quite as virtuous, to be the kept mistresses of white gentlemen, than the lawfully wedded wives of colored men.  We repeat the remark, that the actual progress which the colored people of Barbadoes have made, while laboring under so many depressing influences, should excite our astonishment, and, we add, our admiration too.  Our acquaintance with this people was at a very interesting period—­just when they were beginning to be relieved from these discouragements, and to feel the regenerating spirit of a new era.  It was to us like walking through a garden in the early spring.  We could see the young buds of hope, the first bursts of ambition, the early up-shoots of confident aspiration, and occasionally the opening bloom of assurance.  The star of hope had risen upon the colored people, and they were beginning to realize that their day had come.  The long winter of their woes was melting into “glorious summer.”  Civil immunities and political privileges were just before them, the learned professions were opening to them, social equality and honorable domestic connections would soon be theirs.  Parents were making fresh efforts to establish schools for the children, and to send the choicest of their sons and daughters to England.  They rejoiced in the privileges they were securing, and they anticipated with virtuous pride the free access of their children to all the fields of enterprise, all the paths of honest emulation, and all the eminences of distinction.

We remark in conclusion, that the forbearance of the colored people of Barbadoes under their complicated wrongs is worthy of all admiration.  Allied, as many of them are, to the first families of the island, and gifted as they are with every susceptibility to feel disgrace, it is a marvel that they have not indignantly cast off the yoke and demanded their political rights.  Their wrongs have been unprovoked on their part, and unnatural on the part of those who have inflicted them—­in many cases the guilty authors of their being.  The patience and endurance of the sufferers under such circumstances are unexampled, except by the conduct of the slaves, who, though still more wronged, were, if possible, still more patient.

We regret to add, that until lately, the colored people of Barbadoes hate been far in the background in the cause of abolition, and even now, the majority of them are either indifferent, or actually hostile to emancipation.  They have no fellow feeling with the slave.  In fact; they have had prejudices against the negroes no less bitter than those which the whites have exercised toward them.  There are many honorable exceptions to this, as has already been shown; but such, we are assured, is the general fact.[A]