Until the earlier parts of this nineteenth century England has been
conspicuous among other nations in tolerating slavery in some of her
possessions, and in permitting her people to engage in systematic man-hunts,
with the accompanying atrocities and horrors of a regular slave trade.
Manifestations of national abhorrence and condemnation of that inhuman
traffic and of slavery in general appeared during the first quarter of this
century. The nation hid its shame and contrition in acts towards remedying
its share of the evil committed. These took the shape of expending some
twenty million pounds sterling towards the emancipation of slaves and
various other costly measures to repress the trade in human beings, and in
proclaiming personal freedom for all slaves in her dominions. The desire to
do justice to coloured races was further exemplified in the adoption, dating
some fifty years back, of a totally altered colonial and native policy. Up
to then the practice with all colonizing Powers had been to utilize their
foreign dominions as preserves for financial exploitation, involving the
most crying injustice to aborigines. The departure then effected consisted
in a policy of just laws instead, directed to ensure to those people
equitable treatment and a recognition of their rights to fixed property and
to a position before the law equal with that of white inhabitants. The
revenues produced by the Colonies were thenceforward all to be devoted to
the advancement of their own local prosperity. Free trade followed that
régime of liberty and equity, and, as intended, such Colonial dominions
began to partake of the character and were constituted off-shoots of the
mother country, with a like status of liberty and enjoying the benefit of
British protection at the same time. Many were the auguries that the
experiment would result in political and economic failure, but the good
results to all concerned proved to be so far-reaching as to startle even its
most sanguine advocates. The extension of privileges and rights operated
upon the natives as a magical incentive to labour and emulation for the
improvement of their economic condition; people who had before preferred an
indolent, semi-nomadic existence betook themselves more to agricultural and
sedentary habits, living in much greater comfort and steadily increasing in
wealth.
Civilization went on apace, and with it the moral improvement of the
aborigines, paving the way as well for the spread of Christianity. All this
was accompanied with an immense and ever-advancing expansion of trade with
England and the recognition of British prestige as a successful colonizing
power.
Numerous other principalities courted the privilege of coming under the ćgis
of the English flag, their potentates and people readily submitting to the
abolition of practices which were not in accord with humane and civilized
usages and eager to share the benefits and advancement of civilization which
were enjoyed under British rule. In not a few instances it was, however, not
feasible to extend the protectorate so coveted.
While other nations were engaged in wars during the past half-century,
England had opportunities to largely expand and consolidate her Colonial
dominions. At the same time British trade, industries and shipping advanced
with gigantic strides, and that nation has since gained the foremost rank as
a commercial and Colonial empire, governing over the choicest portions of
the globe some four hundred millions of loyal and contented subjects, who
enjoy liberty and a degree of prosperity unequalled elsewhere as yet, the
whole being protected by a navy which constitutes England as champion on sea
as well.
All this national success and example of liberal government have had a
salutary influence upon the rest of the world in evoking wholesome
competition and emulation. But another and very untoward effect is that
widespread and deep-rooted envy and jealousy have also been aroused, which
on occasion are apt to develop into pretexts for actual hostility, or
hostile partisanship as is now the case.
What signalises the beneficent reign of Queen Victoria more than anything
else is the peculiarly devoted manner in which that august lady has
personally acquitted herself of her duty and responsibility in regard to the
elevation and rehabilitation of the hitherto socially enslaved condition of
womanhood in her Indian empire; for it is well known how the philosophic
religions of the East have been subtly adapted for establishing the
political and social pre-eminence of certain classes of a population over
its majority, at the same time dooming womanhood generally to the lowest
rank of drudges, perpetual contempt and ignorance, refusing them education
(as had been done in the case of the Roman slaves)—specially despised if
without a husband, and if a widow, immolated at last upon her husband's
funeral pyre.
Step by step, by means of strenuous and disinterested exertions, employing
prestige and encouragements, by legislation and otherwise, a breach was
effected which bids fair to break down that caste-fenced and chained
thraldom, and to raise over a hundred millions of her humble subject sisters
from unnatural degradation to occupy the honourable and responsible rank
assigned by the Creator to woman as man's social help, meet for him, and to
whom honour is due as to the weaker vessel. Millions of women have already
found emancipation and recognition of their right position, to man's
reciprocal joy and to the felicity of their families. Their sons and
daughters in turn now form armies to complete the mission of liberty so
zealously inaugurated by their beloved Empress, their own peculiar star of
India.
Maybe this and similar earnests evinced during that noble Queen's reign,
among which the shelter afforded to the Jewish people, will come into
remembrance in mitigation of visitations deserved by the nation for its
previous complicity in the hideous traffic in African souls of men.
It
throws a light upon the credulity and simplicity of the bulk of the poor
deluded peasant Boers when, in the face of most genial rule and almost an
excess of liberty and privileges, Bond artifice could succeed in conjuring
up contrary notions, and to poison them into the monstrous belief that they,
the Boers, were an oppressed people, whose downfall was designed by
rapacious England, and that no other remedy existed for preserving
independence, religion and homes than to expel that wicked English people
from African soil. This is, then, what Bond artifice effected in the absence
of actual cause and in order to dissimulate its own nefarious objects. It
was the work of twenty years' sedulously applied deception and calumnious
machinations.
The Hollander coterie has at last succeeded in its ardently desired purpose
of pitting the Boer nation against England, and to bring about the present
war. What is even more astounding is the success of those villainous
artificers upon intelligent partisans of the Boer cause outside of Africa
and in England even.
