he Hottentots furnished by the Directors of the Dutch
East India Company to Van Riebeck. In a despatch of July, 1800, the
third Duke of Portland, who was then acting as Secretary for the
Colonies, writes:

[Sidenote: Non-interference.]

"Considering the tract of country over which these border
inhabitants are dispersed, the rude and uncultivated state in
which they live, and the wild notions of independence which
prevail among them, I am afraid any attempts to introduce
civilisation and a strict administration of justice will be slow
in their progress, and likely, if not proceeded upon with caution
and management, rather to create a spirit of resistance, or to
occasion them to emigrate still further from the seat of
government, than answer the beneficent views with which they
might be undertaken. In fact, it seems to me the proper system of
policy to observe to them is to interfere as little as possible
in their domestic concerns and interior economy; to consider them
rather as distant communities dependent upon the Government than
as subjects necessarily amenable to the laws and regulations
established within the precincts of Government. Mutual advantages
arising from barter and commerce, and a strict adherence to good
faith and justice in all arrangements with them, joined to
efficient protection and occasional acts of kindness on the part
of the Government, seem likely to be the best means of securing
their attachment."

Who would have thought that this statement of policy, admirable as it is
at first sight, contained in itself the germ of a political heresy of
the first magnitude? Yet so it was. The principle of non-interference,
here for the first time enunciated and subsequently followed with fatal
effect, could not be applied by a nineteenth-century administration to
the case of a seventeenth-century community without its virtually
renouncing the functions of government. Obviously this was not the
intention of the home authority. There remained the difficulty of
knowing when to apply, and when not to apply, the principle; and
directly a specific case arose there was the possibility that, while the
local authority, with a full knowledge of the local conditions, might
think interference necessary, the home authority, without such
knowledge, might take an opposite view.

[Sidenote: Slaghter's Nek.]

A very few