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Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: No, Sir; I do not propose to publish the whole of the evidence which necessarily contains a great deal of repetition, but the Blue Book will contain a summary of evidence.

The Rhodesian Mative Reserves.

A GRAVE MENACE.

THE Committee of the Society has been engaged for three years in what will probably become its most gigantic effort since the days of the abolition of legalized slavery. It is unfortunate that it is not yet permissible to disclose the wide ramifications of the Rhodesian Case to the members of the Society and the public generally, but when a full disclosure of the Committee's work can be made it will be seen that infinitely more than Rhodesia and the rights of the Matabili are at stake.

The Committee is now confronted with a proposal to take from the native reserves of Rhodesia over 6,000,000 acres in exchange for an addition to them of 5,000,000 acres of land, involving a net curtailment of 1,000,000 acres. Sir Starr Jameson (“ Dr. Jim ") announcing to the Shareholders this recommendation of a Commission, emphasized that "this is very satisfactory"; however satisfactory it may be to the Shareholders, it is most unfortunate for the Mashonas and Matabili. But the gravity of the proposal goes much deeper than this; the titles to the whole of the land of Rhodesia (75,000,000 acres), including the native reserves, have been referred to the Judicial Committee of His Majesty's Privy Council. The natives, through the Society, are one of the parties conditionally represented; the issues raised include the ownership of the land, problems of sovereignty, British constitutional practice, the history of the Chartered Company and its concessions and wars. All these problems of highest importance to the British Commonwealth, and a host of subsidiary questions, are involved; yet this is the movement proposed whilst the case is still sub judice, to cut down the native reserves, the very title to which is disputed.

The Late Bishop Johnson.

BISHOP JAMES JOHNSON, who died on May 18 last at Bonny, was born of Yoruba parents in Sierra Leone about 1838, and his long life was one of strenuous devotion to the highest interests of his countrymen. He was educated at the C.M.S. Grammar School in Freetown and Fourah Bay College, and was ordained to the Anglican ministry in 1863, when he took up work first in Sierra Leone at Freetown for many years, and afterwards at Lagos, to which he was invited as pastor of a self-supporting native church. Later on he went to Abeokuta as superintendent of the Yoruba Mission, where he is said to have laboured with marked results, but his vigorous protests against slavery and polygamy led to nothing less than

persecution, and it is said that at one time he was obliged, owing to the boycott of his enemies, to fetch his own water and cook his own food. He was filled with missionary zeal, especially for the evangelization of the Ijebu tribe to which he belonged, and only after fourteen years succeeded in persuading the native chief of Benin to allow the presence of a missionary. It is said, however, that to-day there are over 7000 Christian converts in the Ijebu country. In 1880 Mr. Johnson was again at Lagos and served on the Legislative Council there for some years. In 1900 he was consecrated as Assistant Bishop of Western Equatorial Africa under Bishop Tugwell, and had the Niger Delta pastorate assigned to him as his special sphere. In 1913 ill health kept him at Sierra Leone for about two years, after which he returned once more to Lagos, where he was instrumental in reorganizing the Nigerian Auxiliary of our Society with success.

On one of his visits to England, in 1908, Bishop Johnson took part in a Conference of the Anti-Slavery Society on Portuguese Slave labour, when he spoke of himself as a child of African slaves liberated by British philanthropy. He then accepted the position of Corresponding Member of the Society.

His life was marked by devotion to duty and a keen desire for native interests. We may recall the part which he took in regard to the West African Native Land question about which he wrote to our Society in 1912, urging the rights of the people to the ownership of the soil. It will be remembered that a deputation visited this country on the subject in 1913.

The Committee at its meeting in July passed a resolution of condolence with Bishop Johnson's family and with the Auxiliary, of which he was President.

Migration of Megro Labour in America

THE movement of negro labour from the Southern States since the War, to which we referred in a recent issue, still goes on on a large scale notwithstanding the efforts of the South to prevent it both by persuasion and by legislation. Various reasons are assigned, some saying that economic conditions are the sole cause and that the relations between the black and white races were never better. In other quarters, however, it is recognized that the attitude of the South to the negro has not a little to do with the migration. An Atlanta newspaper, the Independent, says that the time is fast approaching when the South must arrive at the truth and confess it with reference to the black folk. Another Atlanta paper states that inadequate school facilities and a lack of justice to the negro in the administration of the law is largely responsible for the unrest and the movement north and east, and that it is in the hands of the white men to stop the exodus. Georgia, says this newspaper, and other Southern States are undoubtedly behind in the matter of

negro education; the worst crimes committed by negroes are those of the illiterate. "It is not only a question of duty to the negro race," we read in another Southern paper, "but of duty to the whites that there should be an improvement of a material sort in the system of education provided for them."

A New Jersey paper declares that the South must understand the desire of enfranchised men for the right to be free men with a voice in the conduct of their own affairs. In spite of "scattered manifestations of the spirit of helpfulness that display real progress," the South does not offer the negro a man's place in his town or State; in order to hold the negro the South must offer as much to his manhood as the North. This is confirmed by a Special Correspondent of the Manchester Guardian lately in America, who

wrote:

Southern prejudice against recognizing the humanity of the negro has, unfortunately, been unconquerable by reason or philanthropy; it is now yielding to a force which no community can withstand-economic necessity."

The hope is that when once an improved order has been introduced into the Southern States and is found to work well, the old state of things will be discarded, forces having been set in motion which will prove to be of far-reaching benefit to the negro inhabitants.

