COMMEECIAL PROSPECTS 283 



South African colonies of perhaps 3,000,000 or more, the men of these Zulu, 

 Basuto, Bech Liana, and ^latabele races do not themselves provide all the 

 Negro labour that is necessary for the development of British South Africa 

 up to the Zambezi. The reply to this would be, I suppose, that a good many 

 of the young men do go to work in the mines north of the Orange Kiver ; 

 while hundreds of thousands of others find work as drivers, teamsters, 

 labourers, domestic servants, policemen, etc. Also it might be said that 

 as all these natives pay the taxes levied on them and maintain themselves 

 in a lawful manner, it is nobody's business what they do with their spare 

 time. Ill the same way, if every native of the Eastern African Protectorates 

 paid his taxes in money and obtained his food and lodging in due observance 

 of the laws, it would be a matter entirely for his own consideration whether 

 he was to earn anything in excess of these requirements : he and his 

 congeners having each paid their yearly tax, the Protectorate they lived 

 in would be independent of a British subsidy, and at the very worst 

 would be maintained without cost to the Imperial Government for the 

 benefit of the Negro inhabitants whose taxes supported it. 



But the fact remains that the Negro races of South Africa, though 

 acquitting themselves of all lialiility in the way of taxation, and working suffi- 

 ciently to obtain the food, lodging, and simple luxuries they require, do not 

 suffice as a labour force for the complete development of the regions between 

 the Orange Kiver and the Zambezi, an additional reason for this being \)Y0- 

 bahly that, owing to their much more advanced condition of well-being, they 

 require wages far in excess of Central African natives, whose labour, because 

 less skilled, is not rated so highly. 3Iany an enterprise in Rhodesia, or in 

 the Transvaal, or in Bechuanaland might be worked at a profital)le rate and 

 with results more beneficial to the country if a supply of cheap native 

 labour could be obtained from Central Africa; yet the cheap rates paid for 

 this labour would seem a little fortune to the negro from Nyasaland, 

 Tanganyika, or Uganda. In short, the gigantic enterprises of Euro[)eaiis in 

 South Africa should contribute in a very material degree to the support 

 of the East and Central African Protectorates, into which should flow for 

 their local enrichment a fair pro|)ortion of the vast sums of money expended 

 daily south of the Zambezi. 



I know at first sight that certain people in England, keenly interested 

 in the welfare of the Negro, and whose interest may sometimes border on 

 sentimentality, will exclaim that the theory I am propounding of turning 

 Central African labour into undevelo^ied South Africa, and South African 

 money into unhealthy Central x\frica, is l)ut a disguised revival of slavery. 

 A little reflection, however, will convince the really honest Negroj)hils that 

 this is not the case. A class of missionary now nearly extinct was bitterly 

 opposed to the enterprise of non-missionary Europeans in Central Africa, 



