OCR Rendition - approximate

344 SIR H. B. FRERE.-Ore the Laws affecting the that "an educated or christianized native is a native spoiled, and that natives who have been most influenced by civilized contact and teaching have lost most in truthfulness, docility, and other moral qualities for which, as untutored savages, they were most remarkable." To what extent is this very common sort of assertion justified by experience? It could hardly be so common in the mouths of people not immoral nor inhumane, without some element of truth or half truth. Let us consider, in the first place, that it is chiefly as servants, or in some sort of servile capacity, that the natives are judged of by such critics, and that as servants it is not only possible, but certain, that whatever changes, educational or otherwise, follow on contact with Europeans, they would necessarily derogate from the value of the recipient as a servant. We do not require the authority of tradition to assure us that education had not improved Alfred's capacity as a drudge in the neatherd's cottage, and the goodwife would have found the cow-boy apter and more attentive at turning her cakes than the scholar and hero-king. The doglike fidelity-the unreasoning personal attachment to the hand that feeds and can punish-the habits of implicit obedience, of observance of trusts, under every form of temptation, are natural characteristics of the untutored man, and make a valuable servant when the purely animal instincts are once subdued. Such useful qualities, however, are not necessarily nor often improved by opening the mind through education, direct or indirect. It is a great thing if they are not impaired or destroyed. They are like the speed or agility developed by savage life-useful natural qualities, rarely improved, and sometimes much impaired by civilization. We may note that similar complaints are made of the same class in every part of the world. Nowhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, or Australia do we hear that servants as a class are improving in the estimation of employers who need their services. The fact is, the tendency of all modern teaching is to make those who formerly worked for others' now work for themselves. The two objects are not incompatible, and it is the duty of modern education to reconcile them. The process is not always easy, but it is not, I think, more difficult in the case of South African natives than of other races emerging from barbarism and slavery, and I can testify that such reconciliation is habitually effected by those who set about the task with an equal regard for the wants and wishes of the employed, as well as the employers of labour. In every other respect than as docile drudges, agrarian or