Froudacity; West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Part 5

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 "pa.s.sed 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 emanc.i.p.ation, 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 a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.s on to further clauses of this precious paragraph. Mr.

Froude's talent for eating his own words never had a more striking ill.u.s.tration 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. .h.i.therto 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 t.i.tled 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 grat.i.tude 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 facon de parler. Taking our author's "Anglo-West Indians" and the people of Ethiopian descent respectively, it would not be too much to a.s.sert, 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 cla.s.sic 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 ent.i.tled to declare, with the authority of self-consciousness, what a gentleman would or would not do under given circ.u.mstances.

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-cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s, rich men; while, on the other hand, we have had hundreds of white men who, under providential dispensation, belonged to the cla.s.s, poor men. Similarly, in the composition of a free mixed community, we have hundreds of both races belonging to the cla.s.s, competent and eligible; and hundreds of both races belonging to the cla.s.s, incompetent and ineligible: to both of which cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances is large enough to embrace the possibility of even children being, in emergencies, the most competent influencers of opinion and action.

But let us a.n.a.lyse 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 circ.u.mstances 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 const.i.tutions 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sessment 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 surpa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.es, 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. .h.i.t 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-pa.s.sage." 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 cla.s.s. 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 compet.i.tion 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.

BOOK III: THE NEGRO AS WORKER

[201] The laziness, the incurable idleness, of the Negro, was, both immediately before their emanc.i.p.ation 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 repet.i.tion 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 const.i.tution 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 Ca.n.a.l:--

"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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sert, on its behalf, that they alone should enjoy the privilege of resorting to misrepresentation to give colour, if not solidity, to their pretensions.

BOOK III: RELIGION FOR NEGROES

[207] Mr. Froude's pa.s.sing 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 att.i.tude 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):--