51 
well as his mechanical talents, equal to those of the European, 
who has so long oppressed him, under the plea of his being 
an inferior animal. That the Hottentot is not by nature de- 
ficient in mechanical talents, any one may be convinced, who 
will visit this establishment; and his intellectual capacity is 
placed equally beyond dispute by the rapid progress of the 
rising generation in the elementary branches of learning. 
The school is a recent institution, commenced under the 
patronage of the late Governor, Sir John Craddock. The 
system of instruction followed is that of Joseph Lancaster. 
Little did that ingenious quaker imagine that his invention, 
opposed as it was by the united ignorance, prejudice, and 
- bigotry of England, should within so short a time penetrate 
to the farthest extremity of Africa; and shed its benignant 
light on the most wretched portion of the human race. 
* On the motives that dictated the establishment of the 
Moravian Mission, and the plan on which it has hitherto 
been conducted, there can be but one opinion; both are 
entitled to unqualified approbation; yet so unpropitious are 
the circumstances connected with it, that there is reason to 
apprehend that it will do more harm than good, and aggra- 
vate the misery it was its object to lighten. The population 
of the Colony consists of two races of people; the white, or 
descendants of Europeans, and the black, or Hottentots, 
who are parcelled out among the former, and serve them in 
the capacity of menials. Thinly scattered over a prodigious 
extent of territory, and repelled, by natural difficulties, 
but much more by positive enactments, beyond the reach of 
justice, the distant Colonists live in a state of independence, 
over which the government has no effective control. Hence 
they have usurped full authority over the rights, and not 
unfrequently over the lives of their dependents; and the 
capricious exercise of it, we can éasily imagine, has been the 
source of no small portion of misery to the latter. Laws 
have been enacted from time to time, with a view to curb 
this abuse; but laws issued without the power of enforce- 
ment, are more likely to increase than to restrain abuse, 
from that sort of vindictive pleasure which men often feel, in 
E2 
