If in speaking of the negroes I have been in danger of offending my friends at home, I shall be certain in speaking of the coloured men to offend my friends in Jamaica. On this subject, though I have sympathy with them, I have no agreement. They look on themselves as the ascendant race. I look upon those of colour as being so, or at any rate as about to become so.

In speaking of my friends in Jamaica, it is not unnatural that I should allude to the pure-blooded Europeans, or European Creoles—to those in whose veins there is no admixture of African blood. "Similia similibus." A man from choice will live with those who are of his own habits and his own way of thinking. But as regards Jamaica, I believe that the light of their star is waning, that their ascendency is over—in short, that their work, if not done, is on the decline.

Ascendency is a disagreeable word to apply to any two different races whose fate it may be to live together in the same land. It has been felt to be so in Ireland, when used either with reference to the Saxon Protestant or Celtic Roman Catholic; and it is so with reference to those of various shades of colour in Jamaica. But nevertheless it is the true word. When two rivers come together, the waters of which do not mix, the one stream will be the stronger—will over-power the other—will become ascendant And so it is with people and nations. It may not be pretty-spoken to talk about ascendency; but sometimes pretty speaking will not answer a man\'s purpose.

It is almost unnecessary to explain that by coloured men I mean those who are of a mixed race—of a breed mixed, be it in what proportion it may, between the white European and the black African. Speaking of Jamaica, I might almost say between the Anglo-Saxon and the African; for there remains, I take it, but a small tinge of Spanish blood. Of the old Indian blood there is, I imagine, hardly a vestige.

Both the white men and the black dislike their coloured neighbours. It is useless to deny that as a rule such is the case. The white men now, at this very day, dislike them more in Jamaica than they do in other parts of the West Indies, because they are constantly driven to meet them, and are more afraid of them.

In Jamaica one does come in contact with coloured men. They are to be met at the Governor\'s table; they sit in the House of Assembly; they cannot be refused admittance to state parties, or even to large assemblies; they have forced themselves forward, and must be recognized as being in the van. Individuals decry them—will not have them within their doors—affect to despise them. But in effect the coloured men of Jamaica cannot be despised much longer.

It will be said that we have been wrong if we have ever despised these coloured people, or indeed, if we have ever despised the negroes, or any other race. I can hardly think that anything so natural can be very wrong. Those who are educated and civilized and powerful will always, in one sense, despise those who are not; and the most educated and civilized and most powerful will despise those who are less so. Euphuists may proclaim against such a doctrine; but experience, I think, teaches us that it is true. If the coloured people in the West Indies can overtop contempt, it is because they are acquiring education, civilization, and power. In Jamaica they are, I hope, in a way to do this.

My theory—for I acknowledge to a theory—is this: that Providence has sent white men and black men to these regions in order that from them may spring a race fitted by intellect for civilization; and fitted also by physical organization for tropical labour. The negro in his primitive state is not, I think, fitted for the former; and the European white Creole is certainly not fitted for the latter.

To all such rules there are of course exceptions. In Porto Rico, for instance, one of the two remaining Spanish colonies in the West Indies, the Peons, or free peasant labourers, are of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, without, I believe, any negro element. And there are occasional negroes whose mental condition would certainly tend to disprove the former of the two foregoing propositions, were it not that in such matters exceptional cases prove and disprove nothing. Englishmen as a rule are stouter than Frenchmen. Were a French Falstaff and an English Slender brought into a room together, the above position would be not a whit disproved.

It is probable also that the future race who shall inhabit these islands may have other elements than the two already named. There will soon be here—in the teeth of our friends of the Anti-Slavery Society—thousands from China and Hindostan. The Chinese and the Coolies—immigrants from India are always called Coolies—greatly excel the negro in intelligence, and partake, though in a limited degree, of the negro\'s physical abilities in a hot climate. And thus the blood of Asia will be mixed with that of Africa; and the necessary compound will, by God\'s infinite wisdom and power, be formed for these latitudes, as it has been formed for the colder regions in which the Anglo-Saxon preserves his energy, and works.

