he feels it would be impossible for him to
put away a woman with whom he has lived for so many years.

Whilst polygamy endures Christianity will advance with but small
strides. It seems to me that we are beginning at the wrong end. We must
civilise first and Christianise afterwards. As well try to sow corn
among rocks and look to gather a full crop, as expect the words of
Grace and Divine love to bear fruit in the hearts of a people whose
forefathers have for countless generations been men of blood, whose
prized traditions are one long story of slaughter, and who, if they
are now at peace are, as it were, only gathering strength for a surer
spring. First, the soil must be prepared before the seed is sown.

To do this there is but one way. Abolish native customs and laws,
especially polygamy, and bring our Zulu subjects within the pale of our
own law. Deprive them of their troops of servants in the shape of wives,
and thus force them to betake themselves to honest labour like the rest
of mankind.

There is only one objection in the way of the realisation of this
scheme, which would, doubtless, bring about, in the course of a
generation, a much better state of things, and gather many thousand
converts into the fold of the Church; and that is, the opportunity has,
so far as Natal is concerned, been missed--the time has gone by when it
could have been carried out. To young countries, as to young men, there
come sometimes opportunities of controlling their future destinies
which, if not seized at the moment, pass away for ever, or only to
return after long and troubled years. Natal has had her chance, and it
has gone away from her, though through no fault of her own. If, when the
colony was first settled, the few natives who then lived there had
been forced to conform to the usages of civilised life or to quit its
borders; if refugees had been refused admission save on the same terms,
it would not occupy the very serious position it does at the present
moment.

To understand the situation into which Natal has drifted with reference
to its native inhabitants, it is necessary to premise that that country
has hitherto had practically no control over its own affairs, more
especially as regards native legislation.

In its early days it was a happy, quiet place, a favoured clime, where
the traveller or settler could find good shooting, cheap labour,
and cheap living. No enemy threatened its rest, and the natives were
respec