any creed or any doctrine which directly or indirectly subverts or even weakens this basis is in itself a danger to the highest welfare of mankind. The simple conventional faith in God, in Jesus, and in a future state, however modified nowadays, has still a vitality which can restrain and ennoble its votaries, provided it be inculcated and received in a befitting spirit. Our critic, in the plenitude of his familiarity with such matters, confidently asks:—
[214] "Who is now made wretched by the fear of hell?"
Possibly the belief in the material hell, the decadence of which he here triumphantly assumes to be so general, may have considerably diminished; but experience has shown that, with the advance of refinement, there is a concurrent growth in the intensity of moral sensibility, whereby the waning terrors of a future material hell are more than replaced by the agonies of a conscience self-convicted of wilful violation of the right. The same simple faith has, in its practical results, been rich in the records of the humble whom it has exalted; of the poor to whom it has been better than wealth; of the rich whose stewardship of worldly prosperity it has sanctified; of the timid whom it has rendered bold; and of the valiant whom it has raised to a divine heroism—in fine, of miracles of transformation that have impelled to higher and nobler tendencies and uses the powers and gifts inherited or acquired by man in his natural state. They who possess this faith, and cherish it as a priceless possession, may calmly oppose to the philosophic reasoning against the existence of [215] a Deity and the rationalness of entreating Him in prayer, the simple and sufficient declaration, "I believe." Normal-minded men, sensible of the limitations of human faculties, never aspire to be wise beyond what is revealed. Whatever might exist beyond the grave is, so far as man and man in their mutual relations are concerned, not a subject that discussion can affect or speculation unravel. To believers it cannot matter whether the Sermon on the Mount embodies or does not embody the quality of ethics that the esoteric votaries of Mr. Froude's "new creed" do accept or even can tolerate. Under the old creed man's sense of duty kindled in sympathy towards his brother, urging him to achieve by self-sacrifice every possibility of beneficence; hence the old creed insured an inward joy as well as "the peace which passeth all understanding." There can be no room for desiring left, when receptiveness of blessings overflows; and it is the worthiest direction of human energy to secure for others that fulness of fruition. Is not Duty the first, the highest item of moral consciousness; and is not promoting, according to our best ability, the welfare of our fellow creatures, the first and [216] most urgent call of human duty? Can the urgency of such responsibility ever cease but with the capacity, on our own or on our brother's part, to do or be done by respectively? Contemptuously ignoring his share of this solemn responsibility—solemn, whether regarded from a religious or a purely secular point of view—to observe at least the negative obligation never to wantonly do or even devise any harm to his fellows, or indeed any sentient creature, our new apostle affords, in his light-hearted reversal of the prescriptive methods of civilized ethics, a woful foretaste of the moral results of the "new, not as yet crystallized" belief, whose trusted instruments of spiritual investigation are the telescope and mental analysis, in order to satisfy the carpings of those who so impress the world with their superhuman strong-mindedness.
The following is a profound reflection presenting, doubtless, quite a new revelation to an unsophisticated world, which had so long submitted in reverential tameness to the self-evident impossibility of exploring the Infinite:—
"The tendency of popular thought is against [217] the supernatural in any shape. Far into space as the telescope can search, deep as analysis can penetrate into mind and consciousness or the forces which govern natural things, popular thought finds only uniformity and connection of cause and effect; no sign anywhere of a personal will which is influenced by prayer or moral motives."
How much to be pitied are the gifted esoterics who, in such a quest, vainly point their telescopes into the star-thronged firmament, and plunge their reasoning powers into the abyss of consciousness and such-like mysteries! The commonplace intellect of the author of "Night Thoughts" was, if we may so speak, awed into an adoring rapture which forced from him the exclamation (may believers hail it as a dogma!)—
"An undevout astronomer is mad!"
Most probably it was in weak submission to some such sentiment as this that Isaac Newton nowhere in his writings suggests even the ghost of a doubt of there being a Great Architect of the Universe as the outcome of his telescopic explorations into the illimitable heavens.
[218] It is quite possible, too, that he was, "on insufficient grounds," perhaps, perfectly satisfied, as a host of other intellectual mediocrities like himself have been, and even up to now rather provokingly continue to be, with the very "uniformity and connection of cause and effect" as visible evidence of there being not only "a personal will," but a creative and controlling Power as well. In this connection comes to mind a certain old Book which, whatever damage Semitic Scholarship and Modern Criticism may succeed in inflicting on its contents, will always retain for the spiritual guidance of the world enough and to spare of divine suggestions. With the prescience which has been the heritage of the inspired in all ages, one of the writers in that Book, whom we shall now quote, foresaw, no doubt, the deplorable industry of Mr. Froude and his protégé "popular thought," whose mouth-piece he has so characteristically constituted himself, and asks in a tone wherein solemn warning blends with inquiry: "Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection!" The rational among the most loftily endowed of mankind have grasped [219] the sublime significance of this query, acquiescing reverently in its scarcely veiled intimation of man's impotence in presence of the task to which it refers.