I know it will be said that there have been no signs of a mixture of breed between the negro and the Coolie, and the negro and the Chinese. The instances hitherto are, I am aware, but rare; but then the immigration of these classes is as yet but recent; and custom is necessary, and a language commonly understood, and habits, which the similitude of position will also make common, before such races will amalgamate. That they will amalgamate if brought together, all history teaches us. The Anglo-Saxon and the negro have done so, and in two hundred years have produced a population which is said to amount to a fifth of that of the whole island of Jamaica, and which probably amounts to much more. Two hundred years with us is a long time; but it is not so in the world\'s history. From 1660 to 1860 A.D. is a vast lapse of years; but how little is the lapse from the year 1660 to the year 1860, dating from the creation of the world; or rather, how small appears such lapse to us! In how many pages is its history written? and yet God\'s races were spreading themselves over the earth then as now.

Men are in such a hurry. They can hardly believe that that will come to pass of which they have evidence that it will not come to pass in their own days.

But then comes the question, whether the mulatto is more capable of being educated than the negro, and more able to work under a hot sun than the Englishman; whether he does not rather lose the physical power of the one, and the intellectual power of the other. There are those in Jamaica who have known them long, and who think that as a race they have deteriorated both in mind and body. I am not prepared to deny this. They probably have deteriorated in mind and body; and nevertheless my theory may be right. Nay, I will go further and say that such deterioration on both sides is necessary to the correctness of my theory.

In what compound are we to look for the full strength of each component part? Should punch be as strong as brandy, or as sweet as sugar? Neither the one nor the other. But in order to be good and efficient punch, it should partake duly of the strength of the spirit and of the sweetness of the saccharine—according to the skill and will of the gnostic fabricator, who in mixing knows his own purposes. So has it even been also in the admixture of races. The same amount of physical power is not required for all climates, nor the same amount of mental energy.

But the mulatto, though he has deteriorated from the black man in one respect, and from the white in another, does also excel the black man in one respect, and also excel the white in another. As a rule, he cannot work as a negro can. He could not probably endure to labour in the cane-fields for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, as is done by the Cuban slave; but he can work safely under a tropical sun, and can in the day go through a fair day\'s work. He is not liable to yellow fever, as is the white man, and enjoys as valid a protection from the effects of heat as the heat of these regions requires.

Nor, as far as we yet know, have Galileos, Shakespeares, or Napoleons been produced among the mulattos. Few may probably have been produced who are able even to form an accurate judgment as to the genius of such men as these. But that the mulatto race partakes largely of the intelligence and ambition of their white forefathers, it is I think useless, and moreover wicked, to deny; wicked, because the denial arises from an unjust desire to close against them the door of promotion.

Let any stranger go through the shops and stores of Kingston, and see how many of them are either owned or worked by men of colour; let him go into the House of Assembly, and see how large a proportion of their debates is carried on by men of colour. I don\'t think much of the parliamentary excellence of these debates, as I shall have to explain by-and-by; but the coloured men at any rate hold their own against their white colleagues. How large a portion of the public service is carried on by them; how well they thrive, though the prejudices of both white and black are so strong against them!

I just now spoke of these coloured men as mulattos. I did so because I was then anxious to refer to the exact and equal division of black and white blood. Of course it is understood that the mulatto, technically so called, is the child of parents one of whom is all white and the other all black; and to judge exactly of the mixed race, one should judge, probably, from such an equal division. But no such distinction can be effectually maintained in speaking, or even in thinking of these people. The various gradations of coloured blood range from all but perfect white to all but perfect black; and the dispositions and capabilities are equally various. In the lower orders, among those who are nearest to the African stock, no attempts I imagine are made to preserve an exact line. One is at first inclined to think that the slightest infusion of white blood may be traced in the complexion and hair, and heard in the voice; but when the matter is closely regarded one often finds it difficult to express an opinion even to oneself. Colour is frequently not the safest guide. To an inquirer really endeavouring to separate the races—should so thankless a task ever be attempted—the speech, I think, and the intelligence would afford the sources of information on which most reliance could be placed.

But the distinction between the white and the coloured men is much more closely looked into. And those are the unfortunate among the latter who are tempted, by the closeness of their relationship to Europe, to deny their African parentage. Many do, if not by lip, at any rate by deed, stoutly make such denial; not by lip, for the subject is much too sore for speech, but by every wile by which a white quadroon can seek to deny his ancestry! Such denial is never allowed. The crisp hair, the sallow skin, the known family history, the thick lip of the old remembered granddam, a certain languor in the eye; all or some, or perhaps but one of these tells the tale. But the tale is told, and the life-struggle is made always, and always in vain.

