THE SENSE OF VIRTUE 



so long as no danger or inconvenience result to the 

 community, a matter which affects nobody but 

 the person who may have been guilty of it. In 

 fact, neglect to take advantage of an opportunity 

 to indulge in strong drink to excess, or to purloin 

 safely a white man's small possessions, would, I 

 am convinced, be regarded as a much more in- 

 comprehensible shortcoming than the act of doing 

 so. What then, I ask, can be done at present to 

 instil a high sense of duty and virtue into such 

 natives as these ? Of a surety their claim to be 

 regarded as men and brethren cannot yet be fully 

 admitted. It will come to be so doubtless, but 

 not before the African shall have so changed the 

 man that is within him that those at home, who 

 now all untimely sigh and pant for the education 

 and regeneration of the black races, find in him a 

 more satisfactory field for the seeds of civilisation 

 than, I fear, he yet possesses. His mind in its 

 present condition would afford, I am convinced, 

 but stony ground ; in fact, in most of those cases 

 where, in neighbouring colonies, the lessons of 

 truth have shovim apparently unmistakable signs 

 of germination, they have on reaching maturity 

 proved of far too weak a growth to deter the negro 

 from the occasional committal of those acts of 

 disappointing moral obliquity which show that 

 what is described as his " higher nature " has not 

 as yet attained to a very elevated level. How 

 should it be otherwise ? How can the benumbed 

 intellect, which has been cramped and fettered by 

 countless generations of brain-petrifying subjection, 

 suddenly absorb and assimilate new and perplexing 



