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English Failure in the West Indies

The Testimony of the Eminent Historian, James Anthony Froude--The Mismanagement of the English Islands by Free Trade Orators--Negro Predominance--The Spanish Islands are Peopled with the Children of Spaniards--Black Labor and Beet Sugar--Cuba and the United States, as an Englishman puts the Questions of Destiny.

THE most instructive work on the West Indies is that of James Anthony Froude, who visited those islands ten years ago with all his prejudices and powers, and gave the result to the world in an attractive volume. His complaint, which runs through the work, is that the orator demagogues of England, and he refers expressly to Mr. Gladstone, had misgoverned the colonies and impaired the empire. "The West India Colonies," says Froude, "had once been more to the English 'than casual seedlings' left to grow or wither according to their own strength."