What can Mr. Froude conceive any
sane man should see in common between the action of British and of
American statesmanship in the matter now under discussion? If his
utterance on this point is that of a British spokesman, let him abide
by his own verdict against his own case, as embodied in the words,
"the gulf which divides the two COLOURS is no arbitrary prejudice,"
which, coupled with his contention that the elevation of the Blacks
is not immediately feasible, discloses the wideness of divergence
between British and American political opinion on this identical
subject.
Mr. Froude is pathetically eloquent on the colour question. He tells
of the wide gulf between the two colours--we suppose it is as wide as
exists between his white horse and his black horse. Seriously,
however, does not this kind of talk savour only too much of the
slave-pen and the auction-block of the rice-swamp and the cotton-
field; of the sugar-plantation and the driver's lash? In the United
States alone, among all the slave-holding Powers, was the difference
of race and colour invoked openly and boldly to justify all the
enormities that [126] were the natural accompaniments of those
"institutions" of the Past.
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