THE
ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES. CHAPTER
I.
Colonial policy — Union or separation — Self-government — Varieties of con dition —The Pacific colonies — The West Indies —Proposals for a West Indian federation —Nature of the population—American union and British plantations — Original conquest of the West Indies.
THE Colonial Exhibition has come and gone. Delegates from our great self-governed dependencies have met and consulted together, and have determined upon a common course of action for Imperial defence. The British race dispersed over the world have celebrated the Jubilee of the Queen with an enthusiasm evidently intended to bear aspecial and peculiar meaning. The people of these islands and their sons and brothers and friends and kinsfolk in Canada, in Australia, and in New Zealand have declared with a general voice, scarcely disturbed by a discord, that they are fellow-subjects of a single sovereign, that they are united in feeling, united in loyalty, united in interest, and that they wish and mean to preserve unbroken the integrity of the British Empire. This is the answer which the democracy has given to the advocates of the doctrine of separation. The desire for union while it lasts is its own realisation. As long as we have no wish to part we shall not part, and the wish can never rise if when there is occa sion we can meet and deliberate together with the same regard for each other's welfare which has been shown in the late conference in London. Events mock at human foresight, and nothing is cerB