sustain, presents an insuperable barrier to their improvement in civilization.

The system of oppression under which the Hottentots suffered so grievously, rendered it necessary for their oppressors to allege some reasons in their own defence; and to a colonial government, in possession of the ear of the government at home, this was an easy matter. While a government continues on the side of the oppressed, abuses must be an exception to - a general rule; but when the duty and the interest of those at the head of a government are placed in opposite directions, the law itself becomes the greatest abuse; all checks are withdrawn from the passions of the oppressors; and the oppressed, if they are incapable of vindicating their own rights, are left without a remedy.

To the Dutch East India Company, which still, in all its communications with the Cape, manifested considerable solicitude for the protection and improvement of the aborigines, the government at the Cape justified itself from the complaints urged against it for its conduct to the colonial Hottentots, by laying the blame on their character. The Hottentots were now said to be the most degenerate creatures upon earth they were represented as the lowest class of human beings; as void of memory; as filthy, and disgusting to a degree exceeding credibility; and so ungovernable in their propensities, that nothing would do for them but severe coercion.

But the Bushmen-Hottentots have been still more calumniated. They have been represented, in their persons, as caricatures of human nature, as a species of semi-baboons, and as full of deadly malignity against all other beings.

Colquhoun, on the "Resources of the British Empire," has informed us, with matchless simplicity, that all attempts to tame the Bushmen have hitherto proved ineffectual, and that they cannot be civilized.

Plutarch remarks, when a painter has to draw a fine and elegant form, which happens to have a blemish, we do not want him entirely to omit it, nor yet to define it with exactness. The one would destroy the beauty of the picture; the other would spoil the likeness. On a minute inspection of many individuals of the Bushman race, it is obvious that most who have travelled among them have not only marked distinctly, but aggravated their blemishes, and so disparaged their more pleasing features, as to create disgust towards a people, who, if they cannot boast of forms to call forth admiration, exhibit, nevertheless, but few of those physical deformities so largely ascribed to them. Many, particularly the chil dren, have interesting countenances, and under more auspicious circumstances would speedily lose their displeasing peculiarities of appearance, which in all countries are, in a greater or less degree, the inseparable concomitants of penury and suffering. The plant which, in the desert, is stunted in its growth, and presents but a scanty foliage, becomes the pride of the surrounding scenery when nourished by a more generous soil.

The most miserable specimens of the Bushman race are to be found amongst the frontier boors, or in the immediate vicinity of the colony. Many of the more remote hordes, still remaining in a state of comparative independence, are much superior in stature, and have a vivacity and cheerfulness in their countenances which form a striking contrast with the others. Some are

from five feet nine, to five feet ten and a half inches in height, and the former stature is by no means unusual. Besides the ordinary causes for the exaggerated descriptions of the Bushmen, is the ease with which a caricature may be executed, and the propensity of travellers to aim at effect; and other considerations have aggravated this evil, not less intelligible, and not, perhaps, more creditable to human nature.

It is well known how much the adventitious circumstances of youth and beauty heighten our compassion for a sufferer. Add rank to these advantages, and say that the individual is a highly accomplished female, and sympathy for her case will be raised to its utmost height. Had Mary, Queen of Scots, been as defective in personal charms as she was in prudence, less sympathy would have been excited by her unfortunate end. Knox might have made an ugly and deformed woman weep without creating much indignation; but the fascination of Mary's beauty, added to her rank, has sunk her crimes, and the benefits of the Reformation, in the same grave; and that which entitled our Reformer to the highest praise, the triumph of his principles, has loaded him with the reproaches of a partial and frivolous world. On the same principle, when the liberties of a people are to be extinguished; or, when greater severities are to be inflicted; if, besides assigning certain disqualifications for freedom, and the necessity of restraining their vices, ugliness and deformity can be thrown into the picture, few will interest themselves in the fate of the originals. Misrepresentation and calumny having prepared the way, the work of slavery and extermination may proceed with impunity.

The Bushmen are doubtless in a very ignorant and

degraded state; but the filth and dejection which have been adduced in proof of their incapability of being improved, afford a better criterion of their depressed condition, than of the absence of mental capacity. The Bushman, in a native state, is in perpetual alarm, not merely for the safety of his little property, but for his personal safety, and for that of his family. He is obliged to inhabit, for security, rocks almost inaccessible to any foot but his own; and is perpetually called upon to remove from place to place, lest the colonists should discover his abode. When he ventures forth in quest of game or roots, he is in the utmost fear of discovery, and has consequently leisure for nothing but the necessary regard to his own preservation.

Many of the accounts which have been published in England respecting the savage, ferocious, and untameable character of the Bushmen, can scarcely be read in Africa without a smile. The civilization of that degraded people is not only practicable, but might be easily attained while they are by no means deficient in intellect, they are susceptible of kindness; grateful for favours; faithful in the execution of a trust committed to them; disposed to receive instruction; and, by the use of proper means, could be easily brought to exchange their barbarous manner of life for one that would afford more comfort.

In a journey undertaken into the interior of the colony in 1819, we had two Bushmen in our train; the one was called a "tame Bushman," because he had been brought up among the farmers; and the other was found in the Bushman country, and had been newly received into the service of one of our missionaries. The stature of the one was about five feet seven,

that of the other about five feet four. Any one, not apprized of their origin, would have supposed them colonial Hottentots. The wild Bushman had only been a few months in the service of our missionary when he joined us; and we had not in our party any one that was more teachable, faithful, and obliging. During the last four months of our journey he served at table and, after a month's apprenticeship, conducted himself with as much propriety as any English servant might have been expected to do with as little training.

If the following extract of a letter (written by a gentleman *, who was several years clergyman of a frontier district of the colony, containing many thousand square miles of the Bushman country) is no longer to be regarded as descriptive of the amicable relations which then subsisted between the colonists and the Bushmen, it may, nevertheless, be received as an honourable testimony in favour of the character of that calumniated people:

"The farmers on the frontiers are entirely dependent on the Bushmen for their welfare. Few, if any, have either slaves or Hottentots, consequently they have no means of getting their cattle properly tended without their assistance. Such farmers as possess Bushmen have been in the habit of committing to them the charge of their flocks, and they have proved such faithful shepherds, that the farmers have not hesitated to give them some hundred ewes and other cattle, to sojourn with them beyond the limits of the colony. The Bushman

The Rev. A. Faure, now Minister of the Dutch Colonial Church in Cape Town. The high esteem in which this gentleman is universally held, shows that a Minister may be respected by the Colonists, and be, at the same time, a friend to the natives.