Imperialism in South Africa

1>T IMPERIALISM

1881

SOUTH AFRICA

M9~HRLF

$B 303 ?sb

J. EWING EITCHIE,

Author of " The Night Side of London," "Days and Nights in London,
" On the Track of the Pilgrim Fathers" "British Senators," Sfc.

SECOND EDITION, REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ENLARGED.

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H0tttf0Tt

CO JAMES CLAEKE , CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET.

£

1881.

Price One Shilling.

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND

MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

SI

CONTENTS.

Rr
lei i

IAP. PAGE

I. — Introduction ... .4

II. — The Transvaal and the Boers .... . 17

III. — Our Kaffir Wars 43

IV. — A. Plea for the Kaffir ......... 52

A 2

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.

The following papers were written before in England we
had begun to think much about the Boers, when we were
preparing to crush Cetewayo and his people, and when the
general opinion appeared to be that it was a great and
blessed work to promote Christianity and civilisation by
shooting down the uncivilised and heathen Kaffirs — that is,
such as our traders bad not killed off with Cape smoke, the
most infamous liquor under the sun. We succeeded. We
crushed the Zulus, and, flushed with glory — that peculiar
glory which results from a strong man knocking down a
weak one — our gallant troops returned home, leaving behind
them desolation and death. The bill of costs was rather
heavy, but that is paid, not by the men who make the wars,
nor by the men who are so ready to fight in them,
but chiefly by poor writers like myself, farmers ruined by
bad weather and American competition, small shopkeepers,
clerks with limited incomes and unlimited families, country
parsons who find it exceedingly difficult to bring up their
children in the way of life in which Providence has been
pleased to place them, widows who have known better days,
and that enormous section of the middle class who in these
happy times find themselves being ground to dust like wheat
in a flour-mill, between the British artizan on one side and
the great capitalist on the other, and who cling to what they
call respectability as passionately as any ancient spinster to
the love souvenirs of a gay and giddy youth. It is upon
these and such as these falls the burden of a glory of which
they know nothing but the cost. Of course I pleaded in vain.
The public opinion of the colonists in South Africa was in

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favour of war, as it always is ; war to give them more land,

their sorest need, seeing that every acre of the country is

already in the hands of large proprietors ; and Sir Bartle

Frere was known to be a godly man. Even I have heard

him make speeches at Exeter Hall.

Sir Bartle Erere was recalled, but the lust of Imperialism

to which he had pandered, and of which he was such an

admirable representative, remained. The colonists, eager

for the fray, commenced the Basuto war, and at length our

own authorities in the Transvaal forced matters to such a

pass that the Boers had to rise against British injustice and

British rapacity. Like their grand old fathers, who saved

Holland from a Spain quite as Christian and almost as

merciful as the England of to-day, and who in doing so

saved Protestant England, shortly to build up across the

Atlantic the greatest Bepublic the world has ever seen —

these men, their descendants, ask themselves, as all true

men do —

" How can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods ? "

A scornful laugh was the reply of England to their mild
protest. Who were the Boers, and how could they fight ?
asked the gentlemen of the Press, and all sections of what
is called society. Well, the Boers have pretty well
answered that question. At Laing's Nek and at Majuba
Hill they have shown us what they can do. Better still,
they have shown us what they are by their kindness to our
wounded on the field of battle. The question comes, What
are we to do ? If the Transvaal was a great country like
America, the answer would be, Submit the matter to arbi-
tration ; and if we did we should hear much in that stately
and sonorous language, of which Mr. Gladstone is such a
master, of the awful mischief that would have been occa-
sioned by a war between England and America, and the
newspapers, especially the Nonconformist section, would
have eulogised him as the Saviour of his country. But,
alas ! the Boers are few. We have some thirteen thousand of
our finest soldiers armed in the costliest and most effective

