And so it will always be. It is hard even for trained thinkers intent upon their work to explain precisely why a true idea always wins-except indeed by saying what to-day is an argument only with the Record, and the Record's bitterest antagonist, that the Judge of all the earth can do only right, and that He is irresistible - but the fact remains. Great ideas have strength. Let the strongest man in Europe try a fall with the Emperor Napoleon and he will be beaten, will possibly end his days in rowing a boat under the lash through the bayous of Cayenne. Nevertheless, as sure as the idea of freedom is higher than the idea of authority, so surely will Napoleonism pass away, leaving only the trace a beacon light leaves when it flashes on a quagmire or a rock. Nothing on earth at this moment seems so invincible as English pauperism. It is pro

know not, possibly from some low greed for gain which only the negro can secure to us, but come it will at last, and then the idea clothed and visible will rule with the tyrannical sway all Anglo-Saxon ideas assume. Meanwhile it is well for the few who have not lost the capacity for intellectual faith to march on, carrying their idea over an ever widening range until at last the body is found, careless of those who satirize them as fanatics, dangerous to those who denounce them as evil men, firm even against those who, seeing as clearly as themselves, will lend no hand to help because the workmen reek so with their toil. Was ever thusiast yet so silly as he who first put a seed into the ground and expected the rotten mite to grow?

en

From the Saturday Review.

IN COLONIES.

tected by the faith of the strongest people THE GOvernment of cOLOURED RACES that ever lived, by the impregnable earth wall of human ignorance, by a wretched perversion of the words of the Son of God, and it will fall nevertheless, fall till its defence will seem, not to our "sons" or our posterity, but to us, a momentary aberration which volumes will be written to explain. Ideas are stronger than armies, for they can not only produce armies, as the idea which led to the Crusades did, but they can borrow armies, as the idea which produced Abolition did, and as the idea which demands justice in Jamaica will do. These good Tories think they will have a majority upon that question, which is really an "idea,”the right of the British subject with pigment in his cuticle to the same measure as the British subject without pigmentand their view, though an improbable one, is of course a possible one. What then? The Sadducees may say the true policy is to see that the people of Jamaica are oppressed, and be silent lest there should be a fuss about it, and uncultivated people say things pleasing to the Almighty but not to Oxford, and the Sadducees will be for their ends in the right. And the idea will march on nevertheless, till it meets some day, and at no long day, the flesh, beautiful or hideous, which will clothe it with the required physical power, and the Sadducee will cower first of all, and acknowledge, "Lo! here is Truth armed." Fighting her is not my business, but concession. Why fight with expediencies which have become strong? Whence the flesh is to come we

PERHAPS nothing so much illustrates the careless hand-to-mouth state of political opinion in England as the utter ignorance of two-thirds of the people, and the utter indifference of nearly the whole other third, as to the principles on which alien and dissimilar races ought to be governed. Whoever at any time thinks at all on the subr ject of civil government must think on this. But the fact is that, in England, very few people ever do think of the theory of government. We pride ourselves on our " practical" character and habits. We rejoice that we are not as other nations are, theorists and formalists. We have shaped, rather than designed, a form of government which altogether suits our disposition and our wants, but which is so full of modifications, inconsistencies, checks and counterchecks, that we should wholly despair of making it intelligible to an enlightened citizen of those nations which rejoice in the elaborate enunciation of first principles, and the rigid formularies of codified constitutions. We do not care very much about first principles. We fashion for ourselves a Parliament and Government, and refashion them as we feel the need of change. But we leave to a select few, whether natives or foreigners, the duty of explaining, criticizing, and formalizing what we have done.

