SOUTHERN AFRICA. 373 
wants could be supplied without any effort, the predominant 
pleasures of life would consist in eating and sleeping. The 
propensity to inaction can only be overcome by giving the 
laborer an interest in the product of his labor; by making 
him feel the weight and value of property. The colonists of 
the Cape pursued no such plan with regard to their conduct 
towards the Hottentots. Having first held out the irresistible 
charm that spirituous liquors and tobacco are found to pos- 
sess among all people in a rude state of society, they took the 
advantage of exchanging those pernicious poisons for the 
only means the natives enjoyed of subsisting themselves and 
their families ; and, however extraordinary it may appear, 
instead of instructing and encouraging a race of men, of 
willing and intelligent minds, to renew the means of subsist- 
ence, of which they had deprived them, they imported, at a 
vast expence, a number of Malay slaves, not more expert, 
and much less to be depended on, than the Plottentots ; to 
whom, indeed, they even preferred the stupid negroes of 
Mosambique and Madagascar. 
Whether it happened from real ignorance of the character 
of these natives, or from strong prejudices imbibed against 
them, or from an adherence to a narrow polic}^ I cannot pre- 
tend to determine ; but, from the inquiries I have made, it 
does not appear they have at any period experienced a 
treatment equally favorable to that of the meanest slaves. 
Not many years ago it was thought expedient, for some pur- 
pose or other, to assemble a considerable number in or near 
the town, but the business for which they were coilected, 
dwindling into a job for the emolument of the persons who 
