were an invaluable asset to the people of this country. (Hear, hear.)
Let them take our trade figures and compare them with
the trade figures of the other large British Dominions.
Our figures were surprising when measured by the white population,
but if they took the richest Dominion that there was under the British Crown
outside South Africa, and took the trade value of those figures
per head of the white population, and multiply those figures
by our European population, then they might very well apply
any balance they had to our native population, and then they would see,
strangely enough, that upon that basis it worked out that
the actual trade of three Natives was worth about that of one white man.
That, of course, was a very imperfect way of looking at
the value of these people, because the trade value of some of these Natives
was far greater than the trade value of some of our white people.
He had merely indicated these trade figures to show what an enormous asset
we had in the Natives in that respect. Let them think
what the industry of the Natives had done for us. Who had built our railways,
who had dug our mines, and developed this country as far as it was developed?
Who had been the actual manual worker who had done that? The Native:
the coloured races of this country. We must never forget
that we owed them a debt in that respect -- a debt not often acknowledged
by what we did for them. Proceeding, he said that they ought to think
what they owed to the docility of the Natives, and the wonderfully easy way
in which they had been governed when treated properly. He also paid a tribute
to the honesty of the Natives.

What must strike any one was the fact that though this Bill was really,
to a certain extent, a beginning, or was thought to be in certain quarters,
of a revolution in their dealing with the native races,
it was not even mentioned in the speech of the Governor-General.