Froudacity | Page 4

53-55 Reform in Trinidad: 55-80 Negro Felicity in the West
Indies: 81-110
BOOK III.
Social Revolution: 113-174 West Indian Confederation: 175-200 The
Negro as a Worker: 201-206 Religion for Negroes: 207-230
BOOK IV.
Historical Summary or Résumé: 233-261, end

FROUDACITY
PREFACE
[5] Last year had well advanced towards its middle--in fact it was
already April, 1888--before Mr. Froude's book of travels in the West
Indies became known and generally accessible to readers in those
Colonies.
My perusal of it in Grenada about the period above mentioned
disclosed, thinly draped with rhetorical flowers, the dark outlines of a
scheme to thwart political aspiration in the Antilles. That project is
sought to be realized by deterring the home authorities from granting
an elective local legislature, however restricted in character, to any of
the Colonies not yet enjoying such an advantage. An argument based
on the composition of the inhabitants of those Colonies is confidently
relied upon to confirm the inexorable mood of Downing Street.
[6] Over-large and ever-increasing,--so runs the argument,--the African
element in the population of the West Indies is, from its past history
and its actual tendencies, a standing menace to the continuance of
civilization and religion. An immediate catastrophe, social, political,
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 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