This evil—for it is an evil—arises mainly from the white man\'s jealousy. He who seeks to pass for other than he is makes a low attempt; all attempts at falsehood must of necessity be low. But I doubt whether such energy of repudiation be not equally low. Why not allow the claim; or seem to allow it, if practicable? "White art thou, my friend? Be a white man if thou wilt, or rather if thou canst. All we require of thee is that there remains no negro ignorance, no negro cunning, no negro apathy of brain. Forbear those vain attempts to wash out that hair of thine, and make it lank and damp. We will not regard at all, that little wave in thy locks; not even that lisp in thy tongue. But struggle, my friend, to be open in thy speech. Any wave there we cannot but regard. Speak out the thought that is in thee; for if thy thoughts lisp negrowards, our verdict must be against thee." Is it not thus that we should accept their little efforts?

But we do not accept them so. In lieu thereof, we admit no claim that can by any evidence be rejected; and, worse than that, we impute the stigma of black blood where there is no evidence to support such imputation. "A nice fellow, Jones; eh? very intelligent, and well mannered," some stranger says, who knows nothing of Jones\'s antecedents. "Yes, indeed," answers Smith, of Jamaica; "a very decent sort of fellow. They do say that he\'s coloured; of course you know that." The next time you see Jones, you observe him closely, and can find no trace of the Ethiop. But should he presently descant on purity of blood, and the insupportable impudence of the coloured people, then, and not till then, you would begin to doubt.

But these are evils which beset merely the point of juncture between the two races. With nine-tenths of those of mixed breed no attempts at concealment are by any means possible; and by them, of course, no such attempts are made. They take their lot as it is, and I think that on the whole they make the most of it. They of course are jealous of the assumed ascendency of the white men, and affect to show, sometimes not in the most efficacious manner, that they are his equal in external graces as in internal capacities. They are imperious to the black men, and determined on that side to exhibit and use their superiority. At this we can hardly be surprised. If we cannot set them a better lesson than we do, we can hardly expect the benefit which should arise from better teaching.

But the great point to be settled is this: whether this race of mulattos, quadroons, mustes, and what not, are capable of managing matters for themselves; of undertaking the higher walks of life; of living, in short, as an independent people with a proper share of masterdom; and not necessarily as a servile people, as hewers of wood and drawers of water? If not, it will fare badly for Jamaica, and will probably also fare badly in coming years for the rest of the West Indies. Whether other immigration be allowed or no, of one kind of immigration the supply into Jamaica is becoming less and less. Few European white men now turn thither in quest of fortune. Few Anglo-Saxon adventurers now seek her shores as the future home of their adoption. The white man has been there, and has left his mark. The Creole children of these Europeans of course remain, but their numbers are no longer increased by new comers.

But I think there is no doubt that they are fit—these coloured people, to undertake the higher as well as lower paths of human labour. Indeed, they do undertake them, and thrive well in them now, much to the disgust of the so-esteemed ascendant class. They do make money, and enjoy it. They practise as statesmen, as lawyers, and as doctors in the colony; and, though they have not as yet shone brightly as divines in our English Church, such deficiency may be attributed more to the jealousy of the parsons of that Church than to their own incapacity.

There are, they say, seventy thousand coloured people in the island, and not more than fifteen thousand white people. As the former increase in intelligence, it is not to be supposed that they will submit to the latter. Nor are they at all inclined to submission.

But they have still an up-hill battle before them. They are by no means humble in their gait, and their want of meekness sets their white neighbours against them. They are always proclaiming by their voice and look that they are as good as the white man; but they are always showing by their voice and look, also, that they know that this is a false boast.

And then they are by no means popular with the negro. A negro, as a rule, will not serve a mulatto when he can serve a European or a white Creole. He thinks that the mulatto is too near akin to himself to be worthy of any respect. In his passion he calls him a nigger—and protests that he is not, and never will be like buckra man.

