Native Races and the War Part 11

Even in these enlightened days there seems to be in some minds a strange confusion as to the understanding of the principle of Equality for which we plead, and which is one of the first principles laid down in the Charter of our Liberties. What is meant in that charter is _Equality of all before the Law_; not by any means social equality, which belongs to another region of political ideas altogether.

A friend who has lived in South Africa, and who has had natives working for and with him, tells me of this confusion of ideas among some of the more vulgar stamp of white colonists, who, my friend observes, amuse themselves by a.s.suming a familiarity in intercourse with the natives, which works badly. It does not at all increase their respect for the white man, but quite the contrary, while it is as little calculated to produce self-respect in the native. My friend found the natives naturally respectful and courteous, when treated justly and humanely, in fact as a _gentleman_ would treat them. Above all things, they honour a man who is just. They have a keen sense of justice, and a quick perception of the existence of this crowning quality in a man.

Livingstone said that he found that they also have a keen eye for a man of pure and moral life.

The natives in the Transvaal have never asked for the franchise, or for the smallest voice in the Government. In their hearts they hoped for and desired simple legal justice; they asked for bread, and they received a stone. It does not seem desirable that they should too early become "full fledged voters." Some sort of Education test, some proof of a certain amount of civilization and instruction attained, might be applied with advantage; and to have to wait a little while for that does not seem, from the Englishwoman's point of view at least, a great hards.h.i.+p, when it is remembered how long our agricultural labourers had to wait for that privilege, and that for more than fifty years English women have pet.i.tioned for it, and have not yet obtained it, although they are not, I believe, wholly uncivilized or uneducated.

The Theology of the Boers has been much commented upon; and it is supposed by some that, as they are said to derive it solely from the Old Testament Scriptures, it follows that the ethical teaching of those Scriptures must be extremely defective. A Swiss Pastor writes to me: "It is time to rescue the Old Testament from the Boer interpretation of it.

We have not enough of Old Testament righteousness among us Christians."

This is true. Those who have studied those Scriptures intelligently see, through much that appears harsh and strange in the Mosaic prescriptions, a wisdom and tenderness which approaches to the Christian ideal, as well as certain severe rules and restrictions which, when observed and maintained, lifted the moral standard of the Hebrew people far above that of the surrounding nations. When Christ came on earth, He swept away all that which savoured of barbarism, the husk which often however, contained within it a kernel of truth capable of a great development. "Ye have heard it said of old times," He reiterated, "_but I say unto you_"--and then He set forth the higher, the eternally true principles of action.

Yet if the Transvaal teachers and their disciples had read impartially (though even exclusively) the Old Testament Scriptures, they could not have failed to see how grossly they were themselves offending against the divine commands in some vital matters. I cite, as an example, the following commands, given by Moses to the people, not once only, but repeatedly. Had these commands been regarded with as keen an appreciation as some others whose teaching seems to have an opposite tendency, it is impossible that the natives should have been treated as they have been by Boer Law, or that Slavery or Serfdom should have existed among them for so many generations. The following are some of the often-repeated commands and warnings:

Ex. xii. _v_ 19.--"One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you."

Num. ix. _v_ 14.--"If a stranger shall sojourn among you, ... ye shall have one ordinance, both for the stranger, and for him that was born in the land."

Num. xv. _v_ 15.--"One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation, and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance for ever in your generation: as ye are so shall the stranger be before the Lord."

Verse 16.--"One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you."

Lev. xix. _v_ 33.--"And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him."

Verse 34.--"But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Verse 35.--"Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in mete-yard, in weight, or in measure."

Although the natives of the Transvaal were the original possessors of the country, they have been reckoned by the Boers as strangers and foreigners among them. They have treated them as the ancient Jews treated all Gentiles as for ever excluded from the Commonwealth of Israel,--until in the "fulness of time" they were forced by a great shock and terrible judgments--to acknowledge, with astonishment, that "G.o.d had also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life," and that they also had heard the news of the glorious emanc.i.p.ation of all the sons of G.o.d throughout the earth.

Not only is the non-payment, but even delay in the payment of wages condemned by the Law of Moses. Is it possible that Boer theologians, who quote Scripture with so much readiness, have never read the following?

Lev. xix. _v_ 13.--"Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning."

Deut. xxiv. _v_ 14.--"Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of the strangers that are in thy land, within thy gates."

Verse 15.--"At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee."

Jer. xxii. _v_ 13.--"Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work."

Mal. iii. _v_ 5.--"And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against ... those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts."

The following is from the New Testament, but it might have come under the notice of Boer theologians and Law makers:--

The epistle of St. James v. _v_ 4.--"Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."