This so-called "practical" character of our minds has made most of us wholly in

different, if not blind, to one of the greatest | preacher or law student occasionally falls in problems which can puzzle the ingenuity our way; but it would hardly be accurate of statesmen. For certainly no question to say that either of these specimens is gencan well be more puzzling than this: erally calculated to excite sympathy or lik"How ought subject alien races to be gov- ing beyond the unetuous pale of Exeter erned?" Even when the unexpected flash Hall. As a rule, English people out of of a Jamaica rebellion or tumult startles London see little either of the Eastern or us, we fail to recognize in the event a symp- the African races. They do not know tom which we ought long since to have what it is to grow up with, and in close ⚫studied and examined. We had a graver proximity to, a race of different origin, warning in the Indian mutiny; smaller ones manners, thoughts, intellect, from themin disturbances at St. Vincent's and Anti- selves, and bearing on their bodies the gua. The Indian mutiny was put down, strong ineradicable signs of this hereditary but it flared long enough to startle the difference. Not only are the races differwhole of England with its unwonted blaze. ent in all other characteristics, but they The riots at St. Vincent's and Antigua were have the two signal marks of distinction also put down, though not in a very satis- a distinct feature and a distinct colour. Of factory or honourable way; for the one re- this contiguity of populations nothing is quired the intervention of French troops, known in England, as it is known in the and the other left vestiges of greater alarm East Indies, in the West Indies, and the on the minds of those who had been as- Southern States of the American Federasailed than of those who disturbed the tion. But something distantly resembling public peace. The final suppression of the it is known in our larger towns. There, first, and the comparative obscurity of the mixed up with our own native artisans, is a latter insurrections deadened inquiry and large body of Irish immigrants - different thought in England. "Practical" men took indeed in race, lineament, and religion, but it for granted that, if such outbreaks did not different in colour or language. Such occur, some means would be found to put dissimilarity as does exist, though fruitful in them down. So all concern was dissipated, small disputes, and inimical to fusion, does men ceased to think on the subject, and its not prevent a general harmony of existence important bearings on the relations, not only and occasional intermarriages. It gives, of England, but of other European coun- however, a peculiar, and perhaps not a detries, to other multifarious races were soon sirable, character to the life of those dislost sight of. tricts in which the two races are found toYet, even in an age in which intelligent gether. There is a great deal of Celtic artisans allow themselves to be persuaded impulse, of Celtic warmth, of Celtic mobiliby a powerful demagogue that there was a ty, and Celtic quickness, together with a time in the history of England when the certain degree of Celtic insincerity and want right of voting for members of Parliament of truth, thrown, in casual and unadjusted was possessed by all yearly tenants of houses proportions, into mixture with the dull (as that phrase is now understood), it may stolid obstinacy of the lower Englishman. not be impossible to convince some persons The result is not, on the whole, partcularly that the question which we have propound-pleasing. But then there is this to be reed, even if difficult of solution, is worthy of membered. Both the races thus brought consideration. To us, as a people, it is one together in frequent collision and only parof urgent importance. To others- for ex-tial combination are of the lowest and poorample, Holland, France, Spain, and the est class. All the temptations and all the United States-it is only of less import- irritations of poverty are common to both. ance because their coloured and alien sub- And the result could hardly be expected to jects are less numerous than ours. But it be pleasing. When the Irish become disis important to all Europe and to the Euro- proportionately numerous (which they have pean races in North America, because both a faculty of becoming), their characteristics Europe and America will, every succeeding give a decided tone and colour to the subyear, have greater intercourse with this urb or district. What that tone and that motley herd of dissimilar populations. In colour are, magistrates, vestry-men, and England we see little of these races. A parish officers can best define. Whatever Lascar at a crossing, an old negro servant they are (and they are not unmixedly bad) preserved as a relic by an only half-ruined they illustrate-partially, indeed, imperJamaica family, are objects which excite fectly, and suggestively-what it is to deal occasional sympathy or liking or pity in the with a whole population of which not onemind of the worldly Londoner. A negro | half or two thirds, but eight or nine-tenths,

are as dissimilar and as alien from the gov-instinct of the Oriental. It saps the innate erning race as the great Author of mankind submissiveness of the natives, and stimulates can make his creatures. a rebellious contempt which one day may be fatal."

