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hypothetical and, as they thought, quite unrealisable, conditions, not what actually was happening, or would be at all likely to happen, in any society of which they had cognisance. The classical' economics, which professes only to concern itself with tendencies and generalities, could be as unmoral and as doctrinaire as it pleased. It dealt with imaginary capitalists paying fictitious wages to unreal workmen ; with shadowy landlords drawing impossible rents from unsubstantial acres tilled by visionary tenants; with a kingdom of Cockayne, peopled by moral monsters. Eye hath not seen the creatures who inhabit the 'orthodox' economists' fairy-land-the Consumer who is all stomach, the Labourer who is nothing but a hand and a pair of seven-leagued boots (wherewith he may 'transfer' himself from China to Peru even as Capital calls him), and the rest. They are phantasms of the speculative brain-mere types and symbols and algebraical x's and y's to do economic sums with, as indeed the more candid of their creators confess. Professor Walker, the great (and far from 'orthodox') American economist, has pointed out that competition, as the regulator of all production and exchange, will only work effectively if it is 'perfect ;' and perfect competition means not only that there must be no interference with wages, prices, hours of labour, and the like by Government, but also that in buying and selling no question of sentiment, patriotism, national policy, friendship, custom, vanity, or tradition should arise. But that is only to say that 'perfect competition' cannot possibly exist anywhere but in the green Utopia of the Economic Cloudland; it is too perfect for this grey imperfect earth. Now all this dealing in abstractions and hypotheses would not matter if it were confined to the professors, who, of course, know what the limitations of their science are. But a variety of circumstances caused it to be taken up by a large number of Englishmen without any limitations at all. Good men themselves, they pushed the competitive ideal, derived from the works of their theorists, to dangerous and immoral lengths. Fortunately for society, the movement had hardly set fairly in before the reaction came, and the larger part of our recent legislation has been shaped in direct antagonism to the principle of laisser-faire. Free-trade is only one application of that principle, and it took the firmest hold because it happened to be particularly well suited to the circumstances of a country, which only wanted to get its raw materials cheap in order that it might sell its manufactured goods where it pleased, and could ask its own price for them. Buying cheap and selling dear is uncommonly good policy if you are lucky enough to have almost a monopoly of a great many articles, which everybody must purchase from you because they cannot get them elsewhere. But Free-trade is no more sacred than any other part of the political creed to which it owes its origin; and if it is to maintain itself, it must show clearly that it is justified by actual results at the present time. It is not to the purpose to prove that it suited us in the

'fifties and 'forties; still less to quote 'Political Economy' against it, as some speakers and writers do not very honestly, since, as well-informed persons, they must know that the authorities they refer to, though they may impose on the crowd, are not now accepted unquestioningly in the schools. They are, of course, aware that there is no longer an orthodoxy in political economy; and being, as they must be, familiar with the works of Cairnes, Cliffe Leslie, Cunningham, Walker, Jevons, and Marshall, if not with those of Le Play and Roscher, they should not treat the Smithian political economy as if it were an accepted and unshaken scientific system, instead of a set of rules, generalisations, and personal opinions, some of which are still considered valuable, while others are absolutely discredited. Nothing has done more to accelerate the decline of Cobdenism among the sort of educated people who were once rather pleased to be considered 'Academic Radicals' than the extraordinary refusal of its leaders to recognise the results of modern economic thought. The world has not stood still since John Mill published his Principles of Political Economy, or even since the late Lord Sherbrooke completed the work of Peel' by his entirely unnecessary and superfluous abolition of the shilling metage duty on corn. It is possible that if Cobden were alive to-day, and face to face with the conditions of latter-day industrialism and international competition, he might be a Cobdenite no longer. It is certain that so acute an explorer of the currents of public opinion would have perceived that such projects as that of an Imperial Customs Union would have to be dealt with on their merits, political and social, as well as financial. And he would have understood that they could not be disposed of by being called 'veiled Protectionism,' or by an appeal to an economic pontificate that has lost its sanctity.

SIDNEY LOW.

1896

THE GOD WHO PROMISED VICTORY TO

THE MATABELE

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In the despatches daily reaching us from the scene of the native rebellion in Rhodesia, frequent mention is made of Mlimo,' the mysterious and evidently influential being who has ordered the Matabele to rise against the white man, and promised them victory. Any information about this Mlimo and the religious beliefs of the Matabele will probably be acceptable to the British public at the present juncture; I shall, therefore, in this article attempt to impart some facts upon the subject which I happen to have learned, somewhat in the order in which the knowledge came to me, and it will be seen that we have to do with a phase of one of the oldest and most widely spread faiths in the world-something worth our study, both from a political point of view and from that of the history and growth of human religious thought.

