30 TREATMENT OF THE KAFFIR THIEVES. 



from habit and taste, is to murder and steal, must needs 

 be protected, when he ought to be hung or shot without 

 mercy. If some of these misled and misinformed people 

 were aware how much harm they really did to the savage, 

 and the vast number of lives that have been sacrificed by 

 a want of firmness and of apparent cruelty on the part of 

 those intrusted with Kaffir government, they would cease 

 to do wrong out of piety, and would leave the entire 

 management of these matters in the hands of merciful 

 men, who may be on the spot, and whose experience would 

 lead them to discover that a few lives taken without 

 hesitation at the commencement of disputes would even- 

 tually prevent the loss of many hundreds. 



The policy of showing mercy to the frontier Kaffir 

 murderer is similar to that of allowing a mad dog to run 

 at liberty and bite people rather than to commit the 

 cruelty of knocking it on the head. At the present time, 

 the prompt and decided conduct of the able governor of the 

 Cape appears to have checked a most threatening demon- 

 stration of the frontier Kaffirs. The Dutchmen, who are 

 far up in the interior, keep their black neighbours in better 

 order. When there is any just cause for going to war, such 

 a severe punishment is inflicted by them on the Kaffirs, 

 that a score of years will not wipe out the moral effect of the 

 dread that these Dutchmen have inspired. I am convinced 

 that by this apparent severity lives are eventually saved. 



Almost all the disasters that we have met with in 

 Africa have been caused by underrating the enemy, 

 or fancying security where there was danger. Perpetual 

 caution and watchfulness are the only safeguards. 



