The Negro in the West Indies. 245 



** inhuman monsters," the slave holders — it would have 

 told with splendid effeft, but now the world is before 

 him, and nature pouring her treasure at his feet, the 

 average black is yearly growing more indifferent to the 

 shelter that a substantial roof-tree affords. The simple 

 truth that lies at the bottom of the mistakes made about 

 the negro is in the estimate of his capacities for enjoy- 

 ment and suffering. — progress and civilization. The ques- 

 tion may occur to the reader, however, how is it you talk 

 of a retrograde movement in their ranks,, if, in spite of 

 slavery and all its attendant evils, the slave became 

 something or was something from which retrogression 

 was possible ? The answer is found where it is least ■ 

 likely to be sought for. The new conditions of life — his j 

 being a mere item in the " estate's live-stock" notwith- 

 standing— aftually raised him. Conta6l with the white 

 man,^ a^being of an order as much above him as the 

 classic heroes were above the " vulgar multitude," was 

 an element in his new environment which counter- 

 balanced much of the evil he had to suffer. Slavery 

 brought him into conta6l with new and to him as yet 

 unknown phases of life, as order, law, safety, labour, and 

 the refle6lion of, if not the a6lucil exemplification of, a 

 Dure religion — a religion which ultimately broke his 

 shackles. All this was to him as the regimen of school 



to the boy. The crowning lesson he learnt was to labour 

 and be proud of his work. In every negro there is 

 possibly an organ of industry, or whatever equivalent 

 phrenologists locate in the brain for it, though one is 

 sorely tempted to doubt it sometimes ; but the artificial 

 position in which we have now placed him relieves him 

 of the necessity of cultivating that virtue. It has been, 



II 



