and the Delegates know our power.
It is our will that they doubt. If I could not persuade my fellow
countrymen that they meant to show that they would never grant such
demands as these, I would rather do--what I should otherwise oppose with
all my might,--withdraw from South Africa altogether. I am not so proud
of our extended Empire as to wish to preserve it at the cost of England
refusing to discharge her duties. If we have obligations we must meet
them, and if we have duties we must fulfil them; and I have confidence
in the English people that first or last they will make our Government
fulfil its obligations. But there is much difference between first and
last; last is much more difficult than first, and more costly than
first. The cost increases with more than geometrical progression. There
are people who say, (but the British nation will not say it;) 'leave us
alone, let these Colonists and Boers and Natives whom we are tired of,
fight it out as best they can; let us declare by our deeds, or rather by
our non deeds that we will not keep our promise nor fulfil our duty.'
Such a course as that would be as extravagantly costly as it would be
shamefully wrong. This _laissez faire_ policy tends to make things go
from bad to worse until at last by a great and most costly effort, and
perhaps by a really bloody and destructive war, we shall be obliged to
do in the end at a greater cost, and in a worse way, that which we could
do now. It is not impossible to do it now. A gentleman in the meeting
said it was a question of fighting. I do not believe this; but though
born a Quaker, I must admit that if there be no other way by which we
can protect our allies and prevent the ungrateful desertion of those who
helped us in the time of need, than by the exercise of force, I say
force must be exercised."

Readers will remark how extraordinarily prophetic are these words of Mr.
Forster, spoken in 1883.

The "venerable and beloved Lord Shaftesbury," as Mr. Mackenzie calls
him, spoke as follows:--

"This morning has been put into my hands the reply of the Transvaal
delegates to the Aborigines Protection Society. I read it with a certain
amount of astonishment and of comfort too,--of astonishment that men
should be found possessing such a depth of Christianity, such sentiments
of religion, such love for veracity, and such regard for the human race
as to put on record and to sign with their own hands such a denial of
the atrocities