8
THE
ENGLISH
IN
THE
WEST
INDIES
introduced. The blacks settled into a condition of easy going peasant proprietors. But so far as the white or English interest was concerned, two causes which undermined West Indian prosperity continued to operate. So long as sugar maintained its price the planters with the help of coolie labour were able to struggle on ; but the beetroot bounties came to cut from under them the industry in which they had placed their main dependence ; the reports were con tinually darker of distress and rapidly approaching ruin. Petitions for protection were not or could not be granted. They were losing heart — the worst loss of all; while the Home Government, no longer with a view to separation, but with the hope that it might produce the same effect which it had produced elsewhere, were still looking to their old remedy of the extension of the principle of selfgovernment. One serious step was taken very recently towards the re-establishment of a constitution in Jamaica. I t was assumed that it had failed before because the blacks were not properly represented. The council was again made partially elective, and the black vote was admitted on the widest basis. A power was retained by the Crown of increasing in case of necessity the nominated official members to a number which would counterbalance the elected members; but the power had not been acted on and was not perhaps designed to continue, and a restless hope was said to have revived among the negroes that the day was not far off when Jamaica would be as Hayti and they would have the island to themselves. To a person like myself, to whom the preservation of the British Empire appeared to be the only public cause in which just now it was possible to feel concern, the problem was extremely interesting. I had no prejudice against selfgovernment. I had seen the Australian colonies growing under it in health and strength with a rapidity which rivalled the progress of the American Union itself. I had