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despotic, if not harsh. To escape this fault, a man must be either a saint or a sluggard. And the tendency to race enmity lies very deep in human nature. Perhaps it is a survival from the times when each race could maintain itself only by slaughtering its rivals.

The attitude of contempt I have mentioned may be noted in all classes, though it is strongest in those rough and thoughtless whites who plume themselves all the more upon their colour because they have little else to plume themselves upon, while among the more refined it is restrained by self-respect and by the sense that allowances must be made for a backward race. It is stronger among the Dutch than among the English, partly, perhaps, because the English wish to be unlike the Dutch in this as in many other respects. Yet one often hears that the Dutch get on better with their black servants than the English do, because they understand native character better, and are more familiar in their manners, the Englishman retaining his national stiffness. The laws of the Boer republics are far more harsh than those of the English colonies, and the Transvaal Boers have been always severe and cruel in their dealings with the natives. But the English also have done so many things to regret that it does not lie with them to cast stones at the Boers, and the mildness of colonial law is largely due to the influence of the home government, and to that recognition of the equal civil rights of all subjects which has long pervaded the

common law of England. Only two sets of Europeans are free from reproach: the imperial officials, who have almost always sought to protect the natives, and the clergy, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who have been the truest and most constant friends to the Hottentot and the Kafir, sometimes even carrying their zeal beyond what discretion could approve.

Deep and wide-spread as is the sentiment of aversion to the coloured people which I am describing, it must not be supposed that the latter are generally ill-treated. There is indeed a complete social separation. Intermarriage, though permitted by law in the British colonies, is extremely rare, and illicit unions are uncommon. Sometimes the usual relations of employer and employed are reversed, and a white man enters the service of a prosperous Kafir. This makes no difference as respects their social intercourse, and I remember to have heard of a case in which the white workman stipulated that his employer should address him as "boss." Black children are very seldom admitted to schools used by white children; indeed, I doubt if the two colours are ever to be seen on the same benches, except at Lovedale and in one or two of the mission schools in Cape Town, to which, as charging very low fees, some of the poorest whites send their children. I heard of a wealthy coloured man at the Paarl, a Dutch town north of Cape Town, who complained that, though he paid a considerable sum in taxes, he was not permitted to send his daughter to any of the

schools in the place. In the Protestant Episcopal, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist churches, and of course among the Roman Catholics, blacks are admitted along with whites to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; but this (so I was told) is not the case in the Dutch Reformed Church. An eminent and thoughtful ecclesiastic in Natal deplored to me the complete want of sympathy on the part of the white congregations with the black ones worshipping near them. It rarely, if ever, happens that a native, whatever his standing among his own people,-for to the white there is practically no difference between one black and another, is received within a white man's house on any social occasion; indeed, he would seldom be permitted, save as a servant, to enter a private house, but would be received on the stoep (veranda). When Khama, the most important chief now left south of the Zambesi, a Christian and a man of high personal character, was in England in 1895, and was entertained at lunch. by the Duke of Westminster and other persons of social eminence, the news of the reception given him excited annoyance and disgust among the whites in South Africa. I was told that at a gardenparty given a few years ago by the wife of a white bishop, the appearance of a native clergyman caused many of the white guests to withdraw in dudgeon. Once when myself a guest at a mission station in Basutoland I was asked by my host whether I had any objection to his inviting to the family meal a

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native pastor who had been preaching to the native congregation. When I expressed surprise at the question, my host explained that race feeling was so strong among the colonists that it would be deemed improper, and indeed insulting, to make a black man sit down at the same table with a white guest, unless the express permission of the latter had first been obtained. But apart from this social disparagement, the native does not suffer much actual wrong. Now and then, on a remote farm, the employer will chastise his servant with a harshness he would not venture to apply to a white boy. A shocking case of the kind occurred a few years ago in the eastern province. A white farmer-an Englishman, not a Boer-flogged his Kafir servant so severely that the latter died; and when the culprit was put on his trial, and acquitted by a white jury, his white neighbours escorted him home with a band of music. More frequently, unscrupulous employers, especially on the frontiers of civilisation, will try to defraud their native workmen, or will provoke them by ill-usage to run away before the day of payment arrives. But there are no lynchings, as in America, and the white judges and magistrates, if not always the juries, administer the law with perfect impartiality.

As regards the provisions of the law, one must distinguish between the British colonies and the Dutch republics. In the former the ordinary civil rights of whites and blacks are precisely the same, though there exist certain police provisions which

are applicable only to the latter. Cape Colony has a so-called "curfew law," requiring natives who are out of doors after dark to be provided with a pass

-a law which is found oppressive by the best class of natives, educated and respectable men, though defended as necessary for public order, having regard to the large black population of the lower class, and their propensity to drink and petty offences. There are also certain "labour laws," applying to natives only, and particularly to those on agricultural locations, which are intended to check the disposition of Kafirs living on native reserves to become idle or to take to vagrancy. There is no doubt a danger that people who have never acquired habits of steady industry-for the tribal Kafir leaves to his wives the cultivation of his plot of maize or sorghum-may relapse into a laziness hurtful to their own progress, seeing that a few weeks' labour is sufficient to provide all the food needed for a whole year. In the transition from one state of society to another exceptional legislation is needed, and a prima facie case for the so-called "Glen Grey Act" and similar laws may, therefore, be made out.

The friends of the natives whom I consulted on the subject, and one or two of the most educated and representative Kafirs themselves, did not seem to object to this Act in principle, though they criticised its methods and many of its details. But as all such laws are prompted not only by regard for the welfare of the Kafir, but also by the desire of the

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