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On the 27th of March, 1895, I was engaged in surveying that part of Matabeleland where the murdering of white men, women, and children began nearly a year afterwards. I was encamped at the foot of the peaked mountain called Ghoko,' between Gwelo and Belingwe. I had a trigonometrical station on the peak, and close by my camp was the kraal of Legulube ('the pig'), who has since joined the rebellion. He was one of the Amalozi tribe, but had become quite Matabele, and had been promoted to be an induna of Lobengula's. I engaged lads from the kraal to carry my instruments up to the top of the peak. In a wood near the summit I happened to catch a glimpse, between the trees, of a structure which, at first, I took to be one of the Zimbabwe-like ruins with which the country abounds. I was reading Bent, and on the look-out for such ruins, but presently I perceived that it was a newly-built hut of a very curious construction. Sitting down to rest near the very top of the peak, I pointed down at the hut and asked one of the lads: 'What is that peculiar-looking house?' He answered gravely, 'It is the House of God' (Mlimo). Now, in order to elicit truth from a native it is always well to avoid putting a leading question, so I went on asking gently, as if ignorant and wishing for information: 'Who is Molimo?' He replied earnestly and ingenuously: 'Don't you know? Molimo made the whole earth-these trees-everything.'

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A. We, all of us. He sent his messenger to us all, the people round Ghoko, telling us to build the house there, and we did so, under the direction of the messenger.'

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A. His name is Lusèlé Simpindi; he is down there at that kraal.'

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A. He is at Matojeni, in a rock. No man has seen him at any time, but he speaks to people in all languages, to each in his own tongue. If you spoke to him, he would answer you too in your own language.'

Q. What is the use of making him a house here if he lives at Matojeni ?'

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A. Because he is very kind to people who serve him, so we built his house as he ordered us to do, and the women and girls come up every day to keep it in order, according to his commands.'

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Q. How does Molimo show his kindness?'

A. 'He makes one happy and fortunate in many ways, and sometimes, to one who has served him well, he gives a wife.'

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Q. Where does he get the wife from to give to the man?'

A. Parents take their little girls by the hand and lead them to Molimo, and call out: 'God, here is our child; we come to give her to you,' and God sends his messengers, and they take the little girl and bring her up till she is given in marriage.'

I went down later to look at the hut, and noticed that there was quite a footpath already worn by the steps of the women and girls who came up daily to keep it in order. It was about twelve feet in diameter, and formed by planting tall boughs upright in a circle in the ground and bending them towards and over each other in the centre, so as to form a dome, which was thatched, Zulu-fashion, from the top to rather more than half-way to the ground, with slightly projecting eaves. Below the eaves the walls were converted into a sort of open wicker-work by surrounding them with rings of twisted grass, about two inches thick, tied by means of thin bark to the uprights at intervals of about two inches. In front was an arched doorway some three feet high, and inside, with a similar doorway, was a circular inner chamber formed of perpendicular sticks plastered over with mud. This chamber was perfectly dark inside, while the outer space round it was lighted through the open-work wall. Two calabashes of water stood at each side of the doorway in the outer compartment, and one inside the inner door, and the floor had been freshly smeared.' Near the hut stood a tall tree, and against its trunk were placed three sticks four feet high and forked at the top, the branches which forked having been cut off to about four inches in length. Round the fork at the top of the sticks were some narrow strips of bark entwined snake-wise, the effect reminding one

forcibly of the 'caduceus' of Mercury in the old representations, with which, indeed, as I shall show, they are apparently absolutely identical.

My servant Jim,' a colonial-born Pondo, who had accompanied the pioneers in their first expedition, as well as Jameson's column throughout the war, told me then that he first heard of the Molimo of the country when travelling with Mashona or Makalanga natives near Victoria. A bright meteor had shot from west to east across the sky, and a native at once called out: There goes Molimo, home to Matojeni.' On inquiring who 'Molimo' was, Jim learned that he was the god of the natives of those regions, who inhabited them before the invasion and conquests of the Swazi and Matabele. The last ruling sovereign, or 'Mambo,' of these people was of the priestly tribe of the Amalozi, still looked up to by the others with veneration. His seat of government was at the great ruins near the source of the Shangani (where cannon were discovered and a quantity of bullion, &c., dug up by Messrs. Burnham and Ingram). Matojeni, where the oracle of Molimo is heard, is situated about twenty-five miles south-east of Bulawayo, and consists of a cavern in rock, like so many of the ancient oracles. Umsilikaze made use of this oracle and propitiated the god of the country he had conquered by presents. These were always expected to be black in colour, whether cattle, sheep, goats, or blankets. Lobengula, the son of Umsilikazi, also made use of Molimo and sent his sister there to learn her fate, which he duly accomplished by strangling her. The worship of Molimo among the Matabele, indeed, appears only in its most evil form, resulting in a political and cruel priestcraft.

The morning after my ascent of the peak of Ghoko, Legulube came to visit me. After chatting with him for some time and expressing the interest I had felt in hearing about the House of Molimo, I said that I should like to see the man who had brought the message from God. from God. He was evidently disturbed by my request, and said there were four messengers, but they had all gone with messages to Chilimanzi and the other chiefs. I could extract nothing further from him about Molimo, and my having learned as much as I had the day before seemed owing to the mere chance of an habitually inquisitive man having fallen in with an uncommonly ingenuous Kaffir lad, and his having caught sight of a queer-looking hut which might just as probably have escaped his notice.

At another time my son saw three such sticks as I have described placed against the trunk of a tree near a Zimbabwe-like ruin, and asked the natives what they were for. He was told that they were used to pray for rain with. One day a very old and jolly Amalozi man showed me another such ruin near my line of route to the west of Ghoko. He called these ruins 'Arupanga.' Walking round the ruin I came to a tall tree, and leaning against its trunk I saw three

VOL. XL-No. 234

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