John Chinaman on the Rand

In the following pages I have made no reference to the founder of the Christian faith.

There is a particular form of blasphemy current in Great Britain which ascribes to the highest and noblest Christian motives actions which are prompted by the meanest passions of cupidity and self-interest. Any shadow is good enough for the criminal to creep into in the hope of escaping detection; but blasphemy is not too hard a word to express the attitude of those advocates and supporters of Chinese slavery in the Rand who actually creep under the shadow of the Cross itself for moral protection.

With reservations, the Archbishop of Canterbury has blessed the movement, having satisfied himself, with an ease somewhat extraordinary, that it was all above-board and moral. The Bishop of Bristol has commended it. The Rev. T. J. Darragh, Rector of St. Mary's Church, Johannesburg, saw in it nothing but an opportunity to teach the doctrines of Christianity to the heathen. "I am much attracted by the possibility of evangelistic work among those people under very favourable conditions, and I hope to see many of them sent back to their country good practising Christians. It will be a glorious opportunity for the Church."

Almost it would seem that the logical conclusion of this estimable priest was that all the heathen nations of Asia should be packed into Lord Selborne's loose-boxes and carted over to Johannesburg in order that the evangelistic genius of the Rector of St. Mary's might have full scope, and countless souls be added to the fold of Christ, so long as their duties of digging gold for German Jews at a shilling a day were not interfered with. As these advocates and supporters of Chinese labour have convinced themselves that the Ordinance, so far from being opposed to the principles of Christianity, is likely to be of use in spreading the doctrine of love, I realize that it would be hopeless to attempt to prove to them that the importation of Chinese to the Rand finds no support in the doctrines promulgated in the four Gospels.

Indeed, to expect spiritual ideals on the Rand is too ridiculous for words. The man who searches the Bible for a text to suit his line of argument might perhaps find one for the Rand lords from the Old Testament, and preaching from the sentence that "silver was counted as naught in the days of Solomon" might argue that all practices were justifiable to bring about a state of affairs which apparently had the Divine approval. The ideal of the Rand is money. All imperial, social and religious considerations have no weight with the masters of the gold mines. Their object is to get gold, and to get it as cheaply as they can, and with this in view they realize that they must obtain two things—1. Political control of the Transvaal; 2. Slave labour. To attain the first, all Englishmen, with their democratic ideas of liberty and freedom, must be kept out of the country. This first object attained, the introduction of slave labour would be extremely simple.