This Would Not Have Been Felt
As So Great An Evil But That The Young Men Of Those Tribes, Anxious
To
obtain cattle, the only means of rising to respectability and importance
among their own people, were in the habit
Of sallying forth,
like our Irish and Highland reapers, to procure work in the Cape Colony.
After laboring there three or four years, in building stone dikes and dams
for the Dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time
they could return with as many cows. On presenting one to their chief,
they ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterward. These volunteers
were highly esteemed among the Dutch, under the name of Mantatees.
They were paid at the rate of one shilling a day and a large loaf of bread
between six of them. Numbers of them, who had formerly seen me
about twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, recognized me
with the loud laughter of joy when I was passing them at their work
in the Roggefelt and Bokkefelt, within a few days of Cape Town.
I conversed with them and with elders of the Dutch Church, for whom
they were working, and found that the system was thoroughly satisfactory
to both parties. I do not believe that there is one Boer,
in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country, who would deny that a law was made,
in consequence of this labor passing to the colony, to deprive these laborers
of their hardly-earned cattle, for the very cogent reason that,
"if they want to work, let them work for us their masters,"
though boasting that in their case it would not be paid for.
I can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that I was not born
in a land of slaves. No one can understand the effect
of the unutterable meanness of the slave-system on the minds of those who,
but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling
the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered,
would be equal in virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them
as "paying one's way" is to the rest of mankind.
Wherever a missionary lives, traders are sure to come;
they are mutually dependent, and each aids in the work of the other;
but experience shows that the two employments can not very well be combined
in the same person. Such a combination would not be morally wrong,
for nothing would be more fair, and apostolical too, than that the man
who devotes his time to the spiritual welfare of a people
should derive temporal advantage from upright commerce,
which traders, who aim exclusively at their own enrichment,
modestly imagine ought to be left to them. But, though it is right
for missionaries to trade, the present system of missions
renders it inexpedient to spend time in so doing. No missionary
with whom I ever came in contact, traded; and while the traders,
whom we introduced and rendered secure in the country, waxed rich,
the missionaries have invariably remained poor, and have died so.
The Jesuits, in Africa at least, were wiser in their generation than we;
theirs were large, influential communities, proceeding on the system
of turning the abilities of every brother into that channel
in which he was most likely to excel; one, fond of natural history,
was allowed to follow his bent; another, fond of literature,
found leisure to pursue his studies; and he who was great in barter
was sent in search of ivory and gold-dust; so that while in the course
of performing the religious acts of his mission to distant tribes,
he found the means of aiding effectually the brethren
whom he had left in the central settlement.* We Protestants,
with the comfortable conviction of superiority, have sent out missionaries
with a bare subsistence only, and are unsparing in our laudations of some
for not being worldly-minded whom our niggardliness made to live
as did the prodigal son. I do not speak of myself, nor need I to do so,
but for that very reason I feel at liberty to interpose a word
in behalf of others. I have before my mind at this moment
facts and instances which warrant my putting the case in this way:
The command to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature"
must be obeyed by Christians either personally or by substitute.
Now it is quite possible to find men whose love for the heathen and devotion
to the work will make them ready to go forth on the terms "bare subsistence",
but what can be thought of the justice, to say nothing of the generosity,
of Christians and churches who not only work their substitutes
at the lowest terms, but regard what they give as charity!
The matter is the more grave in respect to the Protestant missionary,
who may have a wife and family. The fact is, there are many cases
in which it is right, virtuous, and praiseworthy for a man
to sacrifice every thing for a great object, but in which it would be
very wrong for others, interested in the object as much as he,
to suffer or accept the sacrifice, if they can prevent it.
-
* The Dutch clergy, too, are not wanting in worldly wisdom.
A fountain is bought, and the lands which it can irrigate
parceled out and let to villagers. As they increase in numbers,
the rents rise and the church becomes rich. With 200 Pounds per annum
in addition from government, the salary amounts to 400 or 500 Pounds a year.
The clergymen then preach abstinence from politics as a Christian duty.
It is quite clear that, with 400 Pounds a year, but little else
except pure spirituality is required.
-
English traders sold those articles which the Boers most dread,
namely, arms and ammunition; and when the number of guns
amounted to five, so much alarm was excited among our neighbors
that an expedition of several hundred Boers was seriously planned
to deprive the Bakwains of their guns.
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