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manner, ready and eager to fight, and thus, as we are in
the proportion of two to one, the cry is still, Forward, to
reap a glorious revenge ! It is too late, we are told,
now to negotiate. It is too late now to listen to the
voice of reason. It is too late now to quit ourselves like
men. Our savage instincts are to be gratified at what-
ever cost. The Boers, with their wives and little ones, are
to be shot down. Their pleasant farms are to be laid
waste ; their flocks are to be stolen, and their fields to be
left untilled. The British flag, which has braved a thou-
sand years the battle and the breeze, will float proudly as
of yore, and under it the British gin dealer will open his
store, and sit happy and serene. The Boers, such as sur-
vive the slaughter, will once more have " trekked " out into
the desert. Their kindred in the Orange Free State, at the
Cape, or in Natal, will be more incensed against us than
ever, the difficulties of our rule will have been immensely
increased, and in the face of Europe and at the Bar of
Justice we shall stand condemned. How much better
would it be to retrace our steps, to admit that we have
been wrong from the first. Why cannot we do so ? We
applaud the criminal who gives up crime, the thief
who takes to honesty. In heaven, we are told, there is
joy over one sinner that repenteth, but now when mercy
pleads and justice commands our reply is, As we have
begun so we must continue to the bitter end. To do
right now is to confess our fault. If we had beaten the
Boers we might have listened to them, as they came on
bended knees to sue for peace. Now that they have beaten
us we cannot sheathe the sword till we have shown them
that England is as unmerciful as she is unjust.

Alas ! the Boers have few friends. They are simply
Republican farmers, anxious mainly to increase their
flocks, and to live on the soil they and their fathers have
cultivated and reclaimed. In the high places of the earth
they are little thought of, and their representatives are not
to be met with in European Courts. Lords and ladies
turn up their nose at their simple habits, condemn their want
of style, and imply that amongst them there is but a limited

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use of soap and water. Bishops and archbishops have
enough to do with their troublesome clergy, to exclaim
against a policy which has driven the Bible-reading Boer
to take up arms ; nor would they, if they could, as the army
and the navy and the Church are but part and parcel of a
system which our ruling classes consider as the glory of the
land, and the wonder of surrounding nations. But why are
the Dissenting ministers dumb ? — the men who may be
said to be the leaders of that section of modern England
which helped to put down slavery ; to abolish the Corn
Laws ; to promote Free Trade, and to which the Liberal
Party owes it that it is now at length revelling in place and
power? Have they no word of protest now that we are
preparing for a final massacre ? In these days of culture
and refinement have they forgot the manly virtues of their
fathers, who faced exile and imprisonment and poverty
and death? I am told that they preach a broader
Gospel. Is it that in their new Gospel they learn that
it is Philistine to stand up for the oppressed ? To lift up
a voice on behalf of the weak? If so, we need not wonder
when they complain that they cannot get the working man
to come and hear them preach. He has many faults, I
own ; nor do I regard him with a very reverent eye ; but
there is this to be said of him, and that is much — that he
has no faith in shams ; that he is the friend of an oppressed
people, and that he likes to see fair play. If the question
were to be settled by him, the soil of the Transvaal would
be yet free of the blood of the slain. The men who met at
the Memorial Hall the other day to bid England stay her
hand were working men. The crowd who clustered round
General Boberts, as he left to shoot down the Boers, last
week, were solely the Upper Ten. In the long run, the
working man is a better judge of what is right in politics
than his master. Mr. Gladstone, at any rate, admits that
he is a man and a brother.

With a heavy heart and almost in despair, I appeal to
the public that this wickedness may be removed from our
shoulders. If Mr. Gladstone had been in Opposition how
eloquently he would have pleaded for the independence of

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the Transvaal. If Mr. Bright had been ont of office how
the world would have re-echoed with his invective. Even
Mr. Courtney has not a word to say. The oracles are
dumb.

* Apollo from his shrme
Can no more divine
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving."

