Chap. I.—B. S.] THE IRREPRESSIBLE NEGRO. 7 
changing for a while the office of narrator for that of 
chorus of an antique tragedy by producing forthwith 
a leading article on a subject worn threadbare long 
before I left London by constant discussion of the Ja- 
maica outbreak. I have had my little say about it at 
St. James’s Hall, was applauded for it by the crowded 
meeting—the largest anti-negro demonstration ever 
held in London,—and abused in company with the 
majority of the speakers by some of the newspapers, 
praised by others. Why should I by reiterating my 
views in this place put some of my readers in bad 
humour ? I will not do it, convinced as I am that all 
those who, like myself, have lived amongst the blacks, 
and are honest and bold enough to make known the 
sum of their experience, have but one opinion about 
them, viz. that the negroes will never be able to take 
a leading position, educate them as much as you may, 
and that therefore all attempts to place them on a foot¬ 
ing of equality with the white man must prove futile. 
. The negro, the irrepressible negro, naturally formed 
the principal topic of conversation on board the 
mail steamer on my outward passage, and as nearly 
everybody connected with the West Indies had more 
or less suffered by the policy pursued towards these 
islands, the general tone was not free from bitterness. 
The effect of the Jamaica outbreak was just as might 
have been predicted by any one conversant with the 
negro character from personal observation. When the 
news of the steps Governor Eyre had adopted spread 
through the West-Indies, nothing could exceed the 
good behaviour of the blacks. They were as obliging 
