owing, in the smallest degree, to the increase of native labourers. The districts of the country in which the farmers are not in the possession of slaves and not able to purchase them, together with the growing demand of the colony for an increase of labourers, will for many years swallow up all the labourers that can be procured by the change of system recommended within the colony, without affecting the price of slaves, who are chiefly confined to the Cape district, and those parts of the colony into which the introduction of native labourers must be very slow and gradual.

No national improvement can take place in any country that will not be found, in its progress, to injure particular interests; but should it happen, in the course of things, that a few slave proprietors should suffer by a reduction in the price of their slaves by the encouragement of free labourers in the colony, they will have ample compensation for the loss they may sustain from this cause, in the advanced value of all their fixed property.

After having said so much, in the last part of the first volume of this work, on the duty of government towards the natives who have been bred up within the colony, and after the quotations from the Reports of the Commissioners, on which we have made our comments, it is unnecessary to enter much more into detail respecting our views as to what should be done for the natives; but we cannot close this chapter, and take our final leave of the subject, without again recurring to it, and again recommending that the natives be placed in future under the same laws as the colonists. The natives will still have much to suffer, and the colonists, particularly in the remoter districts, will have but too many oppor

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 exercised over power 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 invaders, 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