All this we recognize, and we are willing to look the facts fully, if not unblushingly, in the face; but when all has been seen and said, this also must be allowed: that, though we have set our feet on the land over a hundred years, there are as many or more people of the aboriginal races in the land than when we came, and, if we should pass away from them to-morrow, all we shall have left them as our main legacy will be a certain knowledge of our language and laws, and they would not be a less free, rather a more free, people than when we found them. We have not been to them at least the upas-tree, killing out the race from beneath us, and if at times we have been conquerors and oppressors, and if more often we have made blunders, this one thing is certain, that perhaps not the majority of us, certainly not all of us, yet still a certain body of us, have meant well by them. We have meant to aid and raise them, to put them on an equality with ourselves, and the thought they were being crushed or murdered would be a blow to the most earnest sensibilities of our natures. It may be replied: "Yes, that is your English cant; you alone of all people in the world have always a psalm in your mouth as you crunch the bones of your enemies, and, while you are putting the bread of the poor and needy in your own jaws, your eyes are turned upwards." And this is to a certain extent true. Cant lies across our national character as a hideous deformity, peculiar to ourselves. As we have one virtue, so we also have this vice which is ours and ours alone; but is it not the shadow of that very virtue? The disease which is an indication of its opposite? There are times when our heart sickens that we are English, and the meanest and most brutal nation seems great when we compare its attitude with that greasy whine of affected sanctity and humanity with which, often as individuals and continuously as a people, we try to gloss over our acts of greed, injustice and self-seeking. The Boer, if he wishes to annex a Native territory, says: "The damned Kaffir; I'll take his land from him and divide it among my children." The Frenchman says, if he wishes to possess a territory: "I shall take it for the glory of France and keep it for her honour." And this is noble, direct and manly, if perhaps cruel and unjust.