Does it ever occur to mere loungers in a London club, laying down the law with a This doctrine, if it has some followers, positiveness of assertion that makes men of has many opponents in England. All the experience and knowledge dumb with religious world is opposed to it. It is apamazement, that there are not only inherent parently opposed to the teaching of the but increasing difficulties in the way of gov- Gospel. It is not readily reconcilable with erning these dusky populations? That such those texts which inculcate humility, longis the case will be testified by every English- suffering, and turning the cheek to the man who returns from official, professional, smiter. But, if this be so, and if India can or commercial life in India or the West In- not be retained by a precise adhesion to the dies. It is natural that the feeling of na- most pacific texts of the New Testament, tionality, and the desire of vindicating it, some rather embarrassing questions present should in every people be intensified and themselves. If India were Christian exasperated by the presence of another, that is, if the people of India admitted the and that a dominant, race; and we must obligation of Christian precepts of course not be surprised if the mixed races who every English officer of every kind might make up the population of British India-be expected to deal with them as he would Hindoos, Mussulmans, and what not deal with his own countrymen at home. should gradually learn from the incumbent sway of England the dreamy notion of a united Indian People. It may take generations to give the vision body and form; but whether it ever will-or will within any assignable period of time become a reality, depends, according to all trustworthy accounts, much more upon Englishmen, English officers civil and military, and English residents, than on the natives themselves. "As long as we prove ourselves worthy to govern and capable of governing so long shall we continue to govern. From the moment we betray the slightest con sciousness of incapacity, from that moment our raj is doomed." Such is the testimony of those who know India best and longest. And what they mean is this: In order to govern an Eastern people, you must not shirk the outward and visible signs of governing. You must not appear to fear them, or to fear anything. You must not allow the people to take liberties with you. You must not allow them to jostle you in the streets, as they now do in Bombay. You must assert your authority in ways which might be thought strange in England. If," say they, "you treat a Bombay man or a Bengalee as you would treat an Englishman of the lower class, you do not conciliate him; you simply affront his pride. You are of the governing race; With regard to the negroes, a superficial yet you allow him to push and jostle you as contrast is established between them and he would push or jostle some wretched Pa- the natives of India by the readiness with riah. He knows you do not permit this which the former have learned to profess through pure affection. Therefore, he in- Christianity. It must be remembered that fers, you do it through fear. That simple the negroes who are known to us as Chrissuspicion of fear on your part is a loss tians had no choice but between Christianiequal to the loss of a great battle. It de- ty and Paganism. No other religion, at the stroys the feeling of veneration, which is an | time of their conversion, was known to

66

But not only is this not the case now, but there seems no chance of its ever being the case. There are, and probably will continue to be, conversions, more or less genuine, to Christianity all over the peninsula. But to suppose that the mass of the Mussulman and Hindoo population will ever profess Christianity of the English Protestant type is simply one of those expectations on which no statesman would ever think of acting. And so long as they remain Mussulmans or Hindoos, so long will their awe and obedience be ensured by those virtues on the part of their masters which, though co-existent with many Christian qualities, are not themselves specially and eminently typical of the Christian character. To hold out-numbering foes at bay, to preserve a haughty and imperious demeanour amid treacherous and rebellious subjects, to forego not one jot of merited severity even when all around is ominous of danger and perfidy, these are the virtues which awe the Eastern mind; but they are not the virtues most specially inculcated in the Epistles of St. James or St. John. And we fear that those virtues which are most specially enjoined by the last-named Apostle are signally calculated to excite in the Eastern mind feelings as opposed as well can be to awe, reverence, and submission.

them.

