COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 283 



South African colonies of perhaps 3,000,000 or more, tlie nu-n of tlie.-e Zuhi, 

 Basuto, Bechuana, and Matabele races do not themselves provi(h' all the 

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

 up to the Zanil)ezi. The- rc-ply 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. In 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 lor tlie 

 benefit of the Negro inhabitants whose taxes supported it. 



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

 acquitting themselv-es of all liability 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 Eiver and the Zambezi, an additional reason for this being pro- 

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

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

 less skilled, is not rated so highly. ]Many an enterprise in Rhodesia, or in 

 the Transvaal, or in Bechuanaland might be worked at a profitable 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[ieans in 

 South Africa should contribute in a very material degree to the supp)ort 

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

 their local enrichment a fair proportion 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 undeveloped South Africa, and South African 

 money into unhealthy Central Africa, is but a disguised revival of slavery. 

 A little reflection, however, will convince the really honest Negrophils 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, 