But though Mr. Froude's spiritual plight be such as we have just allowed him to state it, with regard to an object of faith and a motive of worship, yet let us hear him, in his anxiety to furbish up a special Negro creed, setting forth the motive for being in a hurry to anticipate the "crystallization" of his new belief:—
"The new creed, however, not having crystallized as yet into a shape which can be openly professed, and as without any creed at all the flesh and the devil might become too powerful, we maintain the old names, as we maintain the monarchy."
The allusion to the monarchy seems not a very obvious one, as it parallels the definitive rejection of a spiritual creed with the theoretical change of ancient notions regarding a concrete fact. At any rate we have it that his special religion, when concocted and disseminated, will have the effect of preventing the flesh and the devil from having too much power over Negroes. The objection to the [220] devil's sway seems to us to come with queer grace from one who owes his celebrity chiefly to the production of works teeming with that peculiar usage of language of which the Enemy of Souls is credited with the special fatherhood.
No, sir, in the name of the Being regarding whose existence you and your alleged "popular thought" are so painfully in doubt, we protest against your right, or that of any other created worm, to formulate for the special behoof of Negroes any sort of artificial creed unbelieved in by yourself, having the function and effect of detective "shadowings" of their souls. Away with your criminal suggestion of toleration of the hideous orgies of heathenism in Hayti for the benefit of our future morals in the West Indies, when the political supremacy which you predict and dread and deprecate shall have become an accomplished fact. Were any special standard of spiritual excellence required, our race has, in Josiah Henson and Sojourner Truth, sufficing models for our men and our women respectively. Their ideal of Christian life, which we take to be the true one, is not to be judged of with direct reference to the Deity whom we cannot [221] see, interrogate, or comprehend, but to its practical bearing in and on man, whom we can see and have cognizance of, not only with our physical senses, but by the intimations of the divinity which abides within us.* We can see, feel, and appreciate the virtue of a fellow-mortal who consecrates himself to the Divine idea through untiring exertion for the bettering of the condition of the world around him, whose agony he makes it his duty, only to satisfy his burning desire, to mitigate. The fact in its ghastly reality lies before us that the majority of mankind labour and are being crushed under the tremendous trinity of Ignorance, Vice, and Poverty.
It is mainly in the succouring of those who thus suffer that the vitality of the old creed is manifested in the person of its professors. Under this aspect we behold it moulding men, of all nations, countries, and tongues, whose virtues have challenged and should command on its behalf the unquestioning faith and adhesion of every rational observer. "Evidences of Christianity," "Controversies," "Exegetical Commentaries," have all proved [222] more or less futile—as perhaps they ought—with the Science and Modern Criticism which perverts religion into a matter of dialectics. But there is a hope for mankind in the fact that Science itself shall have ultimately to admit the limitations of human inquiry into the details of the Infinite. Meanwhile it requires no technical proficiency to recognize the criminality of those who waste their brief threescore and ten years in abstract speculations, while the tangible, visible, and hideous soul-destroying trinity of Vice, Ignorance, and Poverty, above mentioned, are desolating the world in their very sight. There are possessors of personal virtue, enlightenment, and wealth, who dare stand neutral with regard to these dire exigencies among their fellows. And yet they are the logical helpers, as holders of the special antidote to each of those banes! Infinitely more deserving of execration are such folk than the callous owner of some specific, who allows a suffering neighbour to perish for want of it.
We who believe in the ultimate development of the Christian notion of duty towards God, as manifested in untiring beneficence to man, cling to this faith—starting from the [223] beginning of the New Testament dispensation—because Saul of Tarsus, transformed into Paul the Apostle through his whole-souled acceptance of this very creed with its practical responsibilities, has, in his ardent, indefatigable labours for the enlightenment and elevation of his fellows, left us a lesson which is an enduring inspiration; because Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, benefited, in a manner which has borne, and ever will bear, priceless fruit, enormous sections of the human family, after his definite submission to the benign yoke of the same old creed; because Vincent de Paul has, through the identical inspiration, endowed the world with his everlasting legacy of organized beneficence; because it impelled Francis Xavier with yearning heart and eager footsteps through thousands of miles of peril, to proclaim to the darkling millions of India what he had experienced to be tidings of great joy to himself; because Matthew Hale, a lawyer, and of first prominence in a pursuit which materializes the mind and nips its native candour and tenderness, escaped unblighted, through the saving influence of his faith, approving himself in the sight of all [224] an ideal judge, even according to the highest conception; because John Howard, opulent and free to enjoy his opulence and repose, was drawn thereby throughout the whole continent of Europe in quest of the hidden miseries that torture those whom the law has shut out, in dungeons, from the light and sympathy of the world; because Thomas Clarkson, animated by the spirit of its teachings, consecrated wealth, luxury, and the quiet of an entire lifetime on the altar of voluntary sacrifice for the salvation of an alien people; because Samuel Johnson, shut out from mirthfulness by disease and suffering, and endowed with an intellectual pride intolerant of froward ignorance, was, through the chastening power of that belief, transformed into the cheerful minister and willing slave of the weaklings whom he gathered into his home, and around whom the tendrils of his heart had entwined themselves, waxing closer and stronger in the moisture of his never-failing charity; because Henry Havelock, a man of the sword, whose duties have never been too propitious to the cultivation and fostering of the gentler virtues, lived and died a blameless hero, constrained by that faith to be one of its most illustrious exemplars; [225] because David Livingstone looms great and reverend in our mental sight in his devotion to a land and race embraced in his boundless fellow-feeling, and whose miseries he has commended to the sympathy of the civilized world in words the pathos whereof has melted thousands of once obdurate hearts to crave a share in applying a balm to the "open sore of Africa"—that slave-trade whose numberless horrors beggar description; and finally—one more example out of the countless varieties of types that blend into a unique solidarity in the active manifestation of the Christian life—we believe because Charles Gordon, the martyr-soldier of Khartoum, in trusting faith a very child, but in heroism more notable than any mere man of whom history contains a record, gathered around himself, through the sublime attractiveness of his faith-directed life, the united suffrages of all nations, and now enjoys, as the recompense and seal of his life's labours, an apotheosis in homage to which the heathen of Africa, the man-hunting Arab, the Egyptian, the Turk, all jostle each other to blend with the exulting children of Britain who are directly glorified by his life and history.
