companies will employ the cheapest labour they can secure, which will always be that of the native and inferior race.[1] Let it be remembered that a country as big as Great Britain, which would be a mere patch on the Continent of Africa, would have a native population of half a million if it were peopled as Natal was when the British Government took it over. Can it be conceived that England could send out half a million settlers to balance these, unless the attraction were as great as that of Australian gold was for a time? And even assuming the half -million to come, where would they be at the end of a century with the black race increasing faster by births, and recruited by constant accessions from the populous interior of the continent? Can it be supposed that such a state would fare better than Georgia or South Carolina has fared? The best chance for a community so constituted would be to declare itself independent, as the Boers of the Transvaal have done, and so maintain the supremacy of the white race. Such a country, however, would not escape the fate of all countries into which an inferior people is admitted in large numbers. Its colonists would soon be divided into a wealthy ruling caste, planters or miners, and mean whites; while the blacks, servile or semi-servile, would increase year by year, because their labour was necessary to maintain and extend the fortunes of the governing caste. Such a community might last for generations, but its chance of perpetuity would be far smaller in Africa, where it was surrounded by dense masses of an unfriendly population, than it was in Louisiana, where slavery might
- ↑ "In capacity the African is fit to work; in inclination he is willing to work; and in actual experiment he has done it."—Drummond's Tropical Africa, p. 65.
