There are probably few of us who have not some consciousness of this
defect in our own persons; it may be a fault allied to our highest
virtues, but it is a fault, and a serious one as regards our relations
with peoples who come under our rule. We may and do generally sincerely
desire justice; we may have no wish to oppress, but we do not readily
understand wants and conditions distinct from our own. Here and there
great Englishmen have appeared in South African history as elsewhere
(such as Sir William Porter and Sir George Grey) who have been able to
throw themselves sympathetically into the entire life of the people
about, to love them, and so to comprehend their wants and win their
affections. Such men are the burning and shining lights of our Imperial
and Colonial system, but they are not common. Undoubtedly the officials
sent out to rule the Cape in the old days were generally men who
earnestly desired to do their duty; but they did not always understand
the folk they had to rule. They were generally simple soldiers, brave,
fearless and honorable as the English soldier is apt to be, but with
hard military conceptions of government and discipline. Our Dutch
fellow South Africans are a strange folk. Virile, resolute, passionate
with a passion hid far below the surface, they are at once the gentlest
and the most determined of peoples. When you try to coerce them they
are hard as steel encased in iron, but with a large and generous
response to affection and sympathy which perhaps no other European
folk gives. They may easily be deceived once; but never twice. Under
the roughest exterior of the up-country Boer lies a nature strangely
sensitive and conscious of personal dignity; a people who never forgets
a kindness and does