LORD MILNER ON LliE BLACK QUESTION. T HE black question—that is,
the question of the relative positions of blacks and whites—was bound to come up in South Africa, and it may come up very soon in most harassing and perplexing ways. The situation is even more complicated than it is in the Southern States of the American Union. In the first place, the blacks in South Africa not only outnumber the whites, but outnumber them, as Lord Milner tells us, by five to one ; and the disproportion may even be increased, for it is pro- posed to import black labourers, not only from Central Africa, but from West Africa, where, we are told on good private authority, the blacks take more kindly to hard work than in any other section of the British dominions. This vast majority is composed for the most part of men who are brave, who have not been com- pletely drilled out of their original fierceness, and who greatly prefer, when they are allowed the choice, working for themselves to working for wages. On the other hand, the white men, though so inferior in numbers, are beyond comparison more intelligent; they possess all political power ; and they have a conviction—so rooted that, true or false, it is beyond the reach of argument—that they enjoy by virtue of race superiority an inherent right to rule, and to claim the obedient assistance of the blacks in performing all manual labour. They do not refuse wages, as the American planters did ; they do not admit that they even desire slavery as an institution ; but they hold that to live by labour is for the black a binding obli- gation. They deprecate and dislike cruelty as much as good coachmen do in England; butin their hearts they would regard a general strike of the black population as a general rebel- lion, to be prevented or put down, if possible, by force. It is clear to all disinterested observers that in a, community in which the rulers and ruled are thus divided and marked off from each other there must exist the possibility of very serious collisions, and that to anticipate this possibility, and lay down a policy which will work, at all events for a considerable period, and which both the majority and the minority can accept without too much bitterness, is the first duty—and perplexity—of the local statesmen.
Lord Milner, the High Commissioner, evidently thinks he has found such a policy, and as he must have discussed it with Mr. Chamberlain, we regard the speech of Monday in which he explains and defends it as of the last import- ance to the future of South Africa. His plan is at least original. He rejects entirely the idea of any inherent equality between the civilised and the uncivilised, and declares that the civilised must rule; but he rejects also the idea that colour is to be in any way the evidence of civilisation. That, he says, is "a rotten and indefensible ground" of distinction. He would not give the black man the vote, for a settlement on that matter has been expressly reserved "for decision by future Legislatures to be exclusively elected by white men"; and he always intends the whites to rule, but they must rule "by the right of a, superior civilisation," and therefore "when one black man in a thousand raises himself to the level of the white he must be accorded the privileges of the white." That points, of course, to a future suffrage based, at least as regards blacks, upon education ; but Lord Milner desires to take one immediate and very strong step. He evidently would admit " civilised " black men to municipal power at once ; indeed he would, as we understand him, appoint them to seats in all City Councils. "The Govern.- ment had exempted civilised natives from the special legislation applied to the ruck of the natives, and the same principle applied to municipal rights. Could it be maintained that the native, however high a degree. of civilisation he had attained, should have no voice in such questions as health and sanitation, which if he were civilised affected him as much as white men ? " He would, in fact, grant to all civilised natives municipal rights, and, as we understand a subsequent paragraph, would specially grant them to Asiatic subjects of his Majesty, who are already in their own way civilised.
We have no doubt that this plan, explained and an- notated as it will be by Mr. Chamberlain, will be generally approved in this country. It. will satisfy in a conservative sort of way the British sense of justice, and will appear wise because it will detach from the cause of the un- civilised those who if themselves excluded would naturally be their leaders. This is not, Englishmen will say, a senti- mental plan or an Exeter Hall plan, but a statesman's plan hued upon right reason. The objection that it will create a class of privileged blacks will not be held to be a serious one here, where no one really believes in equality, and it will be supported by the secret conviction that no one is directly or permanently excluded from power, because every man can be civilised if he likes. Nevertheless there are serious objections to the plan, and as the assent to it will be general and needs no stimulus, we will proceed to state these objections as briefly as we can. It seems to us that, with all the appearance of a settlement, the scheme leaves everything unsettled. Who is to define exactly what constitutes a civilised man? If the phrase is employed, as it used to be in this country, merely to imply regular and unbroken obedience to the law, there is a danger that the whites may be swamped,—a danger which, as we see in the United States, they refuse to endure, and which the British Government does not intend that they shall incur, its decision being that South Africa shall be ruled in the last resort by its white inhabitants. On the other hand, if by " civilisation " high education is intended, the blacks elected will be too few and too completely cut off from the body of their countrymen to be of any use as representatives. Indeed, it is quite possible that there may be none, for the white Legislatures will not give even the municipal vote to black labourers, and the white citizens will not elect black representatives. In that case the blacks when aggrieved, say by a Contract Act, will feel, as they often do now in the West Indies, compelled to fall back upon the argument of force, and mill resort to the rioting which when the ruling caste is of one colour and the ruled of another so often ends in massacre. We do not see any fair chance of permanent unity in the scheme, and it is permanent unity that is wanted, and not a plan, however philosophic in itself, which will deepen the dis- trust that the conflicting races feel for each other. We had much rather face the facts as they stand, and as we intend the white man to rule, leave him the full responsibility, as we do in India, for ruling rightly. We are bound by the interests of the Empire and the conscience of our own people to prohibit slavery, whether direct or indirect, to see that every man, however black, obtains justice when he is wronged, and to diffuse education as widely as we can ; but those things provided for, we would leave the native to force his way to political power as our own lower classes have done. He will be in no worse position than English minors, or, for that matter, all English minorities, now are, and, as we believe, would be no more discontented than are the natives of India, who are the freest people in the world, though they are denied political power. As for municipal power, if that is granted, so must political power be. You cannot allow a man to govern a city, and then say that he is incompetent—and Lord Milner's whole argument is one of comparative competence—to govern a province or a kingdom. As for the High Commis- sioner's assumption that the native, if a Municipal Councillor, will improve sanitation because sanitation will benefit himself, it is, we fear, entirely baseless. It is the " civilised " people, not the officials, who in Bombay object to precautions against the plague ; the " civilised " people, not the doctors, who in Leicester and Keighley reject vaccination,—the plain truth being that care for sanitation is one of the last teachings of wisdom that reach even the civilised. Who looked after drains in Elizabeth's reign ? Yet Shakespeare lived then, and Bacon too. A Kaffir can be free, and prosperous, and happy without a right to office, to which, if democracy rests on a true basis of thought, he has rather more than five times the right of his white employer. A hundred years hence, if he insists on it, and voting is still in practice, he may have the vote ; but at present the white man must rule by the right, as Lord Milner acknowledges, of the superior civilisation which he does not derive from his colour, but which his colour indicates.
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