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XI. CONCLUSION 
who professed to be followers of Jesus ? Who can 
describe the injustice and the cruelties that in the course 
of centuries they have suffered at the hands of Euro- 
peans ? Who can measure the misery produced among 
them by the fiery drinks and the hideous diseases that 
we have taken to them ? If a record could be compiled 
of all that has happened between the white and the 
coloured races, it would make a book containing num- 
bers of pages, referring to recent as well as to early 
times, which the reader would have to turn over 
unread, because their contents would be too horrible. 
We and our civilisation are burdened, really, with a 
great debt. We are not free to confer benefits on these 
men, or not, as we please ; it is our duty. Anything 
we give them is not benevolence but atonement. For 
every one who scattered injury some one ought to go 
out to take help, and when we have done all that is in 
our power, we shall not have atoned for the thousandth 
part of our guilt. That is the foundation from which 
all dehberations about “ works of mercy ” out there 
must begin. 
It goes without saying that Governments must help 
with the atonement, but they cannot do so till there 
already exists in society a conviction on the subject. 
The Government alone can never discharge the duties 
of humanitarianism ; from the nature of the case that 
rests with society and individuals. 
The Government can send out as many colonial 
doctors as it has at its disposal, and as the colonial 
budgets are able to pay for. It is well known that there 
are great colonising powers which cannot find even 
enough doctors to fill the places of those already working 
in their colonies, though these are far from sufficient to 
