habit of plundering one another, and saw no manner of evil in this, or any of their actions. Violent deaths were common. Their usual manner of living was truly disgusting, and they were void of shame. They were at the most violent enmity with the Bushmen, and treated them on all occasions where they could, with the utmost barbarity. So might these people, wretched victims of European vice and contempt of all laws, human or divine, have remained, had not the missionaries, by incredible labours and patience, won their good will. They have now reduced them to settled and agricultural life; brought them to live in the most perfect harmony with the Bushmen; and. in 1819 such was their altered condition that a fair was established at Beaufort for the mutual benefit of them and the colonists, at which business was done to the amount of 27,000 rix dollars; and on the goods sold to the Griquas, the colonists realized a profit of from 200 to 300 per cent!
Let our profound statesmen, who go on from generation to generation fighting and maintaining armies, and issuing commandoes, look at this, and see how infinitely simple men, with but one principle of action to guide them—Christianity—outdo them in their own profession. They are your missionaries, after all the boast and pride of statesmanship, who have ever yet hit upon the only true and sound policy even in a worldly point of view;[1] who, when the profound statesmen have turned men into miserable and exasperated savages, are obliged to go and again turn them from savages to men,—who, when these wise
- ↑ William Penn is the only exception, and he was a preacher and in some degree a missionary.
