As Mr. Froude is speaking dogmatically here of his, or rather our, West Indies, let us hear him as he proceeds:?
'We have been a ruling power there for two hundred and fifty years; the whites whom we planted as our representatives are drifting into ruin, and they regard England and England's policy as the principal cause of it. The hlacks whom, in a fit of virtuous benevolence, we emancipated, do not feel particularly obliged to us. They think, if they think at all, that they were ill-treated originally, and have received no more than was due to them.'
Thus far. Now, as to 'the whites whom we planted as our representatives,' and who, Mr. Froude avers, are drifting into ruin, we confess to a total ignorance of their whereabouts in these islands in this jubilee year of Negro Emancipation. 3 Of the representatives of Britain immediately before and after Emancipation we happen to know something, which, on the testimony of Englishmen, Mr. Froude will be made quite welcome to before our task is ended. With respect to Mr. Froude's statement as to the ingratitude of the emanci
1. Don Quixote, the title character of Miguel de 3. The fifty-year anniversary of the freeing of Cervantes's novel (1605, 1615), whose name be-slaves in the British West Indies. Slavery was abolcame synonymous with foolish, self-deluded ideal-ished in British colonial possessions in 1833, but ism. ex-slaves working on plantations were apprenticed 2. Freethinker (French). to their former owners until 1838.
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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON / 162 5
pated Blacks, if it is aimed at the slaves who were actually set free, it is utterly untrue; for no class of persons, in their humble and artless way, are more attached to the Queen's majesty, whom they regard as incarnating in her gracious person the benevolence which Mr. Froude so jauntily scoffs at. But if our censor's remark under this head is intended for the present generation of Blacks, it is a pure and simple absurdity. What are we Negroes of the present day to be grateful for to the us, personified by Mr. Froude and the Colonial Office exportations? We really believe, from what we know of Englishmen, that very few indeed would regard Mr. Froude's reproach otherwise than as a palpable adding of insult to injury. Obliged to 'us,' indeed! Why, Mr. Froude, who speaks of us as dogs and horses, suggests that the same kindliness of treatment that secures the attachment of those noble brutes would have the same result in our case. With the same consistency that marks his utterances throughout his book, he tells his readers 'that there is no original or congenital difference between the capacity of the White and the Negro races.' He adds, too, significantly: 'With the same chances and with the same treatment, I believe that distinguished men would be produced equally from both races.' After this truthful testimony, which Pelion upon Ossa4 of evidence has confirmed, does Mr. Froude, in the fatuity of his skin-pride, believe that educated men, worthy of the name, would be otherwise than resentful, if not disgusted, at being shunted out of bread in their own native land, which their parents' labours and taxes have made desirable, in order to afford room to blockheads, vulgarians, or worse, imported from beyond the seas? Does Mr. Froude's scorn of the Negroes' skin extend, inconsistently on his part, to their intelligence and feelings also? And if so, what has the Negro to care?if let alone and not wantonly thwarted in his aspirations? It sounds queer, not to say unnatural and scandalous, that Englishmen should in these days of light be the champions of injustice towards their fellow-subjects, not for any intellectual or moral disqualification, but on the simple account of the darker skin of those who are to be assailed and thwarted in their life's career and aspirations. Really, are we to be grateful that the colour difference should be made the basis and justification of the dastardly denials of justice, social, intellectual, and moral, which have characterized the regime of those who Mr. Froude boasts were left to be the representatives of Britain's morality and fair play?
ft ? ?
1889
4. I.e., mountains. The proverbial phrase 'to heap Olympus and threaten the gods by stacking one Ossa upon Pelion' derives from Greek mythology mountain on top of the other, and the unsuccessful attempt of the giants to scale ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
In his capacity as poet laureate, Tennyson (1809?1892) was invited by Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria's eldest son, to write a poem for the opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886. It was one of numerous elaborately
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1626 / EMPIRE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
staged and popular events?hosted by London after the success of the Great Exhibition in 1851?that made a spectacle of colonial products, crafts, and peoples for the British public. Tennyson's verses were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842? 1900) and sung at the inaugural ceremony at the Albert Hall in the presence of the queen.
Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen
Written at the Request of the Prince of Wales
i
Welcome, welcome with one voice! In your welfare we rejoice, Sons and brothers that have sent, From isle and cape and continent,
s Produce of your field and flood. Mount and mine, and primal wood; Works of subtle brain and hand, And splendours of the morning land,? the East Gifts from every British zone;
io Britons, hold your own!1
II May we find, as ages run, The mother featured in the son; And may yours for ever be That old strength and constancy is Which has made your fathers great In our ancient island State, And wherever her flag fly, Glorying between sea and sky, Makes the might of Britain known; 20 Britons, hold your own!
III Britain fought her sons of yore? Britain fail'd; and never more, Careless of our growing kin, Shall we sin our fathers' sin, 25 Men that in a narrower day?
Unprophetic rulers they? Drove from out the mother's nest That young eagle of the West? United States
To forage for herself alone; 30 Britons, hold your own!
IV Sharers of our glorious past, Brothers, must we part at last? Shall we not thro' good and ill Cleave to one another still?