Nevertheless, the truth will out, and from the distant
Transvaal the cry echoes across the waves with redoubled
and redoubling force. What can, for in stance, be more
touching than the letter of Field Cornet Pretorious to
Colonel Lanyon in December, 1880, on the subject of pro-
bable hostilities. Cornet Pretorious has a claim to be listened
to, as he had at times incurred the displeasure of the Boers
by establishing a corps of Transvaal Volunteers in the ser-
vice of the Government. " I deem it my earnest duty," he
writes to the Colonel, " to inform you, and at the same time
to warn you against dreadful and fatal consequences which
will rest on my shoulders and yours. I say, again, I have
deceived myself, and I hope further your Excellency to
think that the burghers, the protesting people, do not mean,
or take to heart, their cause, aye, their just cause. I can
tell you that if the Government intends not otherwise than
has been hitherto made known to me, that we then will
have to bear heavy and sad consequences. Believe me,
your Excellency, I see torrents of blood and tears. Blood
from the veins of the men, and bitter tears from the eyes of
the women and children. The women and children will
lament the loss of their husbands and fathers ; they will
weep, the children for bread, the mothers because they can-
not give the bread, and, finally, they will weep because they
have become foreigners in their own land. My hope and
wish is that God will say to England : Until here, and no
farther ! But, Sir, think and consider that one innocent
drop of blood will cry vengeance over the leader. Aye, you
excuse yourself, and you accuse me and others that we shall
be the cause of sad consequences. I will accuse you of
having shed blood unjustly, aye, I feel my case so just that
I almost venture to say that the blood of the men, whether

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of the burghers or of the soldiers, will summon those that
have brought about and maintained the annexation before
the Throne of Judgment hereafter of the Judge of all. Or
do we not dread the Day of Judgment ! I say : I dread, for
I believe in the Supreme Being. Sir, I am born under fire
in Natal when my father fought the English along with
the Boers ; hence, when I got my sense, I was a free Be-
publican. The whole history of this country is known to
me, and, therefore, I venture to say that we have been
wronged on the 12th April, 1877. England has been
deceived by those who wrought the annexation, and we have
been deceived and misled by our head and our headmen*
because we have obeyed them to remain quiet. We have
thought that England's people would withdraw the arbitrary
annexation."

In spite of its uncouth English, what depth of feeling
there is in this brave Boer's letter, and how guilty are we,
the English people. I need not potter over Blue Books.
I need not weary the reader with official despatches. It
is sheer waste of time to study the sophistries of Sir
Bartle Frere. I need not quote even Mr. Gladstone's
condemnation of Lord Beaconsfield's Government for the
annexation of the Transvaal. We all know that the Boers
were annexed against their leave ; that they have appealed
to the English Cabinet, and to an English Queen in vain
for their rights ; and that if ever there was a righteous war
it is that in which the Boers are now engaged.

Let me take ground more in accordance with the trading
instincts of the community. When we talk about morality
and right, we are apt to get into a fog, and to use words
which have no meaning ; but pounds, shillings, and pence
are things we can all understand. When men talk about
their principles it is well to suspect, and ask them
what they mean ; but figures are clear. It appears
from the recently-issued report of the Comptroller and
Auditor-General: — "The revenue of the Transvaal in 1879
was £93,408, and the expenditure £177,595 ; " that is to
say, the income was not much more than half the outlay.
In the same year the excess of liabilities over assets is,

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in round numbers, s£420,000. On financial grounds, at
least, the Transvaal, as the Pall Mall Gazette remarks,
does not seem to be worth the enormous outlay which its
conquest will cost at once, and its retention will cost in
perpetuity.

