Anthony Trollope

“ The Kafir Chiefs may feel,—certainly do feel,—that they have been aggrieved. They have been as it were knocked about, deprived of their power, humiliated and degraded, and, as far as British Kafraria is concerned, made almost ridiculous in the eyes of their own people. But the people themselves have been relieved from the force of a grinding tyranny. They increase and multiply because they are no longer driven to fight and be slaughtered in the wars which the Chiefs were continually waging for supremacy among each other. ”

“ The Zulu of Natal knows well what it is to have escaped from such tyranny.
He is a thrall, and must remain so probably for many a year to come. I call a man a thrall when he has to be bound by laws in the making of which he has no voice and is subject to legislators whom he does not himself choose. But the thraldom though often irrational and sometimes fantastic is hardly ever cruel. The white British ruler who is always imperious,—and who is often irrational and sometimes fantastic,—has almost always at his heart an intention to do good. ”

“ I do not intend to suggest that any man should be excluded by his colour from the hustings. I am of opinion that no allusion should be made to colour in defining the franchise for voters in any British possession. But in colonies such as those of South Africa,—in which the bulk of the population is coloured,—the privilege should be conferred on black and white alike, with such a qualification as will admit only those who are fit. ”

“ In the first place we have to take care that the native shall not be subjected to slavery on any pretence or in any of its forms; and in doing this we shall have to own that compulsory labour, the wages for which are to be settled by the employer without the consent of the employed, is a form of slavery. After that,—after acknowledging so much, and providing against any infraction of the great law so laid down,—the more we do to promote the working of the coloured man, the more successful we are in bringing him into his harness, the better for himself, and for the colony at large. ”

“ Almost all domestic service is done by the Zulu or Kafir race in Natal. Here and there may be found a European servant,—a head waiter at an hotel, or a nurse in a lady’s family, or a butler in the establishment of some great man. But all menial work is as a rule done by the natives and is done with fidelity. I cannot say that they are good servants at all points. They are slow, often forgetful, and not often impressed with any sense of awe as to their master, who cannot eat them up or kill them as a black master might do. ”

“ I cannot conceive that the Savoyards should confederate with the Swiss,—let their interests be ever so identical,—unless Savoy were to become a Swiss Canton. The Dutch Republic is no doubt free to do as she pleases, which Savoy is not; but the idea of Confederation presumes that she would give herself up to the English flag. There may no doubt be a Confederation without the Orange Free State, and that Confederation might offer advantages so great that the Dutchmen of the Free State should ultimately feel disposed to give themselves up to Great Britain ”

“ He is still Bishop of Natal, and will probably remain so till he dies. He is not the man to abandon any position of which he is proud. But there is another bishop—of Maritzburg—whose tenets are perhaps more in accord with those generally held by the Church of England. The confusion has no doubt been unfortunate,—and is still unfortunate, as has been almost everything connected with Natal. And yet it is a smiling pretty land, blessed with numerous advantages; and if it were my fate to live in South Africa I should certainly choose Natal for my residence. Fair Natal, but unfortunate Natal! ”

“ I need hardly point out that the present British theory of colonization is exactly the reverse of this. Some of those prosperous but by no means benevolent looking old gentlemen with gold chains, as we see them painted by Rembrandt and other Dutch Masters, were no doubt the owners of the Cape and its inhabitants. Slave labour was the readiest labour, and therefore slave labour was procured. The native races were not to be oppressed beyond endurance, because they would rise and fight. The community itself was not to grow rich, because if rich it would no longer be subservient to its masters. ”

“ George will probably resent the description, caring more for its importance than its prettiness. George considers itself to be a town. It is exactly what in England we would describe to be a well-to-do village. Its so-called street consists of a well made broad road, with a green sward treble the width of the road on each side. And here there are rows of oak trees,—real English oak trees, planted by some most beneficent because patient inhabitant of the earlier days. A man who will plant a poplar, a willow, or even a blue-gum in a treeless country,—how good is he! ”

“ It seemed now as though the rainy season had begun in very truth, for the waters for which everybody had been praying since I had landed in South Africa came down as though they would never cease to pour. On the day after our arrival I had got up to see the departure of the mail cart for Pretoria, and a more melancholy attempt at a public vehicle I had never beheld. Prophecies were rife that the horses would not be able to travel and that the miseries to be surmounted by the passengers before they reached their destination would be almost unendurable. ”

“ I am bound to say that on leaving Durban I felt that I had visited a place at which the settlers had done the very utmost for themselves and had fought bravely and successfully with the difficulties which always beset new comers into strange lands. I wish the town and the sugar growers of its neighbourhood every success,—merely suggesting to them that in a few years’ time a Zulu may become quite as handy at making sugar as a Coolie. ”

“ I will not,—as I said before, venture to enquire into the far distant future of the black races of South Africa. There are many who think that the black man should not only be free but should be, and by his nature is, the equal of the white man. As I am glad to see all political inequalities gradually lessened among men of European descent, so should I be glad to think that the same process should take place among all men. ”

“ I am inclined to think that the philanthropist at home when he rises in his wrath against some white ruler of whose harshness to the blacks he has heard the story forgets that the very civilization which he is anxious to carry among the savage races cannot be promulgated without something of tyranny,—some touch of apparent injustice. Nothing will sanctify tyranny or justify injustice, says the philanthropist in his wrath. Let us so decide and so act;—but let us understand the result. In that case we must leave the Zulus and other races to their barbarities and native savagery. ”