Verse 3.--"Your gold and your silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you."

Jer. x.x.xv. _v_ 17.--"Because ye have not proclaimed Liberty every man to his neighbour, behold I proclaim Liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the Sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine."

I am aware that there will be voices raised at once in application to certain English people of the very commands here cited; and justly so, so far as that application is made to individuals or groups of persons who have transgressed not only Biblical Law but the Law of our Land in their dealings with native races; and the warning conveyed to us in such recriminations must not and, I believe, will not be unheeded.

The following occurs in a number of the "Ethical World," published early in the present year:--"We know that capitalists, left to themselves, would mercilessly exploit the labour of the coloured man. That is precisely the reason why they should not be left to themselves, but should be under the control of the British Empire. It is a reason why Crown colonies should supersede Chartered Companies; it is a reason for much that is often called 'shallow Imperialism.' If the present war had been staved off, and if, by mere lapse of time and increase of numbers _without British intervention_, the Outlanders had come to be the masters of the South African Republic, they might have established a system of independent government quite as bad as that now in existence, though not hardened against reform by the same archaic traditions."

To my mind some of the published utterances of the Originator and members of the "Chartered Company" are not such as to inspire confidence in those who desire to see the essential principles of British Law and Government paramount wherever Great Britain has sway. There is the old contemptuous manner of speaking of the natives; and we have heard an expression of a desire to "eliminate the Imperial Factor."

This elimination of the Imperial Factor is precisely that which is the least desired by those who see our Imperialism to mean the continuance of obedience to the just traditions of British Law and Government. The granting of a Charter to a Company lends the authority (or the appearance of it) of the Queen's name to acts of the responsible heads of that company, which may be opposed to the principles of justice established by British Law; and such acts may have disastrous results.

It is to be hoped that the present awakening on the subject of past failures of our government to enforce respect for its own principles may be a warning to all concerned against any transgression of those principles.

Continental friends with whom I have conversed on the subject of the British Colonies have sometimes appeared to me to leave out of account some considerations special to the subject. They regard British Colonization as having been accomplished by a series of acts of aggression, solely inspired by the love of conquest and desire for increased territory. This is an error.

I would ask such friends to take a Map of Europe, or of the World, and steadily to regard it in connection with the following facts. Our people are among the most prolific,--if not the most prolific,--of all the nations. Energy and enterprise are in their nature, together with a certain love of free-breathing, adventure and discovery. Now look at the map, and observe how small is the circ.u.mference of the British Isles.

"Our Empire has no geographical continuity like the Russian Empire; it is that larger Venice with no narrow streets, but with the sea itself for a high-road. It is bound together by a moral continuity alone." What are our Sons to do? Must our immense population be debarred from pa.s.sing through these ocean tracts to lands where there are great uninhabited wastes capable of cultivation? What shall we do with our sons and our daughters innumerable, as the ways become overcrowded in the mother land, and energies have not the outlets needful to develop them. Shall we place legal restrictions on marriage, or on the birth of children, or prescribe that no family shall exceed a certain number? You are shocked,--naturally. It follows then that some members of our large British families must cross the seas and seek work and bread elsewhere.

The highest and lowest, representing all ranks, engage in this kind of initial colonization. Our present Prime Minister, a "younger son," went out in his youth,--as others of his cla.s.s have done,--with his pickaxe, to Australia, to rank for a time among "diggers" until called home by the death of the elder son, the heir to the t.i.tle and estate. This necessity and this taste for wandering and exploring has helped in some degree to form the independence of character of our men, and also to strengthen rather than to weaken the ties of affection and kins.h.i.+p with the Motherland. Many men, "n.o.bly born and gently nurtured," have thus learned self-dependence, to endure hards.h.i.+ps, and to share manual labour with the humblest; and such an experience does not work for evil. Then when communities have been formed, some sort of government has been necessitated. An appeal is made to the Mother Country, and her offspring have grown up more or less under her regard and care, until self-government has developed itself.

The great blot on this necessary and natural expansion is the record (from time to time) of the displacement of native tribes by force and violence, when their rights seemed to interfere with the interests of the white man. Of such action we have had to repent in the past, and we repent more deeply than ever now when our responsibilities towards natives races have been brought with startling clearness before those among us who have been led to look back and to search deeply into the meanings of the present great "history-making war."