Many persons who speak with a personal knowledge of the West Indies say that events have long been moving up to this catastrophe; that it was long foreseen; that it was a mere question of sooner or later; that the conflict was simply postponed by tact and management; and that it will again be repeated at no distant day. We have not experience or knowledge sufficient to affirm or deny these allegations. But we feel assured of this. If there is any truth in them, two things are clear. First, that there can be no public opinion in the West Indies; only heated passion in two hostile camps. Next, that to attempt to govern the West Indies on the principles of Exeter Hall would be as unfair to our white brethren as to govern them on the principles of Colonel Hobbs, Colonel Whitfield, and the West India ensigns would be cruel to our black subjects. Who shall discover the true art of governing the two races? The French treat their free blacks as aliens, amenable to police protection and police supervision. But this cannot now be even tried in English colonies. Such are the fruits of a government founded on a public opinion of the narrowest metropolitan pretensions. The two races are becoming intolerant of each other, and there is no powerful dispassionate mediator between them possessing the requisite knowledge of local habits, relations, and prejudices.

At this day it is an open question | similar races, of the most opposite natures, whether Mahometanism, whenever it does are kept from flying at one another only by compete with Christianity in Central and a Power three thousand miles away? And even in Western Africa, does not compete that they cannot be so kept apart forever, successfully. Certainly the superior tribes, this Jamaica outbreak shows. the more warlike races those of whom, because they are the more warlike, we see the least in our own colonies-are for the most part Mahometans. These men will die rather than be sold as slaves. Our own negroes became Christians after they had become slaves. And there was much in the Christianity popularly taught by the missionaries to the negroes which was likely to engage the sympathies of the latter. Compassionateness and long-suffering were qualities calculated to gain the hearts of men living in bondage. Subsequently, after the days of bondage, the negro found particular attractions in the doctrines which his Baptist teachers love to dwell on, without qualification or limitation—namely, the equality of all men; the duty of calling no man "master;" in fine, all those doctrines which are generally known as those of Christian socialism. Preached to men endowed with no power of reflection, but gifted with an amount of self-conceit which no other race of human beings ever possessed, and with a love of lazy devotion, they naturally inflated their self-importance until it broke down the barriers of ancient customs, manners, and feelings. The negro, civilly free and religiously exalted, began, like all other races, to dream of a nationality for his own colour. He was the equal of the white man. Why should he work for the white man? Why should he be governed by the white man? Such, we are informed on good authority, are the questions with which the negroes of our West India colonies season their social gatherings. Neither identity of language nor identity of creed has broken down the barrier between the white race and the black race. Both have made the negroes fanatical democrats of the socialist type. Though speaking the same tongue and living under the same laws, they have very few sympathies with white men. The black man craves an equality which the white man will not concede. The white man avows a superiority which the modern negro will not admit. The gulf widens deeper between them every day. A strong external power keeps the two elements together. It compels them in appearance to maintain a genuine harmony. In truth, it only compels them to keep a long truce. But how long will this truce last? And is this government? Can any sort of recognised polity be said to exist where two dis

From the Reader.

BELGIAN BONE CAVES.

THE explorations of the Belgian bone caves, which have been carried on for some time past by MM. Van Beneden and Dupont, have been referred to several times in the pages of THE READER. We have now to lay before our readers an account of the progress of the work up to the end of November last, and for this purpose we make use of a report recently presented by M. Dupont to the Belgian Minister of the Interior. We may premise that all the bonecaves in this locality furnish indisputable evidence of one fact-viz., that the cavedwellers were destroyed by a sudden inun

dation, which covered the whole of Belgium jet and a few sharks' teeth were from the and the North of France, the evidences of same locality. "We cannot therefore which M. Dupont finds in the limon of Hes- deny," says M. Dupont, "the relations of baye and the yellow clay of the fields, and these men with Champagne, whilst there is in the peculiar arrangement of the débris in no evidence to show their connexion with the caverns. The cave at present under 'Hainaut and the province of Liége, which examination was discovered in May last, could have also furnished them with their and is situated on the banks of the river flint." Lesse, opposite the hamlet of Chaleux, about a mile and a half from the well-known Furfooz cave.