It Sufficed When A Percentage Of The
Population Were Shipped To America As Slaves; Now It Suffices Only
To Help To Keep The Natives In Their Low State Of Culture - A State
That Is Only Kept Up Even To Its Present Level By Trade.
The
condition of the African native will be a very dreadful one if this
trade is not maintained; indeed,
I may say if it is not increased
proportionately to the increase of white Government control - for
this governmental control does many things that are good in
themselves, and glorious on paper. It prevents the export slave
trade; it suppresses human sacrifice; it stops internecine war among
the natives - in short, it does everything save suppress the terrible
infant mortality (why it does not do this I need not discuss) to
increase the native population, without in itself doing anything to
increase the means of supporting this population; nay, it even wants
to decrease these by importing Asiatics to do its work, in making
roads, etc.
It may be said there is no fear of the trade, which keeps the
native, disappearing from the West Coast, but it is well to remember
that the stuff that this trade is dependent on, the stuff brought
into the traders' factory by the native, is mainly - indeed, save for
the South-West Coast coffee and cacao, we may say, entirely - bush
stuff, uncultivated, merely collected and roughly prepared, and it
is so wastefully collected by the native that it cannot last
indefinitely.
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