The personality of Paul Kruger stands out mournfully at this moment on the page of history. Mr. FitzPatrick wrote of him in 1896, as follows:--

"_L'Etat c'est moi_, is almost as true of the old Dopper President as it was of its originator; for in matters of external policy and in matters which concern the Boer as a party, the President has his way as completely as any anointed autocrat. To anyone who has studied the Boers and their ways and policy ... it must be clear that President Kruger does more than represent the opinion of the people and execute their policy: he moulds them in the form he wills. By the force of his own strong convictions and prejudices, and of his indomitable will, he has made the Boers a people whom he regards as the germ of the Afrikander nation; a people chastened, selected, welded, and strong enough to attract and a.s.similate all their kindred in South Africa, and thus to realize the dream of a Dutch Republic from the Zambesi to Cape Town.

"In the history of South Africa the figure of the grim old President will loom large and striking,--picturesque as the figure of one who, by his character and will, made and held his people; magnificent as one who, in the face of the blackest fortune, never wavered from his aim or faltered in his effort ... and it maybe, pathetic too, as one whose limitations were great, one whose training and a.s.sociations,--whose very successes had narrowed and embittered and hardened him;--as one who, when the greatness of success was his to take and to hold, turned his back on the supreme opportunity, and used his strength and qualities to fight against the spirit of progress, and all that the enlightenment of the age p.r.o.nounces to be fitting and necessary to good government and a healthy State.

"To an English n.o.bleman, who in the course of an interview remarked, 'my father was a Minister (of the Queen),' the Dutchman answered, 'and my father was a shepherd!' It was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the ant.i.thesis. He, too, was a shepherd,--a peasant. It may be that he knew what would be right and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realized that to educate would be to emanc.i.p.ate, to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices, to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread, to give to all men the rights of men would be to swamp for ever the party which is to him greater than the State. When one thinks of the one century history of that people, much is seen which accounts for their extraordinary love of isolation, and their ingrained and pa.s.sionate aversion to control; much, too, that draws to them a world of sympathy; and when one realizes the old President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations--trying to fight both fate and Nature--standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea--one realizes the pathos of the picture. But this is as another generation may see it. We are now too close--so close that the meaner details, the blots and flaws, are all most plainly visible, the corruption, the insincerity, the injustice, the barbarity--all the unlovely touches that will bye and bye be forgotten--sponged away by the gentle hand of time, when only the picturesque will remain."[37]

And now that his sun is setting in the midst of clouds, and the great ambition of his life lies a ruin before him, and age, disappointment, and sorrow press heavily upon him, reproach and criticism are silenced.

Compa.s.sion and a solemn awe alone fill our hearts.

A late awakening and repentance may not serve to maintain the political life of a party or a nation; but it is never too late for a human soul to receive for itself the light that may have been lacking for right guidance all through the past, and G.o.d does not finally withdraw Himself from one who has ever sincerely called upon His name.

I beg to be allowed to address a word, in conclusion, more especially to certain of my own countrymen,--among whom I count some of my valued fellow-workers of the past years. These latter have been very patient with me at times when I have ventured a word of warning in connection with the Abolitionist war in which we have together been engaged, and perhaps they will bear with me now; but whether they will do so or not, I must speak that which seems to me the truth, that which is laid on my heart to speak. I refer especially to the temper of mind of those whose present denunciations of our country are apparently not restrained by considerations derived from a deeper and calmer view of the whole situation.

When G.o.d's Judgments are in the earth, "the people of the world will learn righteousness." Are we learning righteousness? Am I, are you, friends, learning righteousness? I desire, at least, to be among those who may learn something of the mind of G.o.d towards His redeemed world, even in the darkest hour. But you will tell me perhaps that there is nothing of the Divine purpose in all this tribulation, that G.o.d has allowed evil to have full sway in the world for a time. Others among us, as firmly believe that there is a Divine permission in the natural vengeance which follows transgression, that we are never the sport of a senseless fate, and that G.o.d governs as well as reigns.

"G.o.d's fruit of justice ripens slow; "Men's souls are narrow; let them grow, "My brothers, we must wait."

Many among us are learning to see more and more clearly that the present "tribulation" is the climax of a long series,--through almost a century past,--of errors of which till now we had never been fully conscious,--of neglect of duty, of casting off of responsibility, of oblivion of the claims of the millions of native inhabitants of Africa who are G.o.d's creatures and the redeemed of Christ as much as we,--of ambitions and aims purely worldly, of a breathless race among nations for present and material gain.

