CUAP. IX. SOUKCES OF APPREHENSION. 249 



Contrasted with this ground of encouragement, were sources 

 of apprehension arising from the limited amount and the 

 imperfect quality of the education obtained by them. This 

 appeared traceable in some places to the inadequate means 

 of instruction within their reach, in others to the inability of 

 the parents to send their children to school, or to their in- 

 sensibility to its advantages. In connection with this subject, 

 parental discipline, the enlightened and judicious authority of 

 the parent over the child, seemed to be but seldom exercised. 



Another source of apprehension arises from the fact that 

 the young people growing up without personal experience of 

 the miseries of slavery, and consequently without the stimulus 

 to self-improvement which the remembrance supplied to 

 their parents, are in danger of deeming the restraints of 

 school irksome and unnecessary. The Hottentots particularly, 

 from the natural weakness of character which, notwith- 

 standing many truly amiable traits, they exhibit, seem to 

 prefer an easy, listless mode of life to the self-denial, energy, 

 forethought, and enterprise which the maintenance of their 

 present position will require, to say nothing of their pro- 

 gressive advancement. Persons of this class appear too often 

 contented if their physical wants are supplied, or the means 

 of immediate gratification, however expensive to them, 

 secured, and consequently live as if but for the day, trusting 

 to the future to provide for itself. There were some striking 

 exceptions to these characteristics. But still, with regard to 

 the Hottentots especially, the existence of this downward 

 tendency cannot be regarded with indifference ; for, without a 

 change, they must either become mere hewers of wood and 

 drawers of water to others, or, as a race, gradually melt away. 

 It is this weakness of character which makes persons of this 

 class, when destitute of religious principle, fall so easily into 

 the temptations which the canteens or other sources of 

 drunkenness and poverty present. 



