tunities of abusing their power with impunity, if the laws and even the magistrates are in their favour; but when the protection of equal laws shall be extended to all the coloured population, the British government will have done one part of its duty, and the friends of the aborigines will have some encouragement in their benevolent attempts to shield them from oppression and to ameliorate their condition.

We ask for no new laws: we simply ask that the colonists, and the different classes of the natives, should have the same civil rights granted to them. The liberty we ask is not an exemption from the law, but its protection; and the law grants no rights to the colonists which it may not extend with perfect safety to all classes in the colony.

No sound reason can be assigned against the extension to the natives of the laws which protect the colonists from oppression and injustice. The effects of oppression on the natives have been tried for nearly two hundred years in South Africa, and the results have been placed before us.

If the leg is galled by an iron chain, it is vain to prescribe ointment to cure the wound while the fetter remains. The first step towards the improvement of the natives must begin by removing the cause of their present degradation. They have been corrupted and debased by the uncontrolled power exercised over them by their European masters; and the legislative enactments which bestow on them equal rights, will prove a salutary check to the one, and afford the stimulus of hope to the other. While the colony of the Cape of Good Hope continues to have one set of laws for the rich, and another for the poor, its very consti

tution presents as great a barrier to the improvement of the oppressor, as it does to that of the oppressed. ... In an estimate formed by Dr. Johnson of what mankind have lost or gained by European conquest, having adverted to the cruelties which have been committed, and the manner in which the laws of religion have been outrageously violated, he adds," Europeans have scarcely visited any coast but to gratify avarice and extend corruption, to arrogate dominion without right, and practice cruelty without incentive;" and he then gives it as his opinion that it would have been happy for the oppressed, and still more happy for the inva-. ders, that their designs had slept in their own bosoms. How far the description this distinguished writer gives of European avarice and cruelty towards the natives of other countries is applicable to the conduct of Europeans in South Africa, I leave my readers to estimate on a review of the details which have been furnished in these volumes; and if there be a shadow of truth in the remark, that the oppressor has placed himself in a worse condition than even the oppressed, we may fairly assume in the present argument, the principle (a principle which has been illustrated in other parts of this work) that to free the oppressed natives from the cruel bondage under which they now suffer, will be an act of greater benevolence to those who now oppress them and their families, than it will be even to the sufferers themselves.

We shall be excused if, in concluding our reflections on this subject, we reiterate a truth which it is the chief object of the author in this book to establish and inculcate, that the only method by which we can elevate all classes of people in the colony of the Cape of Good

Hope is, by elevating the coloured population to a full and fair participation of those privileges from which they have hitherto been excluded. Unless these privileges are granted to the natives in the remote and northern districts of our colony, the evil we have dwelt upon at so much length will neutralize the effects of every other remedy. We repeat it-there is but one method by which the system of rapine and murder, which has been as prejudicial to the colonists as it has been to the natives, can be effectually checked :-make the coloured population within your colony free-refuse to legalize to the colonists their usurped claims over the service of the men, women, and children they may have caught in their marauding expeditions-permit the natives to choose their own masters-secure to them, inviolate from the grasp of colonial violence, the right which God and nature have given them to their offspring-allow them to bring their labour to a fair market, and the farmers will no longer have occasion to complain of the want of servants; and, as there will no longer remain any temptation for commandoes, and as the colonists will thereby be compelled to win by kindness what they now seize by force, all classes will shortly be seen mingling together in one common fraternity, without bloodshed and without fear.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

Deficiencies of the Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry in regard to the Natives.-Their Remarks on the effects of missions beyond the Colony.-Extracts from the Author's Journal relative to the destruction of two Bushman Kraals, and the Author's interview with the Murderers.-Causes of these Atrocities.-Respect evinced by the Wild Tribes for the Missionaries.-Examples of their Influence in subduing the rancorous animosities of the Natives, and of acquiring their perfect confidence and affection.-Anecdote of a Caffer chief placing his two sons at Theopolis for their education.

In the report of the Commissioners of Inquiry before us, a full developement of the participation which the colonial government has had in the sufferings and degradation of the natives, was, perhaps, more than we had a right to expect; yet I cannot help regretting that a document which has gone so minutely into so many minor details relative to government and finance should have had so little reference to this subject, and to the opposition made to the improvement of the people at our missionary stations. The Commissioners have made brief statements and concessions in their reports, which must prove serviceable to the cause of humanity; and I am aware, as has been already stated, that they have sent home to the colonial office in Downing-street, much writing on these subjects; yet I must confess that in these reports on the government and finances of the colony, I should have liked to have seen something more relating to the causes of those oppressions

under which the natives of the colony have suffered, and upon the advantages the colonial government might derive from the employment of such means as would render those labourers more productive, by raising them, as a body, to that rank which would enable them to become consumers of British manufactures.

The policy of the government towards the natives, independently of the influence it had in originating the measures which led to the appointment of the Commissioners of Inquiry, had the strongest claims, on the ground of its own merits, to particular attention in their reports; and if the taxes paid by the people at our missionary institutions, and the saving created to government by the cheap terms on which the Hottentots at Bethelsdorp contracted to carry the government stores from Algoa Bay to Graham's Town, the productive labour to which our missionary institutions have given rise, and the advantage which has been gained by the consumption of British manufactures by the people under the instruction of our missionaries, did not merit particular notice from the influence they have yet had on the resources of the colony, they at least furnish a fair illustration of the advantages the government may derive by adopting a more liberal system of policy towards this interesting class of its subjects. Having said so little of the missions within the colony, which occupied so large a portion of their time during their journey into the interior, we had no reason to expect much in these reports on the missions beyond the colony, which were not visited by them; but considering the channel through which they must have derived much of their information on this subject, we have no reason to find fault with them for the qualified praise they bestow upon them in the following extract: