162 president's address — section v. 



Aristotle ("Politics," Book I., ii.), and it has often assisted and 

 served as a pretext; but, where there are no other inducements, 

 the consideration of the duty which the civilized man feels, or 

 affects to feel, for the uncivilized has, in the words of Sir Sydney, 

 "been impotent as a colonizing force and has never effectuallv 

 operated to induce any white Power to take up the white man's 

 burden." 



Tiro Waf/s in which Native Faces may he Regarded — (i) A^ 

 the " LiviiHj TooU" of Other Men: (ii.) As Men in the Full Sense. 



Still, the white man's burden has been taken up pretty exten- 

 sively, and there are few, if any, of these native races who are 

 not under the white man's rule to-day; and the white man, 

 therefore, is forced to assume! some definite attitude towards, 

 them. Now, there are two ways in which these "natives" can 

 be considered. They may be considered either as the "natural- 

 born slaves" of Aristotle's "Politics" — ^men, indeed, but men 

 whose function it is to be merely the "living tools" of other 

 men ; or the.y may be regarded as men in the full sense of the 

 word, as possessing rights of their own, and as entitled to be 

 regarded not merely as a means to an end but as an eind in 

 themselves. The former view is thousands of years old, and found 

 its final and crudest expression in the decision of the Supreme 

 Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case, that "the 

 coloured man has no rights which a wdiite man is bound to 

 respect." It is, in fact, part of the sophistry by which a nation, 

 practising slav0ry and knowing \in its heart that slavery is 

 wrong, endeavours to make peace with its conscience. In the 

 Dred Scott decision the sophistry has practically disappeared, 

 and unrelieved brutality has taken its place ; but in the older 

 and more highly-civilized society of Greece one sees the struggle, 

 one sees how Aristotle tries to justify slavery by an appeal to 

 "phusis," and how he comforts himself with the smug reflection 

 — so very unlike his usual style of thought — that it is really for 

 the slave's good after all. 



I mh'nf iired f.ahniir. 



Of course, slavery is a thing of the past, but it has left 

 behind it a rather near relative in the system of indentured 

 labour ; and I do not think that it is an exaggeration to say 

 that just as much hypocrisy has been displayed in defence of 

 indentured labour as evefr was shown in support of slavery. 

 Unfortunately, indentured labour is for the time being a 

 necessity in some places — e.g., in New Guinea — but it is not an 

 institution which any one who knows anything about it would 

 care tO' perpetuate. Indentured labour goes far to keep- upi that 

 feeling of arrogant and innate supeJriority which is really the 

 basic idea of slavery, and which, I suppose, cannot die out so 



