For it was not long in the life of many of the
expatriated Africans before numbers of their own race obtained
freedom, and, eventually, wealth sufficient for purchasing black
slaves on their [199] own account. In other respects, too (outwardly
at least), the prosperous career of such individual Blacks could not
fail to induce a revulsion of thought, whereby the attribution of
unapproachable powers exclusively to the Whites became a matter
earnestly reconsidered by the Africans. Centuries of such
reconsideration have produced the natural result in the West Indies.
With the daily competition in intelligence, refinement, and social
and moral distinction, which time and events have brought about
between individuals of the two races, nothing, surely, has resulted,
nor has even been indicated, to re-infuse the ancient colour-dread
into minds which had formerly been forced to entertain it; and still
less to engender it in bosoms to which such a feeling cannot, in the
very nature of things, be an inborn emotion. Now, can Mr. Froude
show us by what process he would be able to infuse in the soul of an
entire population a sentiment which is both unnatural and beyond
compulsion?
The foregoing remarks roughly apply to preeminence given to outward
distinction, and the conditions under which mainly it impresses and
is accepted by men not yet arrived at the [200] essentially
intellectual stage.
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