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MULATTOS AS MASTERS.

ing by their voice and look, also, that they know that this is a false boast.

And then they are by no means popular with the negro. A negro, as a rule, will not serve a mulatto when he can serve a European or a white Creole. He thinks that the mulatto is too near akin to himself to be worthy of any respect. In his passion he calls him a nigger-and protests that he is not, and never will be like buckra mañ,

The negroes complain that the colored men are sly and cunning; that they cannot be trusted as masters; that they tyrannize, bully, and deceive; in short, that they have their own negro faults. There may, doubtless, be some truth in this. They have still a portion of their lesson to learn; perhaps the greater portion. I affirm merely that the lesson is being learned. A race of people with its good and ill qualities is not formed in a couple of centuries.

And if it be fated that the Anglo-Saxon race in these islands is to yield place to another people, and to abandon its ground, having done its appointed work, surely such a decree should be no cause of sorrow. To have done their appointed work, and done it well,—should not this be enough for any men?

But there are they who protest that such ideas as these with reference to this semi-African people are unpatriotic; are unworthy of an Englishman, who should foster the ascendency of his own race and his own country. Such men will have it as an axiom, that when an Englishman has been master once, he should be master always that his dominion should not give way to strange hands, or his ascendency yield itself to strange races. It is unpatriotic, forsooth, to suggest that these tawny children of the sun should get the better of their British lords, and rule the roast themselves!

ENGLAND AND THE WEST INDIES.

85

Even were it so-should it even be granted that such an idea is unpatriotic, one would then be driven back to ask whether patriotism be a virtue. It is at any rate a virtue in consequence only of the finite aspirations of mankind. To love the universe which God has made, were man capable of such love, would be a loftier attribute than any feeling for one's own country. The Gentile was as dear as the Jew; the Samaritans as much prized as they of Galilee, or as the children of Judah.

The present position and prospects of the children of Great Britain are sufficiently noble, and sufficiently extended. One need not begrudge to others their limited share in the population and government of the world's welfare. While so large a part of North America and Australia remain still savage-waiting the white man's foot-waiting, in fact, for the foot of the Englishman, there can be no reason why we should doom our chil dren to swelter and grow pale within the tropics. A certain work has been ours to do there, a certain amount of remaining work it is probably our lot to complete. But when that is done; when civilization, commerce, and education shall have been spread; when sufficient of our blood shall have been infused into the veins of those children of the sun; then, I think, we may be ready, without stain to our patriotism, to take off our hats and bid farewell to the West Indies.

And be it remembered that I am here speaking of the general ascendency, not of the political power of these colored races. It may be that after all we shall still have to send out some white Governor with a white aide-de-camp and a white private secretary-some three or four unfortunate white men to support the dignity of the throne of Queen Victoria's great-grandchild's grand child.

Such may be, or may not be. To my thinking,

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MISSION OF ENGLAND.

it would be more for our honor that it should not be so. If the honor, glory, and well-being of the child be dear to the parents, Great Britain should surely be more proud of the United States than of any of her colonies.

We Britishers have a noble mission. The word I know is unpopular, for it has been foully misused; but it is in itself a good word, and none other will supply its place. We have a noble mission, but we are never content with it. It is not enough for us to beget nations, civilize countries, and instruct in truth and knowledge the dominant races of the coming ages. All this will not suffice unless also we can maintain a king over them! What is it to us, or even to them, who may be their king or ruler-or, to speak with a nearer approach to sense, from what source they be governed—so long as they be happy, prosperous and good? And yet there are men mad enough to regret the United States! Many men are mad enough to look forward with anything but composure to the inevitable, happily inevitable day, when Australia shall follow in the same path.

We have risen so high that we may almost boast to have placed ourselves above national glory. The welfare of the coming world is now the proper care of the Anglo-Saxon race.

The colored people, I have said, have made their way into society in Jamaica. That is, they have made a certain degree of impression on the millstone; which will therefore soon be perforated through and through, and then crumble to pieces like pumice-stone. Nay, they have been or are judges, attorneys-general, prime ministers, leaders of the opposition, and what not. The men have so far made their way. The difficulty now is with

the women.

And in high questions of society here is always the

stumbling-block. All manners of men can get themselves into a room together without difficulty, and can behave themselves with moderate forbearance to each other when in it. But there are points on which ladies are harder than steel, stiffer than their brocaded silks, more obdurate than whalebone.

"He wishes me to meet Mrs. So-and-So," a lady said to me, speaking of her husband, "because Mr. So-andSo is a very respectable good sort of man. I have no objection whatever to Mr. So-and-So; but if I begin with her, I know there will be no end."

On

Probably not," I said; "when you once commence, you will doubtless have to go on-in the good path." I confess that the last words were said sotto voce. that occasion the courage was wanting in me to speak out my mind. The lady was very pretty, and I could not endure to be among the unfavored ones. "That is just what I have said to Mr. ; but he never thinks about such things; he is so very imprudent. If I ask Mrs. So-and-So here, how can I keep out Mrs. Such-a-One? They are both very respectable, no doubt; but what were their grandmothers ?"

Ah! if we were to think of their grandmothers, it would doubtless be a dark subject. But what, O lady, of their grandchildren? That may be the most important, and also most interesting side from whence to view the family.

"These people marry now," another lady said to me— a lady not old exactly, but old enough to allude to such a subject; and in the tone of her voice I thought I could catch an idea that she conceived them in doing so to be trenching on the privileges of their superiors. "But their mothers and grandmothers never thought of looking to that at all. Are we to associate with the children of

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LIFE OF COLORED WOMEN.

such women, and teach our daughters that vice is not to be shunned?"

Ah! dear lady-not old, but sufficiently old-this statement of yours is only too true. Their mothers and grandmothers did not think much of matrimony-had but little opportunity of thinking much of it. But with whom

did the fault chiefly lie? These very people of whom we are speaking, would they not be your cousins but for the lack of matrimony? Your uncle, your father, your cousins, your grandfather, nay, your very brother, are they not the true criminals in this matter-they who have lived in this unhallowed state with women of a lower race? For the sinners themselves of either sex I would not ask your pardon; but you might forgive the children's children.

The life of colored women in Jamaica some years since was certainly too often immoral. They themselves were frequently illegitimate, and they were not unwilling that their children should be so also. To such a one it was preferable to be a white man's mistress, than the wife of such as herself; and it did not bring on them the same disgrace, this kind of life, as it does on women in England, or even, I may say, on women in Europe, nor the same bitter punishment. Their master, though he might be stern enough and a tyrant, as the owner of slaves living on his own little principality might probably be, was kinder to her than to the other females around her, and in a rough sort of way was true to her. He did not turn her out of the house, and she found it to be promotion to be the mother of his children and the upper servant in his establishment. And in those days, days still so near to us, the colored woman was a slave herself, unless specially manumitted either in her own generation or in that