Anyhow, Sooner Or Later The
Foreclosure Comes And Then There Is Trouble.
X., Y., Z., etc., free
men, have married some of the original A.'s slave woman's
descendants.
They have either bought them right out, or kept on
conscientiously redeeming children of theirs as they arrived. Of
course A., or his heirs, contend that X., Y., Z., etc. have been
wasting time and money by so doing, because the people X., Y., Z.
have paid the money to had no legal title to the women. Of course
X., Y., Z. contend that their particular woman, or her ancestress,
was duly redeemed from the legal owner.
Remember there is no documentary evidence available, and squads of
equally reliable and oldest inhabitants are swearing hard - all both
ways. Just realise this, and that your Government says that
whenever native law is not blood-stained it must be supported, and
you may be able to realise the giddy mazes of a native palaver,
which if you conscientiously attempt to follow with the
determination that justice shall be duly administered, will for
certain lay you low with an attack of fever.
The law of ownership is not all in favour of the owner, masters
being responsible for damage done by their slaves, and this law
falls very heavily and expensively on the owner of a bad slave.
Indeed, when one lives out here and sees the surrounding conditions
of this state of culture, the conviction grows on you that, morally
speaking, the African is far from being the brutal fiend he is often
painted, a creature that loves cruelty and blood for their own sake.
The African does not; and though his culture does not contain our
institutions, lunatic asylums, prisons, workhouses, hospitals, etc.,
he has to deal with the same classes of people who require these
things. So with them he deals by means of his equivalent
institutions, slavery, the lash, and death. You have just as much
right, my logical friend, to call the West Coast Chief hard names
for his habit of using brass bars, heads of tobacco, and so on, in
place of sixpenny pieces, as you have to abuse him for clubbing an
inveterate thief. It's deplorably low of him, I own, but by what
alternative plan of government his can be replaced I do not quite
see, under existing conditions. In religious affairs, the affairs
which lead him into the majority of his iniquities, his real sin
consists in believing too much. In his witchcraft, the sin is the
same. Toleration means indifference, I believe, among all men. The
African is not indifferent on the subject of witchcraft, and I do
not see how one can expect him to be. Put yourself in his place and
imagine you have got hold of a man or woman who has been placing a
live crocodile or a catawumpus of some kind into your own or a
valued relative's, or fellow-townsman's inside, so that it may eat
up valuable viscera, and cause you or your friend suffering and
death.
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