Mr. Froude, in his letter to the Times, tells a
story which throws the British contempt for the dark races and for idleness into very high relief. "When," he says, "I spoke in Natal of immigra- tion from England, I was told impatiently that no white labourer from England could be brought to work, with so many lounging Kaffirs looking on and laughing at him." The moral he would draw is clearly that the Kaffir should be made by some sort of 'beneficent whip to cease to laugh and lounge, and then the free- born Briton, not being aggravated by Kaffir idleness, would cease to be idle in imitation. Did it ever occur to Mr. Fronde that one -of the rights of freemen when they want nothing is to sit still, or is he prepared to apply his philosophy to Rotten Row? Suppose West London gives up working because dandies lounge there and laugh at workers. Will he punish the workmen for striking, or the dandies, as in South Africa, for lounging? It is highly to be regretted, of course, that people should wander about from encamp- ment to encampment, and never do any manual labour; and suppose we imprison, say, the Duke of Sutherland for that line of conduct?
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