It seemed to him that they had not got sufficient information.
Beyond the bald statistics which were given by the Minister
in the course of his interesting and moderate speech, they had nothing.
They were going into a thing that would stir South Africa from end to end,
and which affected hundreds of thousands of both races.
They had no information as to what were the ideas of the Natives.
It was unfortunate that, owing to this lack of information,
wrong ideas had got about with regard to this Bill. It was difficult
to find out what the Native thought about these things; he doubted
whether anybody could say that he had got at the mind of the Native.
The only way, and he must say that he did not take it as a real indication,
was what they wrote in their newspapers. He was alarmed, but not surprised,
at some of the articles in their newspapers, because they took their views
from the heated speeches and writings in party newspapers
all over the country, and they were very much alarmed. He thought
that before a Bill of this sort was passed, there should be some attempt made
to get their views. As far as one section was concerned,
the Bill was going to set up a sort of pale -- that there was going to be
a sort of kraal in which all the Natives were to be driven,
and they were to be left to develop on their own lines. To allow them
to go on their own lines was merely to drive them back into barbarism;
their own lines meant barbarous lines; their own lines were cruel lines.
All along they had been bringing them away from their own lines.
It reminded him of what an English writer said about a similar policy
in Ireland, because when the English went to Ireland
they regarded the Native Irish in the way some extreme people here
regarded the Natives of South Africa. They thought they would root them out.
They treated them as dogs, and thought that they were dogs.
They set up a pale. They set the Irish within that pale,