As early as 1870 he had become a correspondent of the Aborigines'
Protection Society; in 1871 he supported their action in defence of the
Demerara negroes; and to the end of his life he was in constant
communication with their leading men.
His brief tenure of office gave him power to put in force principles for which he had contended as a private member. In 1877 he wrote to Mr. Chesson that since 1868 he had been interested to secure fair treatment for China, [Footnote: In 1869 Sir Charles wrote letters to the Times on Chinese affairs, which, says the Memoir, 'possess a certain interest as showing that I held the same views as to China which I have always continued to have at heart,' and which may be sufficiently illustrated by quotation of a single phrase. He condemned "the old, bad, world-wide party … which never admits that weak races have rights as against the strong.">[ but China's friends must bring pressure to bear to limit the use of torture. In 1880, having become Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, he was able to inform the same correspondent that he had "succeeded in making it certain that a strong direction would be made on the subject of Chinese torture."
Cases of gross barbarity, cases of actual slave trading, always found him ready to act, but his great object was to check the growth of all systems and institutions which made for industrial servitude—to his mind a graver peril than direct slavery. Thus, in 1878 he was in correspondence with the Aborigines' Protection Society concerning the proposed establishment of a Chartered Company in Borneo, and observed that such arrangements could not be justified by proving the existence of bad government in independent Native States. "The worse the government of these States, the greater the difficulties which crop up when we intermeddle." In 1881 as a Minister he resisted the grant of that charter. All these surrenders of territory and jurisdiction to commercial associations filled him with suspicion. He knew that expedients lay ready to the white man's hand by which the native population could easily be enslaved; and to these even the best representatives of direct colonial government under the Crown were prone to resort. In 1878 he had written anxiously to Mr. Chesson concerning the labour tax in Fiji, which, although instituted by a Governor in whom the society had special trust, seemed "opposed to all the principles for which you have hitherto contended." Nearly twenty years later he was maintaining this vigilance. "I am always uneasy about Fiji," he wrote to Mr. Fox Bourne in August, 1896. "I attacked the labour system when it was instituted, and continue to hold the strongest opinion against it." But by that time the new developments which he had resisted in the seventies had spread fast and far.
"The fashion of the day," he wrote in September, 1895, "sets so strongly towards veiled slavery that there is nothing now to be done by deputation to Ministers. We ought to appeal to the conscience of the electorate, and I am willing greatly to increase my little gifts to your society if that is done."
Part of his concern was engendered by the revelation, then recent, that the Chartered Niger Company imposed by contract a fine of £1,000 on any agent or ex-agent of theirs who should publish any statement respecting the company's methods, even after his employment was ended. "I am convinced," Sir Charles wrote, "that the secrecy which it has been attempted to maintain puts them wholly in the wrong, even if they are angels;" and upon this ground he kept up a steady campaign against the Niger Company by question and debate in Parliament until Government bought the company out and assumed direct responsibility for the country.
South Africa was a graver centre of disquietude, for there commercial enterprise was on a greater scale. He wrote in December, 1900, after Great Britain had occupied the Transvaal: "My point is that the Rand Jews have already got slavery, and our Government must repeal the laws they have. Reading together the Pass Law and the coloured labour clause, which you will find was the end of the latest Gold Law, we have slavery by law."
The remedy lay, for him, in the guarantee of citizenship, at least in some degree, to this class of labour; and with that object he put himself at the centre of a concerted movement as soon as opportunity offered. When, after the Boer War, the mine owners returned to the Rand, and, pleading shortage of Kaffir labour, demanded the introduction of indentured Chinese coolies, Sir Charles vigorously protested. The question played a considerable part in the elections which returned the Liberals to power with an enormous majority. It was not, however, as the party man that Sir Charles made his protest, but as the upholder of human rights. He feared lest "South Africa is to become the home of a great proletariat, forbidden by law to rise above the present situation."
When the Union of South Africa was proposed, it became manifest that division existed as to the status of non-European citizens. In 1906, when the Liberals came into power, immediate action was taken by a small group of members, who addressed a letter to the Prime Minister begging that, in view of the contemplated federation, steps should be taken to safeguard such political rights as natives actually enjoyed in the various colonies, and also the tribal institutions of separate native communities. The letter advocated also an extension of Native Reserves, and it was promptly followed (on February 28th) by a motion, brought forward by Mr. Byles, which declared that "in any settlement of South African affairs this House desires a recognition of Imperial responsibility for the protection of all races excluded from equal political rights, the safeguarding of all immigrants against servile conditions of labour, and the guarantee to the native populations of at least their existing status, with the unbroken possession of their liberties in Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and other tribal countries and reservations."
Sir Charles himself took no part in the debate; but he notes: 'I am proud to have planned this letter and drawn the motion for Byles so that it was carried unanimously by the House.' A resolution much stronger in terms could easily have been carried in that Parliament; but it would not have been unanimous, and it could hardly have been enforced later on. Here a principle was so firmly laid down that the House could not recede from it; and the importance of the step soon became apparent. When the Bill for the South African Union came before Parliament in 1909, Colonel Seely, who had been one of the signatories to the letter of 1906, represented the Colonial Office in the Commons; and Sir Charles, warned by friends of the natives in South Africa, questioned him as to whether the Bill as drafted empowered the self-governing colonies to alter the existing boundaries of the Protectorates. He received a private promise that the matter should be put beyond doubt; and this was done in the Committee stage by a solemn declaration that the Imperial Government absolutely reserved its right of veto upon the alienation of native lands. As soon as the text of the proposed Constitution became known, he raised his protest against what he considered a permanent disfranchisement of labour; for labour in South Africa, he held, must for all time be coloured labour. Six weeks later, when the Bill was brought to Westminster, Mr. W. P. Schreiner, who came specially to plead the rights of the civilized men of colour, was in constant intercourse with Sir Charles, and scores of letters on detailed proposals for amendment attest the thoroughness of that co-operation. Dilke, with the support of some Labour men and Radicals, fought strenuously against the clauses which recognized a colour-bar, and in the opinion of some at least in South Africa, the essence of the position was secured.
[Footnote: Mr. Drew, editor of the Transvaal Leader, wrote: