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 History has taught and yet continues to teach you in
Hayti as to the best mode of dealing with your Ethiopic colonists
lies patent, blood-stained and terrible before you, and should be
taken definitively to heart. But if you are willing that
Civilization and Religion--in short, all the highest developments of
individual and social life--should at once be swept away by a
desolating vandalism of African birth; if you do not recoil from the
blood-guiltiness that would stain your consciences through the
massacre of our fellow-countrymen in the West Indies, on account of
their race, complexion and enlightenment; finally, if you desire
those modern Hesperides to revert into primeval jungle, horrent lairs
wherein the Blacks, who, but a short while before, had been
ostensibly civilized, shall be revellers, as high-priests and [9]
devotees, in orgies of devil-worship, cannibalism, and obeah--dare to
give the franchise to those West Indian Colonies, and then rue the
consequences of your infatuation! . . .

Alas, if the foregoing summary of the ghastly imaginings of Mr.
Froude were true, in what a fool's paradise had the wisest and best
amongst us been living, moving, and having our being! Up to the date
of the suggestion by him as above of the alleged facts and