There is no more doubt than of the diurnal motion of the earth, that by the mere exercise of common honesty on the part of the whites, the greater part of all these countries would now be civilized, and a tide of wealth poured into Europe, such as the strongest imagination can scarcely grasp; and that, too, purchased, not with the blood and tears of the miserable, but by the moral elevation and happiness of countless tribes. The waste of human life and human energies has been immense, but not more immense than the waste of the thousand natural productions of a thousand different shores and climates. The arrow-root, the cocoa-nut oil, the medicinal oils and drugs of the southern isles; the beautiful flax of New Zealand; sugar and coffee, spices and tea, from millions of acres where they might have been raised ill abundance—goods and gums, fruits and gems and ivories, have been left unproduced or wasted in the deserts, because the wonderful and energetic race of Europe chose to be as lawless as they were enterprising, and to be the destroyers rather than the benefactors of mankind. For more than three centuries, and down to the very last hour, as this volume testifies, has this system, stupid as it was wicked, been going on. Thank God, the dawn of a new era appears at last!
The wrongs of the Hottentots and Caffres, brought to the public attention by Dr. Philip and Pringle,[1] have led to Parliamentary inquiry; that inquiry has
- ↑ This excellent man was a martyr to his advocacy of the claims of the Caffres. Powerful appeals on behalf of his widow, left in painful circumstances, have been made by Mr. Leitch Ritchie, in his "Life of Pringle," and by Mr. Bannister, in his "Colonization and the Coloured Tribes," which, if they are not effective, will reflect but little credit upon the government, or the philanthropic public.
