WEST
INDIAN
CONFEDERATION
123
•chief slave dealers in the world. We peopled our islands with a population of blacks more dense by far in proportion to the whites than France or Spain ever ventured to do. We did not recognise, as the French and Spaniards did, that if our western colonies were permanently to belong to us, we must occupy them ourselves. We thought only of the immediate profit which was to be gathered out of the slave gangs ; and the disproportion of the two races — always dangerously large — has increased with ever-gathering velocity since the emancipation. It is now beyond control on the old lines. The scanty whites are told that they must work out their own salvation on equal terms with their old servants. The relation is an impossible one. The independent energy which we may fairly look for in Australia and New Zealand is not to be looked for in Jamaica and Barbadoes ; and the problem must have a new solution. Confederation is to be the remedy, we are told. Let the islands be combined under a constitution. The whites collectively will then be a considerable body, and can assert themselves successfully. Confederation is, as I said before of the movement in Trinidad, but a turn of the kaleidoscope, the same pieces with a new pattern. A West Indian selfgoverned Dominion is possible only with a full negro vote. If the whites are to combine, so will the blacks. It will be a rule by the blacks and for the blacks. Let a generation o r two pass by and carry away with them the old traditions, and an English governor-general will be found presiding over a black council, delivering the speeches made for him by a black prime minister ; and how long could this endure ? No English gentleman would consent to occupy des esclaves : et ne se rendit enfin qu'aux pressantes sollicitations qu'on luy faisoit de leur octroyer cette permission que parce qu'on lui remontra que e'étoit un moyen infaillible et l'unique qu'il y eût pour inspirer le culte du vrai Dieu aux Africains, les retirer de l'idolâtrie, et les faire persévérer jusqu'à la mort dans la religion chrétienne qu'on leur feroit embrasser.’ —Vol. iv. p. 14.