Again, there is another consideration. An American
writer — Mr. Sticknay — arguing on behalf of economical
Governments, says that the time is coming when a million
of extra taxation may so cripple the American producer
that he may be undersold in the markets of the world. If in
America, with its energetic population, and its undeveloped
resources, such a plea may be urged, how much stronger
must it be in our case ? We are a trading people, and to
undersell our competitors we must be able to produce more
cheaply. Heavy taxation is quite inconsistent with cheap
production. To realise the dream of Imperialism in South
Africa we must have increased taxation, which means a
bonus to our foreign competitor, while already, as every
merchant and manufacturer knows, he is doing us enough
mischief. This is impolitic, to say the least. It is said,,
further, that our commerce is declining, that there is a
falling off in our foreign trade ; and no wonder — the more we
spend in war the less money we have, and the less we shall
continue to have. There is no expenditure more unprofit-
able than that of war. In Europe, at any rate, of the
plagues that walk the earth there is none so full of evil
influence on the world.

One other reason why the Boers should be left to them-
selves is the utter inability of England to rule them aright.
Mr. Gladstone has complained in one of his political essays
that the English Parliament is overloaded, that it has far more
work than it can accomplish ; India excites little attention,
and South Africa less. A colonial paper thus describes (1
quote the Kajfrarian Watchman of January 28) the utter
ignorance of officers and statesmen at home where South
Africa is concerned : — " History records that some years ago
the question of appointing an extra chaplain to the troops
then serving in South Africa was somewhat warmly
opposed in the British Parliament, and one of the oppo-

A 4

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nents to the appointment — His Grace of Argyll — sported his
knowledge of the geography of the colony by saying that
the chaplain then serving in South Africa could easily hold
morning service in Natal and preach to the troops in King
"Williamstown the same evening ! It would appear that the
people who are determined to maintain themselves as rulers
over our internal affairs know no more of the topography of
the country than did the nobleman referred to when he made
his assertion some thirty years ago ; as, according to a Natal
paper, the commander of Her Majesty's steamer Boadecia,
now in Natal waters, received a recent cablegram to this
effect : — * Anchor off Potchefstroom, but do not shell the
town.' Can ignorance be more disgustingly pernicious to
the welfare and progress of a new country?" Of course
not, and this is a very good reason why we should leave the
Boers alone.

Failing to govern the Boers from Downing Street, it
may be argued a fortiori the colonists at the Cape are
unequal to the task. In the Cape the colonists love to
talk of the Boers as brutes, because they keep out of the
way of the English and regard our countrymen — as they
have abundant reason to do — with dislike and suspicion.
They envy the Boer his fine climate and his productive
soil ; they despise his honest life and his simple aims. In
the Kaffrarian Watchman, which claims to be the Govern-
ment organ of the district, I read, the other day, the
following lines, which may be accepted as a fair proof
that the mental calibre of the colonist is somewhat of the
lowest, and that his prejudices against the Boers quite unfit
him to give them fair play. What are we to think of a
people for whom an editor produces such wretched doggrel
as the following ? —

Hurrah ! for England's equal rule,

Her rights she will maintain ;
The Transvaal Boers will play the fool,

And half of them be slain.

They make a boast about their rights,

And of their heroes true ;
But bear in mind, my valiant knights,

John Bull is valiant too.

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And if they once but rouse his ire,

The Boers will flee apace,
It's then they'll find that England's fiie

'LI exterminate their race.

As for Paul Kruger, who is he,

Who dares our flag denounce ?
A fool of the Transvaal he must be,

Who'll burst with brag and bounce.

The cockney's the boy to teach him to plough ;

If he'd only be guided by him,
He could sit by his fireside with his old vrow,

And enjoy his long pipe and his gin.

But no ! the place where the brains ought to be

Is unluckily stuffed full of leather ;
But give the fools rope they'll haul it in free,

And by-and-by get th' end of the tether.

It's then they will play a fresh time on their fiddle,

And sing, John Bull never roars
But when he's a mind with his horns to tickle,

They'll shout out — Oh ! spare us poor Boers.

And it's then poor old England, so brimful of mercy,

Will teach our Dutch cousins to pray,
For all foolish rebels talk loud and saucy,

To kneel down to John Bull and say — Amen.

