s been
imposed upon certain missionaries and others who regard the Divine
command as practical and sensible men should do: "Go ye and teach _all_
nations." All cannot _go_ to the ends of the earth; but all might cease
to hinder by the dead weight of their indifference, and their contempt
of all men of colour. Dr. Livingstone rebuked the Boers for
contemptuously calling all coloured men Kaffirs, to whatever race they
belonged. Englishmen deserve still more such a rebuke for their habit of
including all the inhabitants of India, East and West, and of Africa,
who have not European complexions, under the contemptuous title of
"niggers." Race prejudice is a poison which will have to be cast out if
the world is ever to be Christianized, and if Great Britain is to
maintain the high and responsible place among the nations which has been
given to her.

"It maybe that the Kaffir is sometimes cruel," says one who has seen and
known him,--"he certainly requires supervision. But he was bred in
cruelty and reared in oppression--the child of injustice and hate. As
the springbok is to the lion, as the locust is to the hen, so is the
Kaffir to the Boer; a subject of plunder and leaven of greed. But the
Kaffir is capable of courage and also of the most enduring affection. He
has been known to risk his life for the welfare of his master's family.
He has worked without hope of reward. He has laboured in the expectation
of pain. He has toiled in the snare of the fowler. Yet shy a brickbat at
him!--for he is only a Kaffir! "However much the Native may excel in
certain qualities of the heart, still, until purged of the poison of
racial contempt, that will be the expression of the practical conclusion
of the white man regarding him; "Shy a brickbat at him. He is only a
nigger."

A merely theoretical acknowledgment of the vital nature of this
question, of the future of the Native races and of Missionary work will
not suffice. The Father of the great human family demands more than
this.

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen?
To loose the bands of wickedness,
To undo the heavy burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that ye break every yoke?"

(ISAIAH lviii. 6.)

I have spoken, in this little book, as an Abolitionist,--being a member
of the "International Federation for the Abolition of the State
regulation of vice." But I beg my readers to understand that I have here
spoken for myself