Mr. Froude's Negrophobia. 95 
" single licentious expression either in face or manner. 
" They seemed to me light-hearted, merry, innocent 
"> young women, as free from any thought of evil as the 
" peasant girls in Brittany." On reading the conclusion 
come to in the latter part of the foregoing extract, one 
cannot but deplore that, during his limited visit to the 
West Indies, Mr. Froude consistently refrained from 
coming into contact with any but the dominant classes 
in the Colonies. His chaff with the market women is 
one of the only two or three instances recorded in his 
book, where he talked with any of the labouring classes, 
whilst not a single instance can be recalled of any attempt 
on our author's part to make himself acquainted with 
those intermediate classes who, willy nilly, are the 
coming people of the West Indies. He was not unaware 
of their existence, but he studiously ignored it when he 
might have made acquaintance with it. The main burden 
of his book is, however, a fulmination against the growing 
importance of those classes. 
The general state of Dominica appeared to our 
Tourist as one of general dilapidation. Bad as things 
were they were going to worse, and it was all the 
fault of the Imperial authorities, who failed to apply 
the system of Indian Administration to this and the 
other West Indian Colonies. The local Council, with 
its Island Hampdens, was to him nothing less than 
anathema. He says cultivation is annually becoming less, 
and that this is the result of the present form of Govern- 
ment (p. 143). 
But our Tourist, although he might not propose, himself 
to study what men were doing with the land in Dominica, 
was not to be let off making some personal observation 
