PRESIDENTS ADDRESS — SECTION 



SECTION F. 



ETHNOLOGY 

 AND ANTHROPOLOGY. 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT: 

 His Honour Mr. Justice Murray, C.M.G., 



Lieutenant-Governor of Papua. 



Subject Races and "yatives." 



The subject races of whom I speak in this paper are those 

 people whom, like Miss Tox in Domhei^ and Son, we are content 

 to call "natives." This term is surely as absurd as it well could 

 h<e, for a man who "w^as not a native of some part of the globe 

 v.-culd indeed be a lusus naturce, but after all it seeins to convey 

 one's meaning well enough, and. when we talk of natives, every 

 on© knows that we refer to those races of men, of different 

 colour from ourselves, whom we, I suppose rightly, regard as our 

 inferiors. 



Incapacity/ for Self-Govetiinnnt. 



In the opinion of the average Britisher, all foreign nations 

 are obviously incapable of self-government, but the " natives " 

 I refer to really do seem to^ suffer from a peculiar unfitness in 

 this regard, for they appear to have little or no idea of nationality 

 or patriotism, and, in spite of their tribal organization, they 

 often have but a rudimentary notion o-f subordinating individual 

 interests tO' those of the general body. Consequently it probably 

 is desirable, even in the interests of these races themselves, that 

 they should be under European domination, although, as Sir 

 Sydney Olivier has pointed out, this is a consideration which, 

 however true it may be, has never by itself caused any race to 

 annex the territory of another or to assume its government 

 (Olivier, White Capital and Coloured Labour, p. 136). It is 

 a truth which looks suspiciously like hypocrisy, it is as old as 



