The West Indies and the Spanish Main. Anthony Trollope
claim; or seem to allow it, if practicable? "White art thou, my friend? Be a white man if thou wilt, or rather if thou canst. All we require of thee is that there remains no negro ignorance, no negro cunning, no negro apathy of brain. Forbear those vain attempts to wash out that hair of thine, and make it lank and damp. We will not regard at all, that little wave in thy locks; not even that lisp in thy tongue. But struggle, my friend, to be open in thy speech. Any wave there we cannot but regard. Speak out the thought that is in thee; for if thy thoughts lisp negrowards, our verdict must be against thee." Is it not thus that we should accept their little efforts?
But we do not accept them so. In lieu thereof, we admit no claim that can by any evidence be rejected; and, worse than that, we impute the stigma of black blood where there is no evidence to support such imputation. "A nice fellow, Jones; eh? very intelligent, and well mannered," some stranger says, who knows nothing of Jones's antecedents. "Yes, indeed," answers Smith, of Jamaica; "a very decent sort of fellow. They do say that he's coloured; of course you know that." The next time you see Jones, you observe him closely, and can find no trace of the Ethiop. But should he presently descant on purity of blood, and the insupportable impudence of the coloured people, then, and not till then, you would begin to doubt.
But these are evils which beset merely the point of juncture between the two races. With nine-tenths of those of mixed breed no attempts at concealment are by any means possible; and by them, of course, no such attempts are made. They take their lot as it is, and I think that on the whole they make the most of it. They of course are jealous of the assumed ascendency of the white men, and affect to show, sometimes not in the most efficacious manner, that they are his equal in external graces as in internal capacities. They are imperious to the black men, and determined on that side to exhibit and use their superiority. At this we can hardly be surprised. If we cannot set them a better lesson than we do, we can hardly expect the benefit which should arise from better teaching.
But the great point to be settled is this: whether this race of mulattos, quadroons, mustes, and what not, are capable of managing matters for themselves; of undertaking the higher walks of life; of living, in short, as an independent people with a proper share of masterdom; and not necessarily as a servile people, as hewers of wood and drawers of water? If not, it will fare badly for Jamaica, and will probably also fare badly in coming years for the rest of the West Indies. Whether other immigration be allowed or no, of one kind of immigration the supply into Jamaica is becoming less and less. Few European white men now turn thither in quest of fortune. Few Anglo-Saxon adventurers now seek her shores as the future home of their adoption. The white man has been there, and has left his mark. The Creole children of these Europeans of course remain, but their numbers are no longer increased by new comers.
But I think there is no doubt that they are fit—these coloured people, to undertake the higher as well as lower paths of human labour. Indeed, they do undertake them, and thrive well in them now, much to the disgust of the so-esteemed ascendant class. They do make money, and enjoy it. They practise as statesmen, as lawyers, and as doctors in the colony; and, though they have not as yet shone brightly as divines in our English Church, such deficiency may be attributed more to the jealousy of the parsons of that Church than to their own incapacity.
There are, they say, seventy thousand coloured people in the island, and not more than fifteen thousand white people. As the former increase in intelligence, it is not to be supposed that they will submit to the latter. Nor are they at all inclined to submission.
But they have still an up-hill battle before them. They are by no means humble in their gait, and their want of meekness sets their white neighbours against them. They are always proclaiming by their voice and look that they are as good as the white man; but they are always showing 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 man.
The negroes complain that the coloured 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!
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.
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