, 1866-12-14

nant, and with all the advantages that a most liberal education can be-
stow, are still shut out from the society of those who belong exclusively
to the superior race.
The amalgamation of the African and AngloSaxon, and the exclu-
siveness of the latter, have thus combined to build up the halfcastes,
and make them somewhat ola distinct peope-a people neither African
nor European, but more properly West Indian. This cass-the middle
1t is composed of small landed proprietors, of business men, clerks in
public and private establishments, editors, tadesmen, and mechanics.
Shut out from the whites, on the one hand, who will not admit them to
their society, and from the blacks on the other to whom they are i'm
measuraby superior, they, nevertheless, are constantly receiving acces-
sons from the ranks of both. Their political sympathies are, of course,
with the black population for between the muatOes and the blacks
there is not the same gulf fixed that there is between the mulattoes and
the whites. In the former case, it is possible to rise from the lowest
class to the middle class, but it is utterly impossible to rise from the mid
die to the highest. The very fact that the haEcaStes,s with more than
the constituencies of Europeans, have to bear all the indignites that are
heaped upon the African race, makes them bitter against the dominant
few and, as they increase in numbers and acquire more and more poll
tcal and moral influence in the community to direct and control, as they
can even now direct and control the desires, passions, and aspirations of
the entire colOred population, they assume formidable proportions as a
party which, sooner or later, must be conciatad and appeased. These
halfcashs, inheritng the intellectual power and force of the white race
and the passions OF the black, must eventually present a successful OPP
position to the existing anomalies of government; must break down the
plantocratic oHgarchy, and obtain for themselves political equality, if not
political ascendency. 1t is a result of emancipation still to be worked
out. 1t is a necessary consequence of the original grant of freedom, that
these people, now that they fully understand and appreciate what free
dom is, should possess all the rights of freemen, and especially the right
of voting. They will insist upon being fully represented in the Legisla-
ture, and they will be satisfied with nothing less. The social problem is
one more difficult of solution; and as long as it remains unsolved-as
long as a cOlOred man is made to understand that. in spite of his ennal
intelligence, education, refinement, and wealth, he is still regarded by the
white as an inferior, the worst possible feeling must exist between the
two. That feeling must gain strength as the mulattoes increase in num-
bers, influence, and general intelligence. 1t would be hard to say that,
to remedy this evil, the whites, as the minority, should yield up their So
called prjudlces. Those prejudces can not excite our sunrise !: it
would be surprising, indeed, if they did not exist. Most Of the white in
habtants remember the day when the people who now claim to be their
these circumstances, the union or even association of white and colored
people must be considered; but, in reality, it is only after q long resi-
dence in the Island that a stranger begins to appreciate the horror with
which a Barbadian white will shrink from the mere mention of q matri