enclosing the ambition of a people whom we are, by religion and by science and by common sentiment, taught to regard as our very equals. By the law of the West Indies the black man is the equal of the white. Yet my friend suggested that rifle-shots would be necessary should that race demand a practical exhibition of that absolute liberty which is reckoned by the English to be part of the heritage of all British-born subjects, black or white. Surely it is a curious condition of affairs? Under British rule, the black man is, theoretically, the equal of the white. Practically he is nothing of the sort. Practically it is not even admitted that he is. Or why is it necessary to continue the West Indian system of Government by the Crown? Now this is all very well. No doubt it is a convenient thing for us and for the peoples of all European countries to theorise about the brotherhood of man. In England and in all countries where the negro population is insignificant, such a question is only a matter of abstract principle; it is a pleasant sop to one’s inherent quality of benevolence to so decide,--to generously overlook obvious shortcomings and proclaim it abroad that Britain accepts her black people as equals--brothers in spirit and in fact. No doubt, in Britain, this is a very comforting creed to absorb in its entirety, and then forget. But not so in any West Indian island. There the fatuity, the impossibility, the impracticability of the scheme is immediately obvious. The farce of the whole thing is at once evident. The average white man cannot count the average negro as being his absolute equal. By reason of the dictum of the homeland he must pretend to do so. Officially he must, with his lips, proclaim the actuality of this impossible equality, but he must do it with his tongue in his cheek. He must see to it that the black man is convinced of the honesty of his protestations--that the blacks believe. And yet he must see that the black man does not attain any of the natural results such a condition would inevitably bring into existence. It is like the old tree in the garden of Eden. The tree of liberty is put before the eyes of the black man who is told that the fruit and the blossom is his very own--but that he must not touch it. That is the condition of affairs. Nominally the equal, the black man is actually not the equal. And this he is beginning to realise. The spread of education among the coloured race in the West Indies is bringing into existence a generation of dissatisfied agitators. The negro is becoming ambitious; he is beginning to become ambitious for his race. As soon as the race feels its strength it will use it for its own ends. It will demand political freedom. The creed of my coloured friend of the Spanish Town highroad may be allowed to stand as the creed of the present, or at any rate the next, generation of the blacks in the British West Indies.