The soup often got cold at the Governor’s board in Adelaide, the while he was laying the foundations of the Colony.  This implied study of the problem, ’How are we to utilise the natives for the civilisation which has begun to invade them in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa?’ Already, in Western Australia, Sir George had devoted earnest study to the subject, and method ripened with him.  He felt, perhaps, that he had been given a unique work, in the sense of moulding raw human materials to higher ends.  He was a master craftsman, and as he contrived, so there might be issues near and remote.  The future dwelt with Sir George when to others, lacking the seer’s eye, it was still below the farthest horizon.  Call it the second-sight of statesmanship—­something which is born with a person rather than acquired.  He had simple words for the ideas that underlay his life’s labour, in bringing barbarous races under the harrow of cultivation.

’It is quite evident that man’s great line of exertion, is towards getting more food for himself and his family.  This truth applies to him in all his states; only the more he advances in material welfare, the more he needs to satisfy him.  With a savage, mere food is enough, but in the centres of civilisation beautiful clothes, fine horses and carriages, marble palaces, all form the prize.  Ever, it is the same impelling desire.

’Well, the way to adopt with natives, was to show them how to obtain more food.  Benefit them in that manner, and they would regard you as their friend, and you would have influence over them.  I always paid a native, doing unskilled work, the wage a white would have received for the same effort.  It was mere justice.  Yet, so small a thing had immense results, for manhood was cultivated in the black.  Self-respect infected him.  He discovered himself, with proud surprise, to be a man instead of a chattel.

’The mystery of managing native races, resolves itself into a few natural laws.  My hardest trouble was the witchcraft, which held in bonds, the savage peoples whom I had to govern.  It might differ, here or there, in its characteristics; the evil was there all the same.  Not merely did the natives believe in witch-craft, having been swathed in it for ages, but their chiefs made a profit therefrom, and were staunch for its maintenance.  My antidote was the introduction of medical aid, so that in the cures wrought, those children of the dark, might see what surpassed their own magic.  They were discomfited, as it were, on their own ground.

’Superstition, which I distinguish from witchcraft, though the greater evil flourished on the less, had its best treatment in the spread of the Christian religion.  Surely, a wonderful witness of its divine origin, lies in the fact that it applies to the elevation and happiness of all the world’s races—­is understandable to all.  Farther, native schools made advances upon sheer ignorance, as hospitals did in respect to witchcraft; and it was possible, in some measure, to eradicate native indolence by affording youths a training in a trade, or grown men work on public improvements:  Here we return to where we began—­food as the primitive impulse driving mankind.’