PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference
C.O.885
19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
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possible be the Greatest Cominon Measure of the laws and rules already existing in the Colonies, that it should embody the best points of all, so that we could always support our model law by an illustration from what is actually in existence in one Colony or another.
As to (iii). assuming that model laws and rules are held to be impossible or unnecessary, at any rate annual summaries or handbooks giving the results of experience or experiment in the various colonies or dependencies on the main subjects which affect the native races would be useful. Here we might possibly employ our Emigrants' Information Office, strengthening its staff for the purpose. Their work is to be perpetually collecting and publishing informin tion. They might have a branch or a sub- committee dealing with subjects relating to native races. The mere fact of taking enough interest in these subjects to give to the world up-to-date information as to how we are dealing with the natives in all parts of the world, under specified heads, would not only give confidence in us but would enable, by the process of perpetually tabulating and comparing, useful suggestions and recommendations to be made.
"The
The value of Industrial and Agricultural Education for natives is beyond dispute. improvement of agriculture" write the Natal Commissioners (page 34) will be generally admitted as a most important element in the education and advancement of the natives," end they recommend centres for teaching agriculture small industrial experimental plots and
schools, evidently implying that there is much wanting. There is plenty of guidance to be gained in South Africa ; but it may be worth while also to go further afield, and we have the best of guides in Sir D. Morris and the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies. We have various West Indian and Office prints on the subject. We could, if desired, ask Sir D. Morris to draw up papers of suggestions of general application, and he could be asked to edit, if he cannot already provide, text books such as the "Tropical Reader," to be translated into the various native tongues. Or again we might second Sir D. Morris, who is now of age for retirement, for the express purpose of going through the colonies, many of which he knows, collecting the information and giving us the models after personal enquiry and examination. Labour is a difficult subject on which to generalise, but I presume even in regard to labour certain general principles might be laid down for the protection of the natives and be embodied in laws or rules, restricting or prohibiting the truck system, safeguarding apprenticeship, restricting labour in lieu of rent, regulating compulsory labour en roads or public works, &c., &c.; and, if such model rules could not be laid down, we could at least have our
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summaries of what is being done in these respects in different lands and among different races.
There are certain principles which hold all the world over. · I should like as far as possible to keep them in our shop window, to add to them from time to time, and to keep ourselves and the public, including the colonial public, informed where and how and when this or that principle is being put into practice.
Special position of South Africa as regards the Native Races.
(i) South Africa of course has infinitely more natives than the other groups of self-governing colonies and, as far as am aware, the natives show no signs of declining in numbers. In this respect it is unique in the British Empire. It is the one group of colonies where the black mea out-number the white, but which is at the same time, to some extent at any rate, a natural home for white men, and therefore inevitably a sphere for self-government.
(ii) It has, like Australia, and like the Southern States of the American Union, parts where the climate favours the native more than the white; and it is not the white men's home to the same extent as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in that, owing to the presence of the coloured races, the field of unskilled labour in South Africa is practically not open to white
men.
(iii) The proportions of whites to natives vary very much in the different districts, and it
is noteworthy, as a comment on the liability to panic and harsh measures where the natives are very many and the whites very few, that in Natal where, among the self-governing Colonies, most preponderate, we have the natives apparently at the present fime the greatest
unrest.
(iv) We have some rather curious political anomalies in South Africa. Of the self-gov- erning colonies, the cllest colony, which had representative institutions given to it over 50 years ago, has always been the most liberal to The colonies which have most the natives. recently been given constitutions are, as the result of antecedent conditions, least liberal. In Basutoland, Crown Colony government of natives in South Africa is, side by side, con- trasting most favourably with the administration of natives in the self-governing colony of Natal. This is in accordance with the principle that natives are better off under the Crown than under a Colonial Government; but it will be noted not only that Basutoland was disannexed from a self-governing colony, and that self- governing colony the most liberal of the South Basutoland African colonies, but also that flourishes, if I understand rightly, by being kept as a native reserve, 12., by maintaining under