But has Mr. Froude, in his present wild propaganda on behalf of political and, therefore, of social repression, anything analogous to those two above-specified auxiliaries to rely on? We trow not. Then why this frantic bluster and shouting forth of indiscreet aspirations on be half of a minority to whom accomplished facts, when not agreeable to or manipulated by themselves, are a perpetual grievance, generating life-long impotent protestations? Presumably there are possibilities the thoughts of which fascinate our author and his congeners in this, to our mind, vain campaign in the cause of social retrogression. But, be the incentives what they may, it might not be amiss on our [127] part to suggest to those impelled by them that the ignoring of Negro opinion in their calculations, though not only possible but easily practised fifty years ago, is a portentous blunder at the present time. Verbum sapienti.
Mr. Froude must see that he has set about his Negro-repression campaign in too blundering a fashion. He evidently expects to be able to throw dust into the eyes of the intelligent world, juggler-wise, through the agency of the mighty pronoun US, as representing the entire Anglo-Saxon race, in his advocacy of the now scarcely intelligible pretensions of a little coterie of Her Majesty's subjects in the West Indies. These gentry are hostile, he urges, to the presence of progressive Negroes on the soil of the tropics! Yet are these self-same Negroes not only natives, but active improvers and embellishers of that very soil. We cannot help concluding that this impotent grudge has sprung out of the additional fact that these identical Negroes constitute also a living refutation of the sinister predictions ventured upon generally against their race, with frantic recklessness, even within the last three decades, by affrighted slave-holders, of whose ravings Mr. Froude's book is only a [128] diluted echo, out of season and outrageous to the conscience of modern civilization.
It is patent, then, that the matters which Mr. Froude has sought to force up to the dignity of genetic rivalship, has nothing of that importance about it. His US, between whom and the Negro subjects of Great Britain the gulf of colour lies, comprises, as he himself owns, an outnumbered and, as we hope to prove later on, a not over-creditable little clique of Anglo-Saxon lineage. The real US who have started ahead of the Negroes, "through the training and discipline of centuries," are assuredly not anything like "represented" by the few pretentious incapables who, instead of conquering predominance, as they who deserve it always do, like men, are whimpering like babies after dearly coveted but utterly unattainable enjoyments—to be had at the expense of the interests of the Negroes whom they, rather amusingly, affect to despise. When Mr. Froude shall have become able to present for the world's contemplation a question respecting which the Anglo-Saxon family, in its grand world-wide predominance, and the African family, in its yet feeble, albeit promising, incipience of self-adjustment, shall [129] actually be competitors, then, and only then, will it be time to accept the outlook as serious. But when, as in the present case, he invokes the whole prestige of the Anglo-Saxon race in favour of the untenable pretensions of a few blasés of that race, and that to the social and political detriment of tens of thousands of black fellow-subjects, it is high time that the common sense of civilization should laugh him out of court. The US who are flourishing, or pining, as the case may be, in the British West Indies—by favour of the Colonial Office on the former hypothesis, or, on the second, through the misdirection of their own faculties—do not, and, in the very nature of things, cannot in any race take the lead of any set of men endowed with virile attributes, the conditions of the contest being on all sides identical.
Pass we onward to extract and comment on other passages in this very engaging section of Mr. Froude's book. On the same page (125) he says:—
"The African Blacks have been free enough for thousands, perhaps for ten thousands of years, and it has been the absence of restraint which has prevented them from becoming civilized."
[130] All this, perhaps, is quite true, and, in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary of our author's dogmatic assertions, we save time by allowing him all the benefit he can derive from whatever weight they might carry.
"Generation has followed generation, and the children are as like their fathers as the successive generations of apes."
To this we can have nothing to object; especially in view of what the writer goes on to say, and that on his own side of the hedge—somewhat qualified though his admission may be:—"The whites, it is likely enough, succeeded one another with the same similarity for a series of ages." Our speculator grows profoundly philosophic here; and in this mood thus entertains his readers in a strain which, though deep, we shall strive to find clear:—
"It is now supposed that human race has been on the planet for a hundred thousand years at least; and the first traces of civilization cannot be thrown back at furthest beyond six thousand. During all this time mankind went on treading in the same steps, century after century making no more advance than the birds and beasts."
[131] In all this there is nothing that can usefully be taken exception to; for speculation and conjecture, if plausible and attractive, are free to revel whenever written documents and the unmistakable indications of the earth's crust are both entirely at fault. Warming up with his theme, Mr. Froude gets somewhat ambiguous in the very next sentence. Says he:—