The negroes complain that the coloured men are sly and cunning; that they cannot be trusted as masters; that they tyrannize, bully, and deceive; in short, that they have their own negro faults. There may, doubtless, be some truth in this. They have still a portion of their lesson to learn; perhaps the greater portion. I affirm merely that the lesson is being learned. A race of people with its good and ill qualities is not formed in a couple of centuries.

And if it be fated that the Anglo-Saxon race in these islands is to yield place to another people, and to abandon its ground, having done its appointed work, surely such a decree should be no cause of sorrow. To have done their appointed work, and done it well,—should not this be enough for any men?

But there are they who protest that such ideas as these with reference to this semi-African people are unpatriotic; are unworthy of an Englishman, who should foster the ascendency of his own race and his own country. Such men will have it as an axiom, that when an Englishman has been master once, he should be master always: that his dominion should not give way to strange hands, or his ascendency yield itself to strange races. It is unpatriotic, forsooth, to suggest that these tawny children of the sun should get the better of their British lords, and rule the roast themselves!

Even were it so—should it even be granted that such an idea is unpatriotic, one would then be driven back to ask whether patriotism be a virtue. It is at any rate a virtue in consequence only of the finite aspirations of mankind. To love the universe which God has made, were man capable of such love, would be a loftier attribute than any feeling for one\'s own country. The Gentile was as dear as the Jew; the Samaritans as much prized as they of Galilee, or as the children of Judah.

The present position and prospects of the children of Great Britain are sufficiently noble, and sufficiently extended. One need not begrudge to others their limited share in the population and government of the world\'s welfare. While so large a part of North America and Australia remain still savage—waiting the white man\'s foot—waiting, in fact, for the foot of the Englishman, there can be no reason why we should doom our children to swelter and grow pale within the tropics. A certain work has been ours to do there, a certain amount of remaining work it is still probably our lot to complete. But when that is done; when civilization, commerce, and education shall have been spread; when sufficient of our blood shall have been infused into the veins of those children of the sun; then, I think, we may be ready, without stain to our patriotism, to take off our hats and bid farewell to the West Indies.

And be it remembered that I am here speaking of the general ascendancy, not of the political power of these coloured races. It may be that after all we shall still have to send out some white Governor with a white aide-de-camp and a white private secretary—some three or four unfortunate white men to support the dignity of the throne of Queen Victoria\'s great-grandchild\'s grandchild. Such may be, or may not be. To my thinking, it would be more for our honour that it should not be so. If the honour, glory, and well-being of the child be dear to the parents, Great Britain should surely be more proud of the United States than of any of her colonies. We Britishers have a noble mission. The word I know is unpopular, for it has been foully misused; but it is in itself a good word, and none other will supply its place. We have a noble mission, but we are never content with it. It is not enough for us to beget nations, civilize countries, and instruct in truth and knowledge the dominant races of the coming ages. All this will not suffice unless also we can maintain a king over them! What is it to us, or even to them, who may be their king or ruler—or, to speak with a nearer approach to sense, from what source they be governed—so long as they be happy, prosperous, and good? And yet there are men mad enough to regret the United States! Many men are mad enough to look forward with anything but composure to the inevitable, happily inevitable day, when Australia shall follow in the same path.

We have risen so high that we may almost boast to have placed ourselves above national glory. The welfare of the coming world is now the proper care of the Anglo-Saxon race.

The coloured people, I have said, have made their way into society in Jamaica. That is, they have made a certain degree of impression on the millstone; which will therefore soon be perforated through and through, and then crumble to pieces like pumice-stone. Nay, they have been or are judges, attorneys-general, prime ministers, leaders of the opposition, and what not. The men have so far made their way. The difficulty now is with the women.

And in high questions of society here is always the stumbling-block. All manners of men can get themselves into a room together without difficulty, and can behave themselves with moderate forbearance to each other when in it. But there are points on which ladies are harder than steel, stiffer than their brocaded silks, more obdurate than whalebone.

"He wishes me to meet Mrs. So-and-So," a lady said to me, speaking of her husband, "because Mr. So-and-So is a very respectable good sort of man. I have no objection whatever to Mr. So-and-So; but if I begin with her, I know there will be no end."

