The Romance of a Pro-Consul: Being the Personal Life and Memoirs of the Right Hon. Sir George Grey, K.C.B.Milne, James
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The Romance of a Pro-Consul: Being the Personal Life and Memoirs of the Right Hon. Sir George Grey, K.C.B.
Milne, James
Grey, George, Sir, 1812-1898
'Well, the way to adopt with natives, was to show them how to obtain more
food. Benefit them in that manner, and they would regard you as their
friend, and you would have influence over them. I always paid a native,
doing unskilled work, the wage a white would have received for the same
effort. It was mere justice. Yet, so small a thing had immense results,
for manhood was cultivated in the black. Self-respect infected him. He
discovered himself, with proud surprise, to be a man instead of a
chattel.
'The mystery of managing native races, resolves itself into a few natural
laws. My hardest trouble was the witchcraft, which held in bonds, the
savage peoples whom I had to govern. It might differ, here or there, in
its characteristics; the evil was there all the same. Not merely did the
natives believe in witch-craft, having been swathed in it for ages, but
their chiefs made a profit therefrom, and were staunch for its
maintenance. My antidote was the introduction of medical aid, so that in
the cures wrought, those children of the dark, might see what surpassed
their own magic. They were discomfited, as it were, on their own ground.
'Superstition, which I distinguish from witchcraft, though the greater
evil flourished on the less, had its best treatment in the spread of the
Christian religion. Surely, a wonderful witness of its divine origin,
lies in the fact that it applies to the elevation and happiness of all
the world's races--is understandable to all. Farther, native schools made
advances upon sheer ignorance, as hospitals did in respect to witchcraft;
and it was possible, in some measure, to eradicate native indolence by
affording youths a training in a trade, or grown men work on public
improvements: Here we return to where we began--food as the primitive
impulse driving mankind.'
No trait of human nature was neglected by Sir George Grey, in his
exertions to plant the better ideas of living. He detected that the
Kaffirs of South Africa were sharp to humour, owners of a lively sense of
the ridiculous. On that hung an incident, which brought out the value of
the personal equation in dealing with natives, whether in South
Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. It was an item of Sir George
Grey's whole native policy. An old witch doctor, he mentioned, had been
inciting unrest among the dark masses of Kaffraria. Sir George had him
put comfortably in prison, where he could be certain of medical
attendance and rest. That was the least office, demanded towards a human
being evidently in a disturbed state of health.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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