great principle, strong and clear, a straight line by which every
enactment dealing with the question, and every act of individuals, or
groups of individuals, bearing on the liberty of the natives can be
measured, and any deviation from that straight line of principle can be
exactly estimated and judged.

When we speak of injustice done to the natives by the South African
Republics, we are apt to be met with the reproach that the English have
also been guilty of cruelty to native races. This is unhappily true, and
shall not be disguised in the following pages;--but mark this,--that it
is true of certain individuals bearing the English name, true of groups
of individuals, of certain adventurers and speculators. But this fact
does not touch the far more important and enduring fact that _wherever
British rule is established, slavery is abolished, and illegal_.

This fact is the ground of the hope for the future of the Missionaries
of our own country, and of other European countries, as well as of the
poor natives themselves, so far as they have come to understand the
matter; and in several instances they have shown that they do understand
it, and appreciate it keenly.

Those English persons, or groups of persons, who have denied to the
native labourers their hire (which is the essence of slavery), have
acted on their own responsibility, and _illegally_. This should be made
to be clearly understood in future conditions of peace, and rendered
impossible henceforward.

That future peace which we all desire, on the cessation of the present
grievous war, must be a peace founded on justice, for there is no other
peace worthy of the name; and it must be not only justice as between