and are living under prosperous circumstances. They enjoy common rights of justice and protection. They are the particular care of magistrates and other officers specially appointed. Education, religion, employment, and regular wages are available to them in most parts, and it is only a question of a short time before, in every Colony, they will have equal opportunities for improvement
It is not necessary to draw comparisons as to whether their advancement was promoted more or less under the British or Dutch administrations. The rate of desirable progress is a contentious point, many holding, for sound reasons, that progress in order to be steady cannot be too slow—so slow, indeed, that those who watch it can scarcely trace it. It is a commonplace that the harvest of missionary labour is seldom gleaned earlier than a generation after the workers have passed away.
The fact remains that great strides have been made, especially in the Cape Colony, and that the aboriginals, as a whole, to-day may claim to have risen considerably in intellectual capacity and attained to a certain degree of civilization. They wear European clothes, cultivate with European implements, consume European goods, and many tens of thousands have passed through the elementary stages of education. Some have attained to standards of excellence, and shown themselves capable of studying with profit the learned professions. It is true that agitations have occasionally been directed against the tendency to keep the masses back. Such agitations have been useful, and have generally been fomented by those who are possessed of exceptional ability to think and express their ideas. Whilst recognising the merit of such individuals, and appreciating the motives which stir them on behalf of their kinsmen, it must be remembered that the great bulk of the communities in the civilized world are not highly educated or endowed with genius, but only with a modicum of plain common-sense sufficient to qualify
