MR. MORLEY ON BRITISH AFRICA.
WE find ourselves for once, rather to our own sur- prise, in the heartiest sympathy with Mr. John Morley It would be hard to find in the whole history of the complex and difficult question on which he spoke a more impressive or more moderate speech than he delivered on Wednesday before the Society for the Protection of Aborigines. He began byirepudiating the "Little England" doctrine. His knowledge as a historian has convinced him that under the imperfect conditions of the world as it is, the government of the dark man by the white man is, for the present at least, conducive to the general progress of mankind. " If well managed," said Mr. Morley with Cob bett-like simplicity of diction, " it must be for good, and not for ill." That is also our own conclusion, and we would add what Mr. Morley, who may again be a Cabinet Minister, judiciously avoided saying, viz., that, in defiance of much a priori reasoning, among white races the English- man has proved himself to be the most competent for this work, the least cruel, and the one whose guidance enlightens and vivifies his subjects the most rapidly. The next best governor is the Russian, for though arbitrary when resisted and intolerant of criticism in print, he has a sympathy with his dark subjects and a comprehension of their instincts which make his rule more acceptable to them than our own, and in certain directions equally bene- ficial. Mr. Morley therefore, like ourselves, accepts the enormous expansion of British territory which has marked this reign as, on the whole, not injurious to mankind, and condones its newest feature, the acquisition of such vast territories in Africa that we are scarcely ready to assume their management, and have not provided adequate means, or, indeed, reasonable means, for their defence. We try to hold territories as large as France with a corporal's guard, and then wonder that colonists with wives and children look askance at possible insurgents. But he holds, as we do, that to justify work like this, to make it anything better than a huge dacoity committed in our own interests, we are imperatively bound to govern justly and merci- fully, and especially to maintain the cardinal principle that labour shall be free, and not enforced. The white men generally have forgotten this condition of conquest, and in the German colonies and in the Congo State have been guilty of oppressions and barbarisms so dreadful that the moral basis of their rule has disappeared. In the latter State more especially the Belgians have governed worse than the Spaniards governed in Peru ; have governed so badly, in fact, that insurrection has become the moral duty of the majority of their subjects. We also, who in India leave our subjects more free than Englishmen are at home, and in Egypt have diffused prosperity and cheerfulness, have in Africa forgotten our mission, and have established, or permitted the establish- ment of, a shameful serfage. Almost everywhere, though we have nominally abolished slavery, the blacks, when wanted, are by one device or another compelled to work, while scarcely anywhere do they settle freely by bargain and contract the terms of their own re- muneration. In too many places we wink at flogging for disobedience to orders or slack labour, and no- where has the worker swift and practical remedy against the oppression of the employer. This situa- tion, moreover, tends to get worse. The blacks do not die out, and the colonists do not grow more humane. Something in the African black—we believe it is his extraordinary vanity, but we are not quite sure—irritates the white man, until Boers, Germans, and Englishmen all alike come to believe that the only method of training him is by punishment, and the employer, if born in Africa, becomes in spirit a complete slaveholder, merciful or cruel according to his temperament, but always convinced of his right to compel black men to toil exclusively for white men's benefit. The two Dutch witnesses who recently appeared before the South African Committee of Inquiry confessed this belief quite openly, and we rarely find an English colonist in South Africa who, when pressed, does not admit that this conviction is his own. Some, like Mr. Selous, defend the doctrine as a sad necessity, a part of the law of Nature like that which extirpated the native rat of New Zealand ; some accept strange views as to the black man being only a superior monkey ; but the majority content themselves with declaring that they desire prosperity for their Colony and themselves, that without labour prosperity cannot exist, and that without liability to flogging the " nigger" cannot be induced to labour. It is, in fact, the desire of gain which produces serfage, just as it was the desire of gain which produced slavery. If slave labour had resulted in a yearly loss in money, every Southern planter would have enfranchised his slaves, and if the serfs cost more in cash to watch than they produced in coin, every white man in Africa would dilate on the iniquity of forced labour. It is greed which is the source of all oppression in Africa, and the greedy must be restrained.
Mr. Morley, who is certainly not moved by any Exeter Hall sympathies, and who admits that the conquest of Africa may be made beneficial to conquerors and conquered, detests the system now flourishing and legalised in Rhodesia as heartily as we do, and the only fault we find with his speech is that it terminated without any practical suggestion except that the Aborigines' Society should bring public opinion to bear in defence of the black man. That will be useful, of course, but we want something more than that, direct action by Parliament, to ensure fair treatment of the native population. We are not negrophiles of any sort. We would not give thew the vote, holding that if they are equal to self-govern- ment we have no business to govern them ; we gravely question whether they are fit to sit upon juries ; and we are not absolutely certain that we would not allow un- provoked insolence from blacks to whites to be made a penal offence, thus placing the whole white community in the position of the sovereign caste. But we would every- where in Africa maintain such a force that the colonists should not be made cruel by the fear of revolt. We would everywhere place above all local authority a Viceroy, with power and with instructions to defend black freedom ; and we would everywhere in every constitution and charter insert a clause forbidding legislative interference with contracts for labour, and making every contract for more than a month absolutely illegal. The masters would then have to conciliate the men. If it is argued that under these conditions no undertaking requiring associated labour could be made to pay, our answer is the simple one, that while we utterly disbelieve the statement, if it is true, undertakings requiring associated labour must in Africa cease to exist. The country, on that showing, is no more ready for them than the region of the tsetse-fly is ready for cattle-ranches. Forced labour implies a theft from the labourer of the wages which, if free, he would obtain, and we have no more right to sanction such theft than we have to sanction burglary or piracy. It is not a question of politics at all, but of the plainest and simplest ethics. Forced labour is theft, and to put down theft is one of the first of the reasons which justify Governments in existing. How any decent Christians can convince themselves of the contrary is to us inexplicable, but that they do is certain, and is ample justification for the existence of the Aborigines' Protection Society, and for Mr. Morley's quite temperate, but most convincing, speech on its behalf. We had not expected such a speech from a. statesman who opposes the occupation of Egypt, and are only too glad to recognise him both as a " Broad Englander" and as one who maintains that British annexations involve British duties, and that one of then is to enforce wherever our flag flies the right of the labourer to fix the terms on which he will consent to sell his strength.
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