“Is it always the custom here to receive travellers in this friendly way?” observed Alexander, as they rode away.
“Always,” replied Swinton; “there are no inns on the road, and every traveller finds a welcome. It is considered a matter of course.”
“Do they never take payment?”
“Never, and it must not be offered; but they will take the value of the corn supplied to your horses, as that is quite another thing. One peculiarity you will observe as you go along, which is, that the Dutch wife is a fixture at the little tea-table all day long. She never leaves it, and the tea is always ready for every traveller who claims their hospitality; it is an odd custom.”
“And I presume that occasions the good woman to become so very lusty.”
“No doubt of it; the whole exercise of the day is from the bed-room to the teapot, and back again,” replied Swinton, laughing.
“One would hardly suppose that this apparently good-natured and hospitable people could have been guilty of such cruelty to the natives as Mr Fairburn represented.”
“Many of our virtues and vices are brought prominently forward by circumstances,” replied Swinton. “Hospitality in a thinly-inhabited country is universal, and a Dutch boor is hospitable to an excess. Their cruelty to the Hottentots and other natives arises from the prejudices of education: they have from their childhood beheld them treated as slaves, and do not consider them as fellow-creatures. As Mr Fairburn truly said, nothing demoralises so much, or so hardens the heart of man, as slavery existing and sanctioned by law.”
“But are not the Dutch renowned for cruelty and love of money?”
“They have obtained that reputation, and I fear there is some reason for it. They took the lead, it must be remembered, as a commercial nation, more commercial than the Portuguese, whose steps they followed so closely: that this eager pursuit of wealth should create a love of money is but too natural, and to obtain money, men, under the influence of that passion, will stop at nothing. Their cruelties in the East are on record; but the question is, whether the English, who followed the path of the Dutch, would not, had they gone before them, have been guilty of the same crimes to obtain the same ends? The Spaniards were just as cruel in South America, and the Portuguese have not fallen short of them; nay, I doubt if our own countrymen can be acquitted in many instances. The only difference is, that the other nations who preceded them in discoveries had greater temptation, because there were more riches and wealth to be obtained.”