points of agreement. We agreed that the breaking down of Church authority at the Reformation had been a fatal disaster; that without a sense of responsibility to a supernatural power, human beings would sink into ingenious apes, that human society would become no more than a congregation of apes, and that with differences of opinion and belief, that sense was becoming more and more obscured. So long as all serious men held the same convictions, and those convictions were embodied in the law, religion could speak with authority. The authority being denied or shaken, the fact itself became uncertain. The notion that everybody had a right to think as he pleased was felt to be absurd in common things. In every practical art or science the ignorant submitted to be guided by those who were better instructed than themselves. Why should they be left to their private judgment on subjects where to go wrong was the more dangerous. All this was plain sailing. The corollary that if it is to retain its influence the Church must not teach doctrines which outrage the common sense of mankind as Luther led half Europe to believe that the Church was doing in the sixteenth century, we agreed that we would not dispute about. But I was interested to see that the leopard had not changed its spots, that it merely readjusted its attitudes to suit the modern taste, and that if it ever recovered its power it would claw and scratch in the old way. Rome, like Pilate, may protest its innocence of the blood which was spilt in its name and in its interests. Did that tender and merciful court ever suggest to those prelates who passed the Act in England for the burning of heretics that they were transgressing the sacred rights of conscience? Did it reprove the Inquisition or send a mild remonstrance to Philip II.? The eyes of those who are willing to be blinded will see only what they desire to see.

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CHAPTER XX.

Return to Havana-The Spaniards in Cuba-Prospects-American influence-Future of the West Indies-English rumours-Leave Cuba-The harbour at night-The Bahama Channel-Hayti-Port au Prince-The black republic-West Indian history.

THE air and quiet of Vedado (so my retreat was called) soon set me up again, and I was able to face once more my hotel and its Americans. I did not attempt to travel in Cuba, nor was it necessary for my purpose. I stayed a few days longer at Havana. I went to operas and churches; I sailed about the harbour in boats, the boatmen, all of them, not negroes, as in the Antilles, but emigrants from the old country, chiefly Gallicians. I met people of all sorts, among the rest a Spanish officer-a major of engineers-who, if he lives, may come to something. Major D-- took me over the fortifications, showed me the interior lines of the Moro, and their latest specimens of modern artillery. The garrison are, of course, Spanish regiments made of home-bred Castilians, as I could not fail to recognise when I heard any of them speak. There are certain words of common use in Spain powerful as the magic formulas of enchanters over the souls of men. You hear them everywhere in the Peninsula; at cafés, at tables d'hôte, and in private conversation. They are a part of the national intellectual equipment. Either from prudery or because they are superior to old-world superstitions, the Cubans have washed these expressions out of their language; but the national characteristics are preserved in the army, and the spell does not lose its efficacy because the islanders disbelieve in it. I have known a closed post office in Madrid, where the clerk was deaf to polite entreaty, blown open by an oath as by a bomb shell. A squad of recruits in the Moro, who were lying in the shade under a tree, neglected to rise as an officer went by. 'Saludad, Co!' he thundered out, and they bounded to their feet as if electrified.

On the whole Havana was something to have seen. It is the focus and epitome of Spanish dominion in those seas, and I was forced to conclude that it was well for Cuba that the English attempts to take possession of it had failed. Be the faults of their administration as heavy as they are alleged to be, the Spaniards have done more to Europeanise their islands than we have done with ours. They have made Cuba Spanish -Trinidad, Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada have never been English at all, and Jamaica and Barbadoes are ceasing to be English. Cuba is a second home to the Spaniards, a permanent addition to their soil. We are as birds of passage, temporary residents for transient purposes, with no home in our islands at all. Once we thought them worth fighting for, and as long as it was a question of ships and cannon we made ourselves supreme rulers of the Caribbean Sea; yet the French and Spaniards will probably outlive us there. They will remain perhaps as satellites of the United States, or in some other confederacy, or in recovered strength of their own; we, in a generation or two, if the causes now in operation continue to work as they are now working, shall have disappeared from the scene. In Cuba there is a great Spanish population; Martinique and Guadaloupe are parts of France; to us it seems a matter of indifference whether we keep our islands or abandon them, and we leave the remnants of our once precious settlements to float or drown as they can. Australia and Canada take care of themselves; we expect our West Indies to do the same, careless of the difference of circumstance. We no longer talk of cutting our colonies adrift; the tone of public opinion is changed, and no one dares to advocate openly the desertion of the least important of them. But the neglect and indifference continue. We will not govern them effectively ourselves our policy, so far as we have any policy, is to extend among them the principles of self-government, and self-government can only precipitate our extinction there as completely as we know that it would do in India if we were wild enough to venture the plunge. There is no enchantment in self-government which will make people love each other when

