Such a thing as an abandoned child, in strictly native condition, is scarcely conceivable. According to state law, an orphan or abandoned child less than 14 years of age may be turned over by the court to missions for care and education. The mission, of course, is entitled to the child’s services through a term of years. Advantage of this law has never been taken by Protestant missions, but Catholic missions have at different times had numbers of children committed to their charge and have used their services in the development of property. A child of 14, the limit of the law’s application, is better than a child of 12, because capable of immediate service. A boy of 15, 16, 17, 18, would be still better, but, of course, it is illegal to seize a young fellow of that age and employ him at such labor. Once committed, the child remains in the mission’s power until manhood.
There is no question that the missions, taking advantage of this law, many times seize boys who are beyond the age limit and many others who are neither orphans nor abandoned. I myself have seen a young man who could not have been less than 19 or 20 years of age, who was married and a member of the Protestant church, who had been taken by the peres under this law. He was brought before the state authorities and immediately set at liberty.
It is due to this fact, that the native goes constantly to the missionary with his complaints—that he looks upon him as the proper person to represent his cause before the state officials; that the missionary, himself, feels it his duty to bring abuses to the attention of the authorities—that the feeling already mentioned between the missionary and the state official has arisen. There have been, unfortunately, abundant occasions for intervention; there have been flagrant and cruel things which the missionary has felt called upon to report.
I do not doubt the honesty of the missionary. I have sometimes felt, however, that they have become so filled with a complaining spirit that they are incapable of seeing any good. I have heard them for hours complain of things that neither in themselves nor in their results were really open to criticism. I have heard them carp and find fault with any matter with which the name of the government could be connected. If their attention is called to some apparent purpose to reform abuses, they shake their heads and say it will come to nothing; it is a subterfuge. If, as time passes, the thing assumes the appearance of reality, they say there is some hidden and mysterious purpose back of it; the state would never do so well unless it were preparing some new iniquity. The attitude of complaint becomes habitual: the ability to see improvement seems completely lost.
The first time that I attended family prayers in a missionary home I waited with some interest to hear the petition in favor of the government. When it came, it assumed this form: “O Lord, stay the hand of the oppressor. Pity and aid the oppressed and overburdened. Prevent cruelty from destroying its victims. Interfere with the wicked and designing schemes of the oppressor.”
A dozen such expressions and petitions were uttered, but no request for divine wisdom and enlightenment for the rulers. It can easily be conceived that, where godly and pious men cherish such sentiments toward representatives of the state, the feelings of state officials toward missionaries are little likely to be completely friendly.
Bachoko Bringing in Rubber, Djoko Punda