"Probably not," I said; "when you once commence, you will doubtless have to go on—in the good path." I confess that the last words were said sotto voce. On that occasion the courage was wanting in me to speak out my mind. The lady was very pretty, and I could not endure to be among the unfavoured ones.

"That is just what I have said to Mr. ——; but he never thinks about such things; he is so very imprudent. If I ask Mrs. So-and-So here, how can I keep out Mrs. Such-a-One? They are both very respectable, no doubt; but what were their grandmothers?"

Ah! if we were to think of their grandmothers, it would doubtless be a dark subject. But what, O lady, of their grandchildren? That may be the most important, and also most interesting side from whence to view the family.

"These people marry now," another lady said to me—a lady not old exactly, but old enough to allude to such a subject; and in the tone of her voice I thought I could catch an idea that she conceived them in doing so to be trenching on the privileges of their superiors. "But their mothers and grandmothers never thought of looking to that at all. Are we to associate with the children of such women, and teach our daughters that vice is not to be shunned?"

Ah! dear lady—not old, but sufficiently old—this statement of yours is only too true. Their mothers and grandmothers did not think much of matrimony—had but little opportunity of thinking much of it. But with whom did the fault chiefly lie? These very people of whom we are speaking, would they not be your cousins but for the lack of matrimony? Your uncle, your father, your cousins, your grandfather, nay, your very brother, are they not the true criminals in this matter—they who have lived in this unhallowed state with women of a lower race? For the sinners themselves of either sex I would not ask your pardon; but you might forgive the children\'s children.

The life of coloured women in Jamaica some years since was certainly too often immoral. They themselves were frequently illegitimate, and they were not unwilling that their children should be so also. To such a one it was preferable to be a white man\'s mistress than the wife of such as herself; and it did not bring on them the same disgrace, this kind of life, as it does on women in England, or even, I may say, on women in Europe, nor the same bitter punishment. Their master, though he might be stern enough and a tyrant, as the owner of slaves living on his own little principality might probably be, was kinder to her than to the other females around her, and in a rough sort of way was true to her. He did not turn her out of the house, and she found it to be promotion to be the mother of his children and the upper servant in his establishment. And in those days, days still so near to us, the coloured woman was a slave herself, unless specially manumitted either in her own generation or in that immediately above her. It is from such alliances as these that the coloured race of Jamaica has sprung.

But all this, if one cannot already boast that it is changed, is quickly changing. Matrimony is in vogue, and the coloured women know their rights, and are inclined to claim them.

Of course among them, as among us at home, and among all people, there are various ranks. There are but few white labourers in Jamaica, and but few negroes who are not labourers. But the coloured people are to be found in all ranks, from that of the Prime Minister—for they have a Prime Minister in Jamaica—down to the worker in the cane-fields. Among their women many are now highly educated, for they send their children to English schools. Perhaps if I were to say fashionably educated, I might be more strictly correct They love dearly to shine; to run over the piano with quick and loud fingers; to dance with skill, which they all do, for they have good figures and correct ears; to know and display the little tricks and graces of English ladies—such tricks and graces as are to be learned between fifteen and seventeen at Ealing, Clapham, and Homsey.

But the coloured girls of a class below these—perhaps I should say two classes below them—are the most amusing specimens of Jamaica ladies. I endeavoured to introduce my readers to one at Port Antonio. They cannot be called pretty, for the upper part of the face almost always recedes; but they have good figures and well-turned limbs. They are singularly free from mauvaise honte, and yet they are not impertinent or ill-mannered. They are gracious enough with the pale faces when treated graciously, but they can show a very high spirit if they fancy that any slight is shown to them. They delight to talk contemptuously of niggers. Those people are dirty niggers, and nasty niggers, and mere niggers. I have heard this done by one whom I had absolutely taken for a negro, and who was not using loud abusive language, but gently speaking of an inferior class.

With these, as indeed with coloured people of a higher grade, the great difficulty is with their language. They cannot acquire the natural English pronunciation. As far as I remember, I have never heard but two negroes who spoke unbroken English; and the lower classes of the coloured people, though they are not equally deficient, are still very incapable of plain English articulation. The "th" is to them, as to foreigners, an insuperable difficulty. Even Josephine, it may be remembered, was hardly perfect in this respect.