The shameful massacre of negro labourers as a result of a racial outbreak in Illinois in July arose from resentment against the coloured men brought in as strike-breakers, and shows that anti-negro animus is not confined to the Southern States. It is said in one report that the casualties in this mob-riot reached 100 negroes killed and 500 injured, while there was a large destruction of property.

New Member of Committee.

WE are glad to announce that Mr. J. H. OLDHAM, Secretary of the Edinburgh Conference Continuation Committee and Editor of the International Review of Missions, has joined the Society's Committee, to which he was duly elected at the August meeting.

Death of the Rev. Dr. baigb.

It is little more than a year ago that the Rev. HENRY HAIGH, D.D., the wellknown Secretary of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, joined our Committee, and its members had looked confidently forward to receiving much valuable help from one so able and sympathetic with native interests as Dr. Haigh was known to be. But ill-health and then absence from England on missionary work intervened, and the sad news came in July of Dr. Haigh's sudden death in China.

The second deputation, which was received by Mr. Hewins on January 16, was introduced by Sir Victor Buxton, the President of the Society.

Besides several members of the Committee, some of the signatories to the memorial attended, including the Bishop of Lincoln, Professor Gilbert Murray, Rev. Dr. Scott Lidgett, Rev. Dr. Meyer and Rev. R. C. Gillie representing the Free Churches, Sir John Rolleston, and the Hon. Eric Collier.

Sir Victor Buxton assured Mr. Hewins that they had no desire to embarrass the Government, believing that an inquiry into what had taken place after the riots would lead to renewed confidence on the part of the people of Ceylon. The Society did not want punishment of officials, but justice for the Sinhalese.

Mr. Leonard Woolf referred to the importance of regaining the confidence of the people of Ceylon by a searching inquiry.

Messrs. Buxton and Harris, the Secretaries of the Society, spoke on the widespread nature of the irregularities, shootings, floggings, illegal imprisonments and exactions. The Commission into ten cases had revealed deplorable facts which had been strongly stigmatized by the Governor, and a great many must have taken place over the wide areas concerned in a very large number of cases. The Society could not rest satisfied with the Governor's limited inquiries.

After a few words from the Bishop of Lincoln and Dr. Scott Lidgett, Mr. Hewins in replying gave no hope of an inquiry being granted. It would, he said, cast a slur upon the Governor, who had already investigated all the cases brought before him, and would, he insisted, be impossible to carry out at this date. The utmost he could promise would be to examine into any specific cases which were laid before him.

Professor Gilbert Murray, who expressed thanks to Mr. Hewins for receiving the deputation, dwelt upon the deplorable effect which the knowledge of what had taken place in Ceylon under martial law had had upon neutral countries. Why could not the Government publish the inquiries made into cases in which we were told justice had been done?

The result of the deputation was felt by all to be disappointing, and the word "reparation" was not even mentioned by Mr. Hewins.

We are taking steps to place a number of specific cases with full particulars before the Colonial Office in response to Mr. Hewins's offer.

Portuguese Slave Labour.

ALTHOUGH the Foreign Office has not sent any reply to the Society's memorial of May last, on the subject of the last White Paper, we have learnt that a copy was sent to Mr. Hall Hall, the British Consul-General, for his com

criticisms "read now very like prophecy." Mr. Fletcher holds sound views on the vital importance of treating the natives properly,-native labour, land tenure and customs being, he says, each a problem in itself, and on the value of missionary work. Among the great men of British nationality who have done much to reconcile the spirit or policy of European enterprise in exploration and colonization with that of earnest regard for native rights in the Pacific, Mr. Fletcher names nine notable administrators and missionaries, of whom Sir William MacGregor now is the only survivor, as Dr. George Brown has died since this book was published. Of Dr. Brown's great knowledge of the Pacific, its problems and its peoples, the book has much to tell us, and Mr. W. M. Hughes, in his "Foreword," assures us that the prominence given to him is deserved. He was a "living book on the South Seas," and did a splendid work as pioneer and missionary, while many examples are given of his wonderful hold over the wild natives of Samoa, Fiji and New Guinea; the secret of this was that he always fulfilled his promises to the letter and never uttered a threat that he was not prepared to carry out. Dr. Brown may truly be regarded as an “Empire builder” in the best sense, and we are reminded that it was he who, with James Chalmers, helped to alter R. L. Stevenson's ideas of the missionary in the Pacific.

An interesting chapter is devoted to the wise and sympathetic administration of Sir William MacGregor, in New Guinea and Fiji, who, as Lord Bryce well says in his Preface, "has been a model of what a Colonial Governor should be."

Other important questions dealt with are those of native land tenure and labour. Except in Samoa, the communal system of land holding has prevailed in the Pacific, and Great Britain has recognized and preserved native rights; Germany, on the contrary, has taken as much of the natives' land as she wanted. Some account is given, though not a very clear one, of land difficulties in Fiji and the missionaries' position in regard to them, while Mr. Fletcher also discusses labour problems, with reference to the Kanaka traffic, Indian coolie labour, etc., and reminds us that they urgently demand settlement. How is work to be got out of the native, often indolent by nature, for the white man who cannot do without him? The German frankly enforces labour and treats the native as a chattel, but the answer of our author's great administrators is quite different.

We commend this book as a valuable discussion of questions on which not much is generally known, but which "well deserve," as Lord Bryce remarks in his Preface, to be dealt with" and "need much wisdom for their solution."

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