The relation of the Boers to the coloured races in South Africa, and the treatment of the latter, have been a cause of much offence and misunderstanding.  It is generally, though mistakenly, held that the Boers ill-treated the natives, and that in the most brutal and tyrannical manner.  Such unwarranted assertions had furnished one of the various flimsy excuses for war in South Africa.  The natives had to be protected!  They were slaves, and must be liberated.  Therefore—­war!  That natives have sometimes received bad treatment at the hands of their masters we shall candidly admit.  In such instances the law-courts of the country stood open to them, where justice was at all times meted out to the guilty party.

On the whole, we maintain that the treatment of inferior races by the Boers contrasts very favourably with that by the British.  The Dutch have always expressed themselves very strongly against the policy of placing the natives on a footing of political equality with the whites, because morally, intellectually, and industrially they are decidedly their inferiors.

Those who, like the American Bishop Hartzell, argued that the British cause ought to win, since the Boers do not equal the English in just treatment of inferior races, would do well to consider the following facts:—­

(1) In the strip of East African coast—­a British Protectorate—­which faces Zanzibar the full legal status of slavery is maintained, and fugitive slaves have even been handed back to their owners by British officials.

(2) In Zanzibar and Pemba the manumission of slaves presided over by Sir Arthur Hardinge is proceeding slowly, and many thousands are still in bondage.

(3) In Natal the corvee system prevails, and all natives not employed by whites may be impressed to labour for six months on the roads.

(4) In Bechuanaland, after a rebellion some years ago, natives were parcelled out among the Cape farmers and indentured to them as virtual slaves for a term of five years.

(5) Under the Chartered Company in Rhodesia the chiefs are required, under compulsion, to furnish batches of young natives to work in the mines; and the ingenious plan of taxing the Kaffir in money rather than in kind has been adopted, so that he may be forced to earn the pittance which the prospectors are willing to pay him.

(6) In Kimberley what is known as the compound system prevails.  All natives who work in the diamond mines are required to “reside” under lock and key, day and night, in certain compounds, which resemble spacious prisons.  So stringent is the system that even the sick are treated within the prison yard.  On no pretext whatever is a native allowed to leave his compound.