“ We do not want to see such another colonial crisis as the American war of last century between ourselves and an English-speaking people. But in the Colonies there is a sort of loyalty of which we at home know nothing. It may be exemplified to any man’s mind by thinking of the feeling as to home which is engendered by absence. The boy or girl who lives always on the paternal homestead does not care very much for the kitchen with its dressers, or for the farmyard with its ricks, or the parlour with its neat array. ”

“ The most manifest effect on the Colony, as it has always been in regions in which gold has been found, has been the great increase in consumption. It is not the diamonds or the gold which enrich the country in which the workings of Nature have placed her hidden treasures, but the food which the diggers eat, and the clothes which the diggers wear, and, I fear, the brandy which the diggers drink. ”

“ There may be those who think that a Kafir Parliament and a Kafir Governor would be very good for a Kafir country. I own that I am not one of them. I look to the civilization of these people, and think that I see it now being effected by the creation of those wants the desire for supplying which has since the creation of the world been{61} the one undeviating path towards material and intellectual progress. I see them habituating their shoulders to the yoke of daily labour,—as we have all habituated ours in Europe, and I do not doubt the happiness of the result. ”

“ The Kafir Chief will say that it is the white man’s duty to stay away and not to touch what does not belong to him. The Dutch Colonist will say that it is the white man’s duty to make the best he can of the good things God has provided for his use,—and that as the Kafir in his natural state is a bad thing he should either be got rid of, or made a slave. In either assertion there is an intelligible purpose capable of a logical argument. But the Briton has to go between the two, wavering much between the extremes of philanthropy and expansive energy. ”

“ But their enterprise has led to the success of others of whom the world will hear. Coffee was grown here, and capital was expended on growing it upon a large scale. But Natal as a coffee-growing country has failed. As far as I could learn the seasons have not been sufficiently sure and settled for the growth of coffee. And now, already, in the new Colony, on which white men had hardly trodden half a century ago, there are wastes of deserted coffee bushes,—as there came to be in Jamaica after the emancipation of the slaves,—telling piteous tales of lost money and of broken hopes. ”

“ The line to Wynberg is of infinite importance to the city as giving to the inhabitants easy means of access to a charming locality. Capetown itself is not a lovely spot on which to reside, but the district at the back of the Table Mountain where are Mowbray, Rondebusch, Wynberg and Constantia,—which district is reached by the railway,—supplies beautiful sites for houses and gardens. There are bits of scenery which it would be hard to beat either in form or colour, so grand are the outlines of the mountain, and so rich and bountiful the verdure of the shrubs and timbers. ”

“ A British colony to the British mind is a land away from home to which the swarming multitudes of Great Britain may go and earn a comfortable sustenance, denied to them in the land of their birth by the narrowness of its limits and the greatness of its population, and may do so with the use of their own language, and in subjection to their own laws. We have other senses of the word Colony,—for we call military garrisons Colonies,—such as Malta, and Gibraltar, and Bermuda. ”

“ It requires the experience of a life to ascertain what five o’clock will mean in one place, and what in another. When the traveller is assured that he certainly will be left behind if he be not up an hour before dawn, he will get up, though he knows that it will be in vain. The long minutes that I have passed, during my late travels, out in the grey dawn, regretting the bed from which I have been uselessly torn, have been generally devoted to loud inward assertions that South Africa can never do any good in the world till she learns to be more punctual. ”

“ But I doubt whether when it was done the justification was as complete as in those former days, twenty years before, when Lord Glenelg reprimanded Sir Benjamin D’Urban for the extension he made in the same territory, and drew back the borders of British sovereignty, and restored their lands and their prestige and their customs to the natives, and declared himself willing to be responsible for all results that might follow,—results which at last cost so much British blood and so much British money!
The difficult question meets one at every corner in South Africa. ”

“ There seems to be a keener relish of life than among our steadier and more fastidious folk at home, with much less to give the relish. So that one is driven to ask oneself whether advanced Art, mechanical ingenuity, and luxurious modes of living do after all add to the happiness of mankind. He who has once possessed them wants to return to them,—and if unable to do so is in a far worse position than his neighbours. I am therefore disposed to say that though Capetown as a city is not lovely, the Capetowners have as good a time of it as the inhabitants of more beautiful capitals. ”

“ The white man in the South African Colonies feels that the colony ought to be his and kept up for him, because he, perhaps, with his life in his hand, went forth as a pioneer to spread the civilization of Europe and to cultivate the wilds of the world’s surface. ”

“ This represents exactly the condition of feeling in South Africa:—and, if so, it certainly is not to such feeling that we can safely entrust an equality of franchise with ourselves, seeing that they outnumber us almost by five to one. It is said that they cannot combine. If they could the question would be settled against us,—without any voting. But nothing will teach men to combine so readily as a privilege of voting. The franchise is intended to teach men to combine for a certain object, and when freely given has always succeeded in its intention. ”

“ The traveller feels certain that he will not require the Dutch language as he moves about, and he recognises the Dutchman as a foreigner in the land when he encounters him. In the Transvaal, in the Orange Free State, and in many parts of the Western districts of the Cape Colony,{255}—even in Capetown itself,—he feels himself to be among a Dutch people. He knows as a fact that the Dutch in South Africa are more numerous than the English. But in Natal he is on English soil, among English people,—with no more savour of Holland than he has in London when he chances to meet a Dutchman there. ”

“ A man will teach himself to think that he pays a shilling each for the apples he eats, because he once gave a shilling for an apple in Covent Garden. The abnormally dear Zulu servants of whom I have heard have been I think like the giant Swiss and the shilling apple. Taking it all round I feel sure that Zulu service in Natal is very much cheaper than English service in England,—that it does not cost the half. I have no doubt that it is less regular,—but then it is more good humoured, and what it lacks in comfort is made up in freedom. ”