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Rh clamors of a powerful and avaricious company to annul the treaty of Waitangi, which secured the Maoris in possession of their lands. It appointed successive protectors of the aborigines—incorruptible officials like the late Walter Mantell. It sent out governors whose first duty was to the natives and only their second to the colonists; and the reality of the guardianship is shown by the facts that it led to the recall of one Governor, made a second resign, and got a third so constantly into hot water with his ministers that he too was recalled. Other governments have acted similarly. The wrongs of the Mexicans reached the tender heart of Isabella, who did the little that she could to modify the ferocity of her subjects; Las Casas was appointed protector of the Indians. Certain others have a more dubious record. M. de Varigny claims that merciless suppression and brutal repression are alike repugnant to the French character. Neither was always repugnant. It is barely half a century since Pelissier smoked the Arabs in Algerian caves. "The welfare of my service requires," commanded Louis XIV, "that the number of the Iroquois should be diminished as much as possible"; they were to be shipped for galley slaves. In 1736 the welfare of Louisiana required that the Chickasaws should be reduced, and two years were unsuccessfully given to that end. Severity is still less alien to the German character. In 1892 and 1897 two governors of German East Africa were recalled for applying too literally the avowed maxim of one of them that the lower races were to be governed by "the stick"; and a few months ago a third German administrator was called to account for cruelty to the Africans.

Public opinion in the mother country is usually divided; a single cross-section will show in what ways. "The agnostics don't send missionaries to Cochin China," cries the pulpit; North America was not colonized by the sensualistic school of philosophy, dogmatizes Bancroft. Yet the leaders of these very schools champion the cause of the oppressed. When Governor Eyre and his subordinates were prosecuted in 1866 for having suppressed a negro rebellion in Jamaica with needless cruelty, it was Mill, then at the height of his fame, who instituted the prosecution, and he was backed by Spencer, not yet at the meridian of a career that was to eclipse Mill's, and by Huxley, coiner of the word agnostic. Is it that there is a close connection between a belief in evolution and a fellow-feeling for the lower races from which we sprang? On the same side were the radicals, advocates of political freedom, the philanthropists, the "nonconformist conscience," and the evangelicals, who believe that negroes have souls. The opposite side was led by Carlyle, fresh from Frederick and his peculiar methods; Ruskin, with lance in rest against a new windmill; idolized Tennyson; Kingsley a