Jos. Jones.

Naturally we ask how can a community of which this
gifted Jones is a fair specimen understand or appreciate the
Boers ? What chance have the latter of justice at the
hands of the former when even a friend of the Boers is
bespattered with mud and loaded with abuse, and regarded
as a traitor and a miscreant ? There was a time when it
seemed possible that of their own free will the Boers might
have come to terms with us, and have become part of that
South African Confederation of which Lord Carnarvon and
Mr. Froude were so much enamoured, and to promote
which it was understood Mr. Gladstone, criminally, as it
seems to most people, allowed Sir Bartle Frere to remain.
But that dream has now no chance of becoming true — its
realisation seems further off than ever. We have made
enemies of the Boers, and the less England or the Cape
interferes in their concerns the better in that part of the
world for both. We may be sure that the Boer will not
trouble us, unless we first trouble him.

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From the same paper, which always speaks of the brave
men who are fighting for their freedom as " cowardly,
murdering Boers," I take the following account of the Boer
leaders : — " The president of the discontented farmers is a
man of about sixty years of age, a native of the district of
Cradock, Cape Colony, and is one of the ' voertrekkers ' or
original emigrants from the Old Colony, who trekked north
to the Vaal river, while another branch came over the
Drakensburg to this colony. Those ' trekking ' northwards
remained longer isolated than the others ; and several
travellers have noticed the almost Chinese or Japanese
jealousy with which they kept strangers out of the country.
The Krugers settled in the fertile district behind the Maga-
liesberg range ; and the subject of our notice became a
leader amongh is people, known as the ' Doppers ' — a kind of
extremely strict body of Dutch Protestants ; in fact, a peculiar
people in dress, manners, and mode of life. ' Oom Paul,'
as he is affectionately called, came first into prominent
notice at the time of the civil war (as it was called) between
the northern Boers and those of Utrecht, Wakkerstroom, and
Lydenderg — who had a kind of commonwealth of their own.
Paul commanded the northmen, and after an engagement, in
which one man was actually killed and Nikolas Smith was
wounded, they fraternised ; and the Bepublic started anew
under Pretorius, son of the Pretorius who was head of the
Boers of Natal after the death of Maritz and Betief. Per-
sonally, Mr. Kruger is of middle height. He is much
respected by all who know him as an honest man and sin-
cere patriot. During the troubles which ended in the annexa-
tion of the Transvaal, Mr. Kruger fearlessly helped his
country's cause in purse and person. He has made two
journeys to London, protesting against the Annexation ;
and although he has seen and appreciated the power of
Great Britain, he has not hesitated to throw his lot in with
the insurgents."

P. J. Joubert, the Commander-in-Chief of the Boer
armies, is one of those who reached the country via Natal
— the family leaving this colony on its conquest, or, rather,
acquisition, by the British Government. Yet the subject of

