tnesses shall not be all of
one nation; they shall come from different countries, and among them
there shall be representatives of the native peoples themselves. I shall
add little of my own to the testimony of these witnesses. But I will
say, in advance, that what I desire to make plain for some sincere
persons who are perplexed, is this,--that where a Government has
established by Law the principle of the complete and final abolition of
Slavery, and made its practice illegal for all time,--as our British
Government has done,--there is hope for the native races;--there is
always hope that, by an appeal to the law and to British authority, any
and every wrong done to the natives, which approaches to or threatens
the reintroduction of slavery, shall be redressed. The Abolition of
Slavery, enacted by our Government in 1834, was the proclamation of a
great principle, strong and clear, a straight line by which every
enactment dealing with the question, and every act of individuals, or
groups of individuals, bearing on the liberty of the natives can be
measured, and any deviation from that straight line of principle can be
exactly estimated and judged.

When we speak of injustice done to the natives by the South African
Republics, we are apt to be met with the reproach that the English have
also been guilty of cruelty to native races. This is unhappily true, and
shall not be disguised in the following pages;--but mark this,--that it
is true of certain individuals bearing the English name, true of groups
of individuals, of certain adventurers and speculators. But this fact
does not touch the far more important and enduring fact that _wherever
British rule is established, slavery is abolished, and illegal_.

This fact is the ground of the hope for the future of the Missionaries
of our own country, and of other European countries, as well as of the
poor natives themselves, so far as they have come to understand the
matter; and in several instances they have shown that they do understand
it, and appreciate it keenly.

Those English persons, or groups of persons, who have denied to the
native labourers their hire (which is the essence of slavery), have
acted on their own responsibility, and _illegally_. This should be made
to be clearly understood in future conditions of peace, and rendered
impossible henceforward.

That future peace which we all desire, on the cessation of the present
grievous war, must be a peace founded on