The Negro in the West Indies. 249 



But should we be surprised at it ? Are nations made 

 in a day? Can the undercurrent of heredity be cut off by 

 an a6l of parliament ? I trow not ; and justice seems to 

 me to demand that we who brought the negro here for 

 our own purposes should drop our laissez faire policy 

 and step in now to save him from suicide as a race and 

 from relapsing into the predatory squatter his ancestor 

 was ere we brought him across the Atlantic. 



And what, the reader asks, has been the result of your 

 work as teachers of Christianity ? Has it failed ? 



In reply I assume the Hibernian attitude and answer 

 by the counter question, how long did it take to Chris- 

 tianize Great Britain, and were there not many secondary 

 causes facilitating that work and making for an end in 

 the same dire6lion ? And I would further ask, what per- 

 centage of white men are even now anything more than 

 nominal Christians? 



AH Africans in these parts are ostensibly Christians, 

 many really so, and but for the restraining influence the 

 partially understood and accepted tenets of " our faith" 

 have exerted, the negro would have reached his retrograde 

 goal long since. Christianity has not proved a failure 

 here any more than among our own English, Scotch and 

 Irish peasantry, who after centuries of its possession are 

 still in some localities steeped to the lips in superstition. 

 In every case where its truths have been honestly ac- 

 cepted and a6led upon, it has done just the same for the 

 African as for the European or New Zealander. As to 

 its indireft influence upon the masses, we are bold to 

 claim for it a power which has prevented the low moral 

 tone which obtains from sinking to still greater depths, 

 and supplied those unwritten codes which find their 



