Pernicious Social Barriers. 
46 
for the motherland in proportion as this class happens to he the more 
numerous, just as it is, at the same time, and taken as a whole, the 
better educated and the more intellectually gifted. 
169. The bonds of married life are tied more loosely here than they 
can possibly be in any other Colony. The least wealthy, yet to be sure 
rich, planters, the merchants, even Government officers, inspectors, es- 
tates' managers, and their servants are married, but usually live in con- 
cubinage with coloured people, negro or Indian women. Many chil- 
dren born of such unions receive their education in England, yea, even 
in South Germany. Endowed with the most ample physical and intel- 
lectual gifts, son and daughter return .home, to their native soil where, 
upon their first footfall they find themselves condemned, like Pariah 
and Helot, back to the existence which English national Pride and 
Slavery, 1 1 1 a.t dark spot in the history of mankind, have devised for them. 
They say good-bye to Europe but cannot take farewell of all the claims 
to such a life as that to which they are entitled by their refinement and 
wealth, because the father at his death frequently bequeaths them all his 
property. Life in all its bitterness spurns them with frigid callousness, 
contempt dodges their every step, and scorn is meted out to those who 
strive to force their way through these cold and inhuman barriers. Deep 
hatred tills the impassionate heart with disdain for the ideals which 
European education taught them on the other side of the ocean, and the 
breast burning for satisfaction soon tears away and casts aside the veil 
of womanliness. Finery, the grasp at temporary pleasure, and the taste 
for illicit love are in very great measure the sad consequences of this 
neglect, Tf in isolated cases the European disregards these prejudices 
and still marries a coloured woman upon whose reputation even the 
most stinging envy can find no stain, the blot of birth indelibly remains: 
all the aristocratic circles are open to the husband, but to the wife they 
are impenetrably closed. Thus in the hearts of the coloured people there 
is developed that passionate hatred which hovers over the Colony like 
an Avenging Angel more threatening than the one the negroes cherish : 
for, with the latter the sources are much more superficial. 
170. Still more striking however is the reciprocal action which this 
complete segregation of white society from that of the coloured exer- 
cises again upon (lie different gradations of the latter, and in this social 
relationship of the Present may perhaps lie the only guarantee that the 
motherland will retain her hold on the Colony in the Future. The 
coloured man regards the mulatto and creole negro with the same con- 
tempt that the latter looks upon the non-creole negro who comes here as 
an emigrant or freed slave, although he shares bis colour absolutely. Tn 
their mouths the word “nigger’ is the commonest term of abuse, and 
woe betide him who offends his falsely-understood feeling of freedom and 
illimitable arrogance. “I am a free man, have the same rights as you, 
and know how to defend them,” are words to which the most harmless 
remark, or an apparent disregard for their boundless oft-ridiculous 
self-confidence gives rise. The contempt shown the negroes by the mul- 
attoes is mutual and often enough have I heard songs, wherein the 
negroes are so fond of expressing their feelings of hatred or of love, 
amongst which the following, of which T am only mentioning its gen- 
