upon a complete misunderstanding of the character of the natives as a whole, and of the Zulus in particular; I can only believe of them that they have never been in contact with natives, so as to become aware of the bare-faced line of action they pursue; and generally I should presume of them that in the view they take they are blinded by the prejudice that every negro is a poor oppressed creature, ever ill-used, abused, and trampled on.
In England, after my return, I had several opportunities of talking over this matter with various influential people, and found that whenever I expressed my belief that there was a happy future in store for the natives of South Africa, my anticipations were uniformly regarded with extreme surprise. The general impression seemed to be that the black man was becoming extinct as the result of oppression, and that the outbreak of the Zulu war was only an additional proof of this. That there has hitherto been a failure in the relations between white men and coloured in so many places is, I conceive, attributable to the entire misapprehension of the character and position of the native; either he has been treated as a being scarcely endued with human qualities at all, or, by the opposite extreme, he has been encouraged to regard himself as in every respect the equal of his master. To give a negro the rights of civilization, and to entitle him to enjoy its privileges before training him to use them aright, is only like treating a child as though he were a full-grown man, and the result has been to make him presume upon his alleged equality to take up arms against his superiors.