[226] Here, then, are speaking evidences of the believers' grounds. Verily they are of the kind that are to be seen in our midst, touched, heard, listened to, respected, beloved—nay, honoured, too, with the glad worship our inward spirit springs forth to render to goodness so largely plenished from the Source of all Good. Can Modern Science and Criticism explain them away, or persuade us of their insufficiency as incentives to the hearty acceptance of the religion that has received such glorious, yet simply logical, incarnation in the persons of weak, erring men who welcomed its responsibilities conjointly with its teachings, and thereby raised themselves to the spiritual level pictured to ourselves in our conception of angels who have been given the Divine charge concerning mankind. Religion for Negroes, indeed! White priests, forsooth! This sort of arrogance might, possibly, avail in quarters where the person and pretensions of Mr. Froude could be impressive and influential—but here, in the momentous concern of man with Him who "is no respecter of persons," his interference, mentally disposed as he tells us he is with reference to such a matter, is nothing less than profane intrusion.
[227] We will conclude by stating in a few words our notion of the only agency by which, not Blacks alone, but every race of mankind, might be uplifted to the moral level which the thousands of examples, of which we have glanced at but a few, prove so indubitably the capacity of man to attain—each to a degree limited by the scope of his individual powers. The priesthood whereof the world stands in such dire need is not at all the confederacy of augurs which Mr. Froude, perhaps in recollection of his former profession, so glibly suggests, with an esoteric creed of their own, "crystallized into shape" for profession before the public. The day of priestcraft being now numbered with the things that were, the exploitation of those outside of the sacerdotal circle is no longer possible. Therefore the religion of mere talk, however metaphysical and profound; the religion of scenic display, except such display be symbolic of living and active verities, has lost whatever of efficacy it may once have possessed, through the very spirit and tendency of To-day. The reason why those few whom we have mentioned, and the thousands who cannot possibly be recalled, have, as [228] typical Christians, impressed themselves on the moral sense and sympathy of the ages, is simply that they lived the faith which they professed. Whatever words they may have employed to express their serious thoughts were never otherwise than, incidentally, a spoken fragment of their own interior biography. In fine, success must infallibly attend this special priesthood (whether episcopally "ordained" or not) of all races, all colours, all tongues whatsoever, since their lives reflect their teachings and their teachings reflect their lives. Then, truly, they, "the righteous, shall inherit the earth," leading mankind along the highest and noblest paths of temporal existence. Then, of course, the obeah, the cannibalism, the devil-worship of the whole world, including that of Hayti, which Mr. Froude predicts will be adopted by us Blacks in the West Indies, shall no more encumber and scandalize the earth.
But Mr. Froude should, at the same time, be reminded that cannibalism and the hideous concomitants which he mentions are, after all, relatively minor and restricted dangers to man's civilization and moral soundness. They can [229] neither operate freely nor expand easily. The paralysis of horrified popular sentiment obstructs their propagation, and the blight of the death-penalty which hangs over the heads of their votaries is an additional guarantee of their being kept within bounds that minimize their perniciousness. But there are more fatal and further-reaching dangers to public morality and happiness of which the regenerated current opinion of the future will take prompt and remedial cognizance. Foremost among these will be the circulation of malevolent writings whereby the equilibrium of sympathy between good men of different races is sought to be destroyed, through misleading appeals to the weaknesses and prejudices of readers; writings in which the violation of actual truth cannot, save by stark stupidity, be attributed to innocent error; writings that scoff at humanitarian feeling and belittle the importance of achievements resulting therefrom; writings which strike at the root of national manliness, by eulogizing brute force directed against weaker folk as a fit and legitimate mode of securing the wishes of a mighty and enlightened people; writings, in fine, which ignore the divine principle [230] in man, and implicitly deny the possibility of a Divine Power existing outside of and above man, thus materializing the mind, and tending to render the earth a worse hell than it ever could have been with faith in the supremacy of a beneficent Power.
NOTES
221. *"Est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."—Ovid.