“Very well. I speak under correction, but I understand the commando system to be this. When property is continually and persistently stolen by the Hottentots and Bushmen, and no peaceable measures can secure its restoration, the whites in the neighbourhood are summoned to assist at an armed attempt at its recovery. They march into the domains of the robbers, seize the cattle or other property which has been plundered, or an equivalent, punish the robbers, according to the amount of the offence, and then return home. Is that a correct statement?”
“Theoretically, very fairly correct.”
“Well, where is the injustice? Those who will recognise no law but force, must take their first lesson under that law. A savage has to learn that he must respect the rights and feelings of others. That is the foundation of all social order. Until he has learned it, you cannot civilise him.”
“Granted. But the means you take are not the right ones. In the first place, who gave the Dutch settlers the right to the land or the cattle? They found the Hottentot and Bushman in possession. What equivalent did they give them for their land? They were savages, you will say, and could not appreciate its value. True, but the Dutchmen could. Did they not take advantage of the ignorance of the aboriginals to gain possession, on ridiculously cheap terms, of their property. If so, the rights of which you speak are founded on fraud and extortion, and are, in fact, no rights at all, but simply wrongs.”
“Do you mean that there can be no dealings at all between civilised races and savages?”
“By no means. If the civilised trader is an honest man, he will appraise the land at its true value, and hold it in trust for the vendor.”
“How hold it in trust?”
“He will remember that he cannot pay the fair purchase-money down, and therefore hold it for the seller, till he can pay it. He will remember, that the seller was supported off the land previously to its sale, and ought to be supported still by it, or its proceeds, or the bargain cannot have been a fair one. He will therefore supply the natives with food, if in need; will help them to live; will feel bound to furnish the means of instructing them; will show infinite forbearance, until they are instructed. He will be sensible that he cannot wash his hands clear of them as he might, in a civilised country, of men, who had sold him land at market price.”
“And what, if such forbearance produced no other result than increased lawlessness and treachery?”
“You have, first, to show that it would produce it. And you would have some difficulty in doing that. When that mode of dealing with aboriginals has been fairly tried and has failed, then you may ask your question. But when has it ever been tried? I have striven to impress the truths of the Gospel on the Hottentots and the Bushmen, and I have failed; but why? Not because they could not understand the Gospel, or because they hated it; but because those who professed it did not themselves act up to it—did not, in fact, themselves really believe it. Look you here. A tribe of Bushmen have been in the habit of ranging over a large tract of country, and killing game, wherever they could, for their support. They regarded that as their natural right; and who shall say it was not? Well, some persons, of whom they have never heard, make some bargain with some of their neighbours or fellow-countrymen, and they find themselves suddenly deprived of the rights which they and their fathers have enjoyed from immemorial time. They traverse their old hunting-grounds and kill the first cattle they fall in with, as they have been ever wont to do; and for so doing, their villages are attacked by night, their huts burnt, their property destroyed, themselves, their wives and children, enslaved or murdered! Whatever sense of natural justice they may possess, must be outraged by such acts.”