Jer. xxii. v 13.—­“Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work.”

Mal. iii. v 5.—­“And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against ... those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.”

The following is from the New Testament, but it might have come under the notice of Boer theologians and Law makers:—­

The epistle of St. James v. v 4.—­“Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.”

Verse 3.—­“Your gold and your silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you.”

Jer. xxxv. v 17.—­“Because ye have not proclaimed Liberty every man to his neighbour, behold I proclaim Liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the Sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine.”

I am aware that there will be voices raised at once in application to certain English people of the very commands here cited; and justly so, so far as that application is made to individuals or groups of persons who have transgressed not only Biblical Law but the Law of our Land in their dealings with native races; and the warning conveyed to us in such recriminations must not and, I believe, will not be unheeded.

The following occurs in a number of the “Ethical World,” published early in the present year:—­“We know that capitalists, left to themselves, would mercilessly exploit the labour of the coloured man.  That is precisely the reason why they should not be left to themselves, but should be under the control of the British Empire.  It is a reason why Crown colonies should supersede Chartered Companies; it is a reason for much that is often called ‘shallow Imperialism.’  If the present war had been staved off, and if, by mere lapse of time and increase of numbers without British intervention, the Outlanders had come to be the masters of the South African Republic, they might have established a system of independent government quite as bad as that now in existence, though not hardened against reform by the same archaic traditions.”

To my mind some of the published utterances of the Originator and members of the “Chartered Company” are not such as to inspire confidence in those who desire to see the essential principles of British Law and Government paramount wherever Great Britain has sway.  There is the old contemptuous manner of speaking of the natives; and we have heard an expression of a desire to “eliminate the Imperial Factor.”