Читать книгу Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No.394, August, 1848 - Various - Страница 3

8It is always with fresh interest that we address ourselves to the perusal of books relating to Great Britain's colonial possessions. The subject, daily increasing in importance, has the strongest claims upon our attention. In presence of a rapidly augmenting population, and of the prodigious progress of steam and machinery, the question naturally suggests itself – and more so in England than in any other country – how employment and support shall be found for the additional millions of human beings with which a few years (judging of the future from the past) will throng the surface of a country already densely and superabundantly populated? The problem, often discussed, has not yet been satisfactorily solved. Without broaching the complicated question of over-population and its antidotes, without attempting to decide when a country is to be deemed over-populated, we may assert, without fear of contradiction, that emigration is the simplest and most direct remedy for the state of plethora into which a nation must sooner or later be brought by a steady annual excess of births over deaths. It is a remedy to which more than one European state will ultimately be compelled to resort, however alleviation may previously be sought by temporising and theoretical nostrums, more palatable, perhaps, to the patient, but inadequate, if not wholly inefficacious and charlatanical. And, after all, emigration is no such insupportable prescription for a very ugly malady. Doubtless much may be said upon the cruelty of making exile a condition of existence; but sympathy on this score may also be carried too far, and degenerate into drivel. At first sight the decree appears cruel and tyrannical, until we investigate its source, and find it to proceed from no earthly potentate, but from that omniscient Being whose intention it never was that men should crowd together into nooks and corners, when vast continents and fruitful islands, untenanted save by beasts of the field, or by scanty bands of barbarians, woo to their shores the children of labour and civilisation. Love of country, admirable as an incentive to many virtues, may be pushed beyond reasonable limits. It is so, we apprehend, when it prompts men to pine in penury and idleness upon the soil that gave them birth, rather than seek new fields for their industry and enterprise in uncultivated and vacant lands. What choice of these is afforded by England's vast and magnificent colonies! The emigrant may select almost his degree of latitude. And where Britannia's banner waves, and her laws are paramount, and the honest, kindly Anglo-Saxon tongue is the language of the land, there surely needs no great effort of imagination for a Briton to think himself still at home, though a thousand leagues of ocean roll between him and his native isle.

Excepting that they all more or less refer to the British possessions at the Cape of Good Hope, it were difficult to find three books more distinct from each other in character than those whose titles we have assembled at the foot of last page. An ex-settler, an accomplished lady, and a shrewd sailor, have selected the same moment for the publication of their African experiences. As in gallantry bound, we give the precedence to the lady. Mrs Harriet Ward, wife of a captain of the 91st regiment of foot, is a keen-witted, high-spirited person; and, like most of her sex when they espouse a cause, a warm partisan of the feelings and opinions of those she loves and admires. She is an uncompromising assailant of the system pursued at the Cape, especially as regards our treaties with the Kaffirs, whom she very justly denounces as perfidious, bloody, and unclean savages, untameable, she fully believes, and with whom Whig officials and negotiators have been ridiculously lenient and confiding. Although some of her views are rather sweeping and severe, she is certainly right in the main. And we honour her for her heartiness in denouncing the nauseous humbug of the pseudo-philanthropists, whose manœuvres have had a most prejudicial effect upon our South African possessions, and have given to persons in this country notions completely erroneous concerning the rights and wrongs of the Kaffir question. But whilst blaming the administration of the colony, she finds the country itself fair and excellent and of great resource. Herein she differs from her contemporary, Mr George Nicholson, junior. This gentleman, lately a settler at the Cape, cannot be too highly lauded for the volume with which he has favoured the public. We are not quite sure, however, that the public will think as highly of it as we do. Our admiration is founded on the consistency of its tone; upon the steady, well-sustained grumble kept up throughout. The preface at once prepossessed us in favour of what was to follow. Intended, doubtless, as a dram of bitters to assist in the digestion of the subsequent sour repast, it consists of general depreciation of other works regarding the Cape, and especially of one by "a Mr Chase" – of sneers at "stay-at-home wiseacres" and hollow theorists – and of a vague accusation brought against certain