but a social shame, at going without them. As I have no doubt whatever that the condition of these people has been improved by our coming, and that British rule has been on the whole beneficent to them, I cannot but approve of the annexation of British Kafraria. But I doubt whether when it was done the justification was as complete as in those former days, twenty years before, when Lord Glenelg reprimanded Sir Benjamin D'Urban for the extension he made in the same territory, and drew back the borders of British sovereignty, and restored their lands and their prestige and their customs to the natives, and declared himself willing to be responsible for all results that might follow,—results which at last cost so much British blood and so much British money!
The difficult question meets one at every corner in South Africa. What is the duty of the white man in reference to the original inhabitant? The Kafir Chief will say that it is the white man's duty to stay away and not to touch what does not belong to him. The Dutch Colonist will say that it is the white man's duty to make the best he can of the good things God has provided for his use,—and that as the Kafir in his natural state is a bad thing he should either be got rid of, or made a slave. In either assertion there is an intelligible purpose capable of a logical argument. But the Briton has to go between the two, wavering much between the extremes of philanthropy and expansive energy. He knows that he has to get possession of the land and use it, and is determined that he will do so;—but he knows also that it is wrong to take what does not belong to him