There are hasty judges it seems to me who look upon this war as the _Initial Crime_, a sudden and fatal error into which our nation has leapt in a fit of blind pa.s.sion aroused by some quite recent event, and chiefly chargeable to certain individuals living among us to-day, who represent, in their view, a deplorable deterioration of the whole nation. The evils (which are not chiefly attributable to our nation) which have led up to this war, and made it from the human point of view, inevitable, are all ignored by these judges. Like the servant in one of the Parables of Christ, who said "my Lord delayeth his coming," (G.o.d is nowhere among us,) and began to beat and abuse his fellow-servants, they fall to inflicting on their fellow citizens unmeasured blows of the tongue and pen, because of this war. Their hearts are so full of indignation that they cannot see anything higher or deeper than the material strife. They judge the combatants, our poor soldiers, the first victims, with little tenderness or sympathy. When King David was warned by G.o.d of approaching chastis.e.m.e.nt for his sins as a ruler, he pleaded that that chastis.e.m.e.nt should fall upon himself alone, saying, "these sheep (the people) what have they done?" We may ask the same of the rank and file of our army. What have they done? It was not they who ordained the war, and so far as personal influence may have gone to provoke war, many of those who sit at home at ease are more to blame than the men who believe that they are obeying the call of duty when they offer themselves for perils, for hards.h.i.+ps, wounds, sickness, and lingering as well as sudden death.

G.o.d's thoughts, however, are "not as our thoughts," nor "His ways as our ways." The record I might give of spiritual awakening and extraordinary blessing bestowed by Him at this time in the very heart of this war on these, the "first victims" of it, would be received I fear with complete incredulity by those to whom I now address myself. Be it so. The sources of my information are from "the front," they are many and they are trustworthy. It seems to me that in visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, or of rulers on the people, the Great Father of all, in His infinite love has said to these mult.i.tudes: "Your bodies are given to destruction, but I have set wide open for you the door of salvation; you Shall enter into my kingdom through death." And many have so entered.[38]

The following is the expression of the thought of many of our humble people at home, who are neither "jingoes" nor yet impatient judges of others. The Journal from which the extract is taken represents not the wealthy nor ambitious part of society, but that of the middle cla.s.s of people, dependent on their own efforts for their daily bread, among whom we often find much good sense:--"Some persons are humiliated for the sins and mistakes they see in other people. As for themselves, their one thought is 'If my advice had been taken the country would never have been in this pa.s.s!' This is the expression of an utterly un-Christian self-conceit. Others, again, take delight in recording the sins of the nation. That our ideals have been dimmed, that a low order of public morality has been openly defended in the highest places, and that the reckoning has come to us we fully believe. Yet it is possible to judge the heart of our people far too harshly. It is a sound heart when all is said and done. We fix our eyes upon the great and wealthy offenders; but it must be remembered that the British people are not wealthy. The number of rich men is small. Most of us, in fact, are very poor. Even those who may be called well off depend on the continuance of health and opportunity for their incomes. The vast majority of those who believe that our cause is righteous are not exultant jingoes, neither are they millionaires. They are care-worn toilers, hard-worked fathers and mothers of children. They have in many cases given sons and brothers and husbands to our ranks; their hearts are aching with pa.s.sionate sorrow for the dead. Many more are enduring the racking agony of suspense.

Mult.i.tudes, besides, spend their lives in a hard fight to keep the wolf from the door. Already they are pinched, and they know that in the months ahead their poverty will be deeper. Yet they have no thought of surrender. They do not even complain, but give what they can from their scanty means to succour those who are touched still more nearly. It is quite possible to slander a nation when one simply intends to tell it plain truths. The British nation, we are inclined to believe, is a great deal better and sounder than many of its shrillest censors of the moment. And, for our part, we find among our patient, brave, and silent people great seed-beds of trust and hope."[39]

These are n.o.ble words, because words of faith--worthy of the Roman, Varro--to whom his fellow-citizens presented a public tribute of grat.i.tude because "he had not despaired of his country in a dark and troubled time."

It can hardly be supposed that I underrate the horrors of war. I have imagination enough and sympathy enough to follow almost as if I beheld it with my eyes, the great tragedy which has been unfolded in South Africa. The spirit of Jingoism is an epidemic of which I await the pa.s.sing away more earnestly than we do that of any other plague. I deprecate, as I have always done, and as strongly as anyone can do, rowdyism in the form of violent opposition to free speech and freedom of meeting. It is as wholly unjustifiable, as it is unwise. Nothing tends more to the elucidation of truth than evidence and freedom of speech from all sides. Good works on many hands are languis.h.i.+ng for lack of the funds and zeal needful to carry them on. The Public Press, and especially the Pictorial Press, fosters a morbid sentiment in the public mind by needlessly vivid representations of mere slaughter; to all this may be added (that which some mourn over most of all) the drain upon our pockets,--upon the country's wealth. All these things are a part of the great tribulation which is upon us. They are inevitable ingredients of the chastis.e.m.e.nt by war.