[5] Last year had well advanced towards its middle—in fact it wasalready April, 1888—before Mr. Froude's book of travels in the WestIndies became known and generally accessible to readers in thoseColonies.
My perusal of it in Grenada about the period above mentioned disclosed,thinly draped with rhetorical flowers, the dark outlines of a scheme tothwart political aspiration in the Antilles. That project is sought tobe realized by deterring the home authorities from granting an electivelocal legislature, however restricted in character, to any of theColonies not yet enjoying such an advantage. An argument based on thecomposition of the inhabitants of those Colonies is confidently reliedupon to confirm the inexorable mood of Downing Street.
[6] Over-large and ever-increasing,—so runs the argument,—the Africanelement in the population of the West Indies is, from its past historyand its actual tendencies, a standing menace to the continuance ofcivilization and religion. An immediate catastrophe, social,political, and moral, would most assuredly be brought about by thegranting of full elective rights to dependencies thus inhabited.Enlightened statesmanship should at once perceive the immense benefitthat would ultimately result from such refusal of the franchise. Thecardinal recommendation of that refusal is that it would avertdefinitively the political domination of the Blacks, which mustinevitably be the outcome of any concession of the modicum of right soearnestly desired. The exclusion of the Negro vote being inexpedient,if not impossible, the exercise of electoral powers by the Blacks mustlead to their returning candidates of their o