Produced by Alfred J Drake  HTML version by Al HainesFROUDACITY 1889JJ ThomasWEST INDIAN FABLES BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDEEXPLAINED BY J J THOMASContentsPreface by JJ ThomasBOOK I  Introduction 2733  Voyage out 3441  Barbados 4144  St Vincent 4448  Grenada 4850BOOK II  Trinidad 5355  Reform in Trinidad 5580  Negro Felicity in the West Indies 81110BOOK III  Social Revolution 113174  West Indian Confederation 175200  The Negro as a Worker 201206  Religion for Negroes 207230BOOK IV  Historical Summary or Résumé 233261 endFROUDACITYPREFACE5 Last year had well advanced towards its middlein fact it wasalready April 1888before Mr Froudes book of travels in the WestIndies became known and generally accessible to readers in thoseColoniesMy perusal of it in Grenada about the period above mentioned disclosedthinly draped with rhetorical flowers the dark outlines of a scheme tothwart political aspiration in the Antilles  That project is sought tobe realized by deterring the home authorities from granting an electivelocal legislature however restricted in character to any of theColonies not yet enjoying such an advantage An argument based on thecomposition of the inhabitants of those Colonies is confidently reliedupon to confirm the inexorable mood of Downing Street6 Overlarge and everincreasingso runs the argumentthe Africanelement in the population of the West Indies is from its past historyand its actual tendencies a standing menace to the continuance ofcivilization and religion  An immediate catastrophe socialpolitical and moral would most assuredly be brought about by thegranting of full elective rights to dependencies thus inhabitedEnlightened statesmanship should at once perceive the immense benefitthat would ultimately result from such refusal of the franchise  Thecardinal recommendation of that refusal is that it would avertdefinitively the political domination of the Blacks which mustinevitably be the outcome of any concession of the modicum of right soearnestly desired  The exclusion of the Negro vote being inexpedientif not impossible the exercise of electoral powers by the Blacks mustlead to their returning candidates of their own race to the locallegislatures and that too in numbers preponderating according to themajority of the Negro electors  The Negro legislators thus supreme inthe councils of the Colonies would straightway proceed to passvindictive and retaliatory laws against their white fellow 7colonists  For it is only fifty years since the White man and theBlack man stood in the reciprocal relations of master and slaveWhilst those relations subsisted the white masters inflicted and theblack slaves had to endure the hideous atrocities that are inseparablefrom the system of slavery  Since Emancipation the enormous stridesmade in selfadvancement by the exslaves have only had the effect ofprovoking a resentful uneasiness in the bosoms of the exmasters  Theformer bondsmen on their side and like their brethren of Hayti areeaten up with implacable bloodthirsty rancour against their formerlords and owners  The annals of Hayti form quite a cabinet ofpolitical and social object lessons which in the eyes of Britishstatesmen should be invaluable in showing the true method of dealingwith Ethiopic subjects of the Crown  The Negro race in Hayti in orderto obtain and to guard what it calls its freedom has outraged everyhumane instinct and falsified every benevolent hope  The slaveownersthere had not been a whit more cruel than slaveowners in the otherislands  But in spite of this how ferocious how sanguinary 8 howrelentless against them has the vengeance of the Blacks been in theirhour of mastery  A century has passed away since then andnotwithstanding that the hatred of Whites still rankles in theirsouls and is cherished and yielded to as a national creed and guide ofconduct  Colonial administrators of the mighty British Empire thelesson which History has taught and yet continues to teach you in Haytias to the best mode of dealing with your Ethiopic colonists liespatent bloodstained and terrible before you and should be takendefinitively to heart  But if you are willing that Civilization andReligionin short all the highest developments of individual andsocial lifeshould at once be swept away by a desolating vandalism ofAfrican birth if you do not recoil from the bloodguiltiness thatwould stain your consciences through the massacre of ourfellowcountrymen in the West Indies on account of their racecomplexion and enlightenment finally if you desire those modernHesperides to revert into primeval jungle horrent lairs wherein theBlacks who but a short while before had been ostensibly civilizedshall be revellers as highpriests and 9 devotees in orgies ofdevilworship cannibalism and obeahdare to give the franchise tothose West Indian Colonies and then rue the consequences of yourinfatuationAlas if the foregoing summary of the ghastly imaginings of Mr Froudewere true in what a fools paradise had the wisest and best amongst usbeen living moving and having our being  Up to the date of thesuggestion by him as above of the alleged facts and possibilities ofWest Indian life we had believed even granting the correctness of hisgloomy account of the past and present positions of the two races thatto no wellthinking West Indian White whose ancestors may haveinnocently or culpably participated in the gains as well as the guiltof slavery would the remembrance of its palmy days be otherwise thanone of regret  We Negroes on the other hand after a lapse of timeextending over nearly two generations could be indebted only toprecarious tradition or scarcely accessible documents for any knowledgewe might chance upon of the sufferings endured in these Islands of theWest by those of our race who have gone before us  Death withundiscriminating hand had gathered 10 in the human harvest ofmasters and slaves alike according to or out of the normal laws ofnature while Time had been letting down on the stage of our existencedropscene after dropscene of years to the number of something likefifty which had been curtaining off the tragic incidents of the pastfrom the peaceful activities of the present  Being thus circumstancedthought we what rational elements of mutual hatred should now continueto exist in the bosoms of the two racesWith regard to the perpetual reference to Hayti because