colonial residents of "fomenting the warlike propensities of the neighbouring barbarians, to secure their own ends," grievously to the detriment and prejudice of their fellow-colonists. "The peculiar bent," says Mr Nicholson, "of each author's mind has, in general, been so far allowed to predominate as to exclude the hope of forming a correct estimate of the capabilities of the soil, climate, and other interesting features of this extensive country, by a perusal of their works." Could the author of "The Cape and its Colonists" read his book with somebody else's eyes, he would discover that his own "peculiar bent has been allowed to predominate," and that the consequences have been of the most gloomy description. Mr Nicholson is evidently a disappointed, man. Either by his fault or misfortune, by the force of circumstances or his own bad management, his attempt to establish himself thrivingly at the Cape resulted unsatisfactorily; and this sufficiently accounts for the general tint of blue so conspicuous in his retrospective sketch of the scene of his mishaps. The particular spot where these occurred was a considerable tract of land (called a farm) in the district of Graaf Reinet, to arrive at which he steamed from Cape Town, where he had landed from England, to Port Elizabeth in Algoa Bay. The dismal aspect of this bay painfully affected him. He "had read some of the glowing descriptions given of this part of the country, by persons whose interest it is to entice over settlers by any means, even the most dishonest, in order to have the benefit of plucking them afterwards. It is true that I had not believed the El Dorado stories so current of this and other colonies, but my expectations had been raised sufficiently high to make the disappointment at the really desolate appearance of the place, perfect." The apparent desolation is accompanied by substantial disadvantages, which Mr Nicholson complacently enumerates. Water is scarce and brackish; there are no vegetables or fruit within twenty miles; hardly forage for a team of oxen; the town is built on sand, of which unceasing clouds are hurled by prevalent strong winds in the face of all comers. No wonder that the new settler, evidently indisposed to be easily pleased, made his escape as quickly as possible from so dreary a neighbourhood. Shipping himself, family, and chattels in an ox-waggon, he joyfully quitted Port Elizabeth on a splendid morning of the African autumn – that is to say, about the end of March or beginning of April, and set out for his property, over a road which he describes as a fair sample of Cape causeways, "nothing more than a series of parallel tracks made by the passage of waggons, from time to time, through the sand and jungle." Finding little to notice on his way, he takes the opportunity of having a fling at the missionaries, whom he describes as doing much harm, although actuated, as he is willing to believe, by the best of intentions. The stations serve as the headquarters of the idlest and most vagabond portion of the coloured population, who have only to affect a Christian disposition to find ready acceptance and refuge. "No sooner is a Hottentot, or other coloured servant, discontented or hopelessly lazy, than off he flies to the nearest station, where he can indulge in the greatest luxury he knows of – that of sleeping either in the sun or shade as his inclination may lead him, with the occasional variation of participating in the singing and praying exercises of the regular inhabitants of the place." If the zealous propagators of Christianity, who thus encourage the natural idleness of the natives, were successful in their attempts at conversion, it might be accepted as some compensation for the temporal evils and inconvenience they aid to inflict on a colony where servants are scarce and bad. But this is far from being the case. Mr Nicholson assures us (and we readily believe him) that it is very rare to find an individual whose moral conduct has been improved by a residence at a missionary station, and that for his part he prefers the downright heathen to the imperfect convert. Few of these coloured Christians have any distinct idea of the creed they profess; when able, which is seldom, to answer questions concerning its first principles, their replies are parrot-like and unintelligent. Against the general character of the missionaries nothing can be said; but they are throwing away time, and their employers are wasting money which might be employed to far greater advantage in England, or in other countries whose inhabitants, equally in want of religious instruction, are more capable of receiving and comprehending it than are the stolid aborigines of the Cape of Good Hope. Mr Nicholson does not dwell upon the subject of missionary labours in Africa, but compresses at the close of a chapter his opinions, which are sound and to the purpose. Mrs Ward says nothing on the matter, and we ourselves are not disposed to dilate upon it, having already often taken occasion to expose the folly of the system that sends preachers and biblemongers to the remotest corners of the earth when such scope for their labours exists at home. Let us return to George Nicholson, his trials and tribulations.