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benevolence, we emancipated, do not feel that they are particularly obliged to us. They think, if they think at all, that they were ill treated originally, and have received no more than was due to them, and that perhaps it was not benevolence at all on our part, but a desire to free ourselves from the reproach of slaveholding. At any rate, the tendencies now in operation are loosening the hold which we possess on the islands, and the longer they last the looser that hold will become. French influence is in no danger of dying out in Martinique and Guadaloupe. The Spanish race is not dying in Cuba and Puerto Rico. England will soon be no more than a name in Barbadoes and the Antilles. Having acquitted our conscience by emancipation, we have left our West Indian interest to sink or swim. Our principle has been to leave each part of our empire (except the East Indies) to take care of itself : we give the various inhabitants liberty, and what we understand by fair play ; that we have any further moral responsibilities towards them we do not imagine, even in our dreams, when they have ceased to be of commercial importance to us; and we assume that the honour of being British subjects will suffice to secure their allegiance. It will not suffice, as we shall eventually discover. We have decided that if the West Indies are to become again prosperous they must recover by their own energy. Our other colonies can do without help ; why not they ? We ought to remember that they are not like the other colonies. We occupied them at a time when slavery was considered a lawful institution, profitable to ourselves and useful to the souls of the negroes, who were brought by it within reach of salvation. We became ourselves the 1
1
It was on this ground alone that slavery was permitted in the French islands. Labat says : ‘ C'est une loi très-ancienne que les terres soumises aux rois de France rendent libres tous ceux qui s'y peuvent retirer. C'est ce qui fit que le roi Louis XIII, de glorieuse mémoire, aussi pieux qu'il étoit sage, eut toutes les peines du monde à consentir que les premiers habitants des isles eussent