It is so with the whole body of custom. It expresses the inward life of the people. It contains such rudimentary morality as they know, or embodies a principle that is necessary for the preservation of society. It is on the level of the African’s moral culture. It corresponds with his beliefs and has the consent of his mind. The foreigner may by sheer force change his outward condition, but unless there be also a corresponding inward change he does not respond to the new obligations; his moral responsibility is not equal to the new demands, and the result is moral degeneration followed inevitably by physical degeneration. This very matter of the dowry illustrates the different method of the missionary and, I believe, the true principle of progress. Our early missionaries made no church laws against the dowry, but they faithfully preached the equality of woman and the higher idea of marriage; and as the Christians became imbued with this sentiment they themselves abolished the dowry within their own society. But they did it at the instance of a moral sentiment which made marriage more secure than ever. The inward preceded the outward change. The missionary does as much harm as anybody else when he adopts the easy method of ruthless and indiscriminate assaults upon native customs and beliefs. It was not the Master’s method. Even slavery Jesus did not attack with violence; that were as vain—if I may use the illustration of Dr. Richard Storrs—as vain as to attack an Arctic ice-field with pick and drill; but He turned upon it the summer sunshine and it slowly melted away. He inspired men with a sentiment of human brotherhood and destroyed slavery by expelling the spirit that made it possible. The African has a rooted antipathy to the pick and drill, but he loves the sunshine; he is responsive to truth and capable of high and transforming affections. It is said on the coast that England rules her African colonies for _commerce_, France for _revenue_ and Spain for _plunder_. The English policy gives the utmost encouragement to native enterprise and thrift, and on the whole the English colonies are the most prosperous and promising. The French policy of revenue imposes such a burden of taxation that life no longer consists in eating and drinking and talking palavers, but in paying taxes. And the enormous import and export duty stifles enterprise and in the end defeats its own purpose. But it must be said that the French officials, of all classes, in their personal intercourse with the natives, are free and friendly, and in consequence are much better liked than the English officials, who, though usually just, are often arrogant, and, while they care for the welfare of the native, care nothing for his feelings. One recalls that in the early days of America the French got on with the Indians much better than the English.