Froude, being
fair-minded and loyal to truth, as far as is compatible with his
sympathy for his hapless "Anglo-West Indians," could not give an
entirely ungrudging testimony in favour of the possible, nay
probable, voters by whose suffrages the supremacy of the Dark [44]
Parliament will be ensured, and the relapse into obeahism, devil-
worship, and children-eating be inaugurated. Nevertheless, Si sic
omnia dixisset--if he had said all things thus! Yes, if Mr. Froude
had, throughout his volume, spoken in this strain, his occasional
want of patience and fairness with regard to our male kindred might
have found condonation in his even more than chivalrous appreciation
of our womankind. But it has been otherwise. So we are forced to
try conclusions with him in the arena of his own selection--
unreflecting spokesman that he is of British colonialism, which, we
grieve to learn through Mr. Froude's pages, has, like the Bourbon
family, not only forgotten nothing, but, unfortunately for its own
peace, learnt nothing also.
BOOK I: ST. VINCENT
[44] The following are the words in which our traveller embodies the
main motive and purpose of his voyage:--
"My own chief desire was to see the human inhabitants, to learn what
they were doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking
about.
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