annexation of Natal was
long delayed because it was held that this area ought to form a native
reserve, and fruitless attempts were made to restrict the settlement of
Europeans in this empty and fertile land. An attempt was also made to
set up a series of native areas under British protection, from which
the white settler was excluded. British Kaffraria, Griqualand East and
Griqualand West were examples of this policy, which is still
represented, not unsuccessfully, by the great protected area of
Basutoland. But, on the whole, these experiments in the handling of the
native problem in South Africa did more harm than good. They were
unsuccessful mainly because South Africa was a white man's country,
into which the most vigorous of the native races, those of the Bantu
stock (Kaffirs, Zulus, Matabili, etc.), were more recent immigrants
than the white men themselves. Owing to their warlike character and
rapidly growing numbers they constituted for a long time a very
formidable danger; and neither the missionaries nor the home
authorities sufficiently recognised these facts.

Perhaps the most unhappy result of this friction over the native
question, apart from the alienation of Boer and Briton which it
produced, was the fact that it was the principal cause of the long
delay in establishing self-governing institutions in South Africa. The
home government hesitated to give to the colonists full control over
their own affairs, because it distrusted the use which they were likely
to make of their powers over the natives; even the normal institutions
of all British colonies were not established in Cape Colony till 1854,
and in Natal till 1883. But although in this case the new attitude
towards the backward races led to some unhappy results, the spirit
which inspired it was altogether admirable, and its growing strength
accounts in part for the real degree of success which has been achieved
by British administrators in the government of regions not suited for
the settlement of Europeans in large numbers. Indeed, this spirit has
come to be one of the outstanding features of modern British
imperialism.

It was not only in the treatment of backward races that the
humanitarian spirit made itself felt. It was at work also in the
government of the highly developed civilisations of India, where,
during this period, British power began to be boldly used to put an end
to barbarous or inhumane practices which were supported or tolerated b