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they are indifferent or estranged. It can only force them into sharper collision.

The opinion in Cuba was, and is, that America is the residuary legatee of all the islands, Spanish and English equally, and that she will be forced to take charge of them in the end whether she likes it or not. Spain governs unjustly and corruptly; the Cubans will not rest till they are free from her, and if once independent they will throw themselves on American protection.

We will not govern our islands at all, but leave them to drift. Jamaica and the Antilles, given over to the negro majorities, can only become like Hayti and St. Domingo; and the nature of things will hardly permit so fair a part of the earth which has been once civilised and under white control to fall back into barbarism.

To England the loss of the West Indies would not itself be serious; but in the life of nations discreditable failures are not measured by their immediate material consequences. To allow a group of colonies to slide out of our hands because we could not or would not provide them with a tolerable government would be nothing less than a public disgrace. It would be an intimation to all the world that we were unable to maintain any longer the position which our fathers had made for us; and when the unravelling of the knitted fabric of the Empire has once begun the process will be a rapid one. 'But what would you do?' I am asked impatiently. 'We send out peers or gentlemen against whose character no direct objection can be raised; we assist them with local councils partly chosen by the people themselves. We send out bishops, we send out missionaries, we open schools. What can we do more? We cannot alter the climate, we cannot make planters prosper when sugar will not pay, we cannot convert black men into whites, we cannot force the blacks to work for the whites when they do not wish to work for them. "Governing," as you call it, will not change the natural conditions of things. You can suggest no remedy, and mere fault-finding is foolish and mischievous.'

I might answer a good many things. Government cannot do everything, but it can do something, and there is a difference between governors against whom there is nothing to object and men of special and marked capacity. There is a difference between governors whose hands are tied by local councils and whose feet are tied by instructions from home, and a governor with a free hand and a wise head left to take his own measures on the spot. I presume that no one can seriously expect that an orderly organised nation can be made out of the blacks, when, in spite of your schools and missionaries, sixty per cent. of the children now born among them are illegitimate. You can do for the West Indies, I repeat over and over again, what you do for the East; you can establish a firm authoritative government which will protect the blacks in their civil rights and protect the whites in theirs. You cannot alter the climate, it is true, or make the soil more fertile. Already it is fertile as any in the earth, and the climate is admirable for the purposes for which it is needed. But you can restore confidence in the stability of your tenure, you can give courage to the whites who are on the spot to remain there, and you can tempt capital and enterprise to venture there which now seek investments elsewhere. By keeping the rule in your own hands you will restore the white population to their legitimate influence; the blacks will again look up to them and respect them as they ought to do. This you can do, and it will cost you nothing save a little more pains in the selection of the persons whom you are to trust with powers analogous to those which you grant to your provincial governors in the Indian peninsula.

A preliminary condition of this, as of all other real improvements, is one, however, which will hardly be fulfilled. Before a beginning can be made, a conviction is wanted that life has other objects besides present interest and convenience; and very few of us indeed have at the bottom of our hearts any such conviction at all. We can talk about it in fine language -no age ever talked more or better-but we don't believe in it; we believe only in professing to believe, which soothes our