PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 



79 



to this social revolution and ruin. The advance of 

 the emancipation theories of Europe in the Antilles, 

 and the gradual extinction of the white race there, is 

 unmistakably indicated by the state of the British 

 West Indies. There we see at a glance the true ten- 

 dencies and results of the application of the social 

 theories of Europe to the communities of America. 

 The details of their history show the sufferings of the 

 whites, and the decline of public prosperity and 

 social welfare ; and indicate an ultimate state of bar- 

 barism as the social condition of the West India 

 Islands. These truths are acknowledged by very 

 competent authority in Great Britain. One of the 

 leading London journals lately held the following 

 language on this subject. 1 



"We have of late, as occasion served, directed the 

 attention of our readers to the condition of the most 

 valuable of our West India possessions, and have 

 endeavored to trace to its true source, in a vicious 

 and mistaken policy, the ruin which not only 

 impends, but has actually fallen upon those islands, 

 once the boast and glory of the British Crown — now 

 the by-word of the commercial nations of the earth. 

 Jamaica, by nature the richest of these dependencies, 

 is reduced to a state of collapse, from which recovery 



1 London Morning Herald, 8th September, 1855. 



