CHAP. IX, 
SOURCES 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. 
