ite boy. A shocking case of the kind occurred a few years ago in
the eastern province. A white farmer--an Englishman, not a Boer--flogged
his Kafir servant so severely that the latter died; and when the culprit
was put on his trial, and acquitted by a white jury, his white
neighbours escorted him home with a band of music. More frequently,
unscrupulous employers, especially on the frontiers of civilization,
will try to defraud their native workmen, or will provoke them by
ill-usage to run away before the day of payment arrives. But there are
no lynchings, as in America, and the white judges and magistrates, if
not always the juries, administer the law with impartiality.

As regards the provisions of the law, one must distinguish between the
British Colonies and the Dutch Republics. In the former the ordinary
civil rights of whites and blacks are precisely the same, though there
exist certain police provisions which are applicable only to the latter.
Cape Colony has a so-called "curfew law," requiring natives who are out
of doors after dark to be provided with a pass--a law which is found
oppressive by the best class of natives, educated and respectable men,
though defended as necessary for public order, having regard to the
large black population of the lower class, and their propensity to
drink and petty offences. There are also certain "labour laws," applying
to natives only, and particularly to those on agricultural locations,
which are intended to check the disposition of Kafirs living on native
reserves to become idle or to take to vagrancy. Doubtless there is a
risk that people who have never acquired habits of steady industry--for
the tribal Kafir leaves to his wives the cultivation of his plot of
maize or sorghum--may relapse into a laziness hurtful to their own
progress, seeing that a few weeks' labour is sufficient to provide all
the food needed for a whole year. In the transition from one state of
society to another exceptional legislation is needed, and a _prima
facie_ case for the so-called "Glen Grey Act" and similar laws may,
therefore, be made out.

The friends of the natives whom I consulted on the subject, and one or
two of the most educated and representative Kafirs themselves, did not
seem to object to this Act in principle, though they criticized its
methods and many of its details. But as all such laws are prompted not
only by regard for the welfare of the Kafir, but also by the desire of
the whit