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our notice did not go far, as his " woonplaats " almost joins
the Colony at its northernmost point ; and he has many-
relations living in our midst. In many ways Mr. Joubert
is a remarkable man, and may be called self-educated, until
manhood never having seen any book but the Bible and
Psalter. Indeed, he informed the writer of this notice that
he was 19 years of age before he saw a newspaper. Mr.
Joubert has also led some expeditions against Kaffirs in the
early days of the Eepublic, and some of his detractors say
he was very severe on the natives in these raids. He was
Vice-President during the rule of President Burgers, and
acted as President during His Honour's absence in Europe,
when the misconduct of Mr. Cooper at Lydenburg is said
to have produced the Sekukuni troubles, which stopped the
flotation of the National Loan through Itsinger and Co.,.
of Amsterdam, and caused the final financial collapse of the
Eepublic. He also has been accused of being unduly in-
fluenced by a certain legal luminary, late canteen-keeper in
Natal, now Advocate in the Supreme Court of the Trans-
vaal. But no one has ever impugned his honesty of purpose
or patriotism. Mr. Joubert was Kruger's colleague in the
mission to London on bofch occasions. He is younger than
" Oom Paul," and the improvement in his gait, dress, and
manner on his return from London was remarkable. Mr.
Joubert had adopted Bond Street fashions even to the
attenuated umbrella — rather a change from the home-made
turn-out of the veldt farmer under ordinary circumstances-
One of the anomalies of this gentleman's political ideas is,
that he swears to have the independence of the Transvaal ;
but, as a compromise, he would vote for Sir Theophilus
Shepstone to be President of the Eepublic. During his
short visit to this city to see Sir Bartle Frere, Mr. Joubert
freely expressed his opinions, saying openly that he re-
gretted the step this people were driven to, as it was certain
to retard the progress of the country and the people for
many years. The compromise he would accept to-morrow
is this — Governors to exercise authority in the name of the
Queen, but to be elective as were the Presidents. Eestora-
tion of the Volksraad, with additional town members com-

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mensurate with their rise. Treaty of offence and defence
with South African Colonies. Compact or project of law>
for repayment of Imperial advances, sine qua non. No
patronage to be exercised by any authority or person
foreign to the land.

Dr. E. F. Jorissen is the legal adviser of the leaders
of the people, or, as they call it, " Staats Procureur ; "
a doctor of divinity, and was a clergyman of some celebrity
in Holland, and is known to entertain very broad and
liberal views on ecclesiastical matters. He was brought
from Holland by President Burgers, was inspector of edu-
cation under that gentleman's government, and at the
change which took place in 1875, was made Staats Pro-
cureur or Attorney-General. Dr. Jorissen is an extremely
learned and talented man ; but he has been too long a
clergyman, with the privilege of having all the talk to him-
self, to subside at fifty years into a cool debater, and his
temper is somewhat of the shortest. He is an irreconcil-
able, especially since his personal views were ignored, and
his office treated with very scant courtesy at the time of the
Annexation.

Edouard Bok, the " Secretaris," is the youngest of the
quartette, is a native of Holland, although his family reside
at present in Brussels. He is a good specimen of an edu-
cated foreigner. His command of the English language
and acquaintance with its literature is extensive. He
accompanied the deputation as interpreter and scribe. He
is about thirty years of age ; he is a studious, thoughtful,
and withal, gay, genial man, who will probably make his
mark in the world.

I now leave the case in the reader's hands. We have
sinned through ignorance, and all that I seek is that justice
and truth may triumph over prejudice and interest and
passion.

CHAPTEE II.

THE TRANSVAAL AND THE BOEBS.

It is vain to dispute the fact that those Puritan Fathers —
who, upon one occasion, held a meeting, and resolved first
that the earth was the Lord's, and the fulness thereof;
secondly, that it was the heritage of the saints ; and that
thirdly, they were the saints, and were, therefore, justified
in depriving the natives of their grounds, and in taking
possession of them themselves — had a full share of that
English faculty of appropriation which has made England
the mistress of the seas, and for awhile, almost, the ruler of
the world ; and, as Englishmen, we cannot say that on the
whole that wholesale system, which has planted the British
flag in every quarter of the globe, has been disastrous to
the communities ruled over, or dishonourable to the nation
itself. In some cases undoubtedly we have acted unjustly ;
in some cases the lives and happiness of millions have been
placed in incompetent hands ; in some cases we have had
selfish rulers and incapable officers ; but India and Canada
and the West Indian Islands and Australia and New Zea-
land are the better for our rule. An Englishman may well
be proud of what his countrymen have done, and it becomes
us to review the past in no narrow, carping, and censorious
spirit. We have spent money by millions; but then we
are rich, and the expenditure has not been an unproductive
one. We have sacrificed valuable lives, but the men who
have fallen have been embalmed in the nation's memory,
and the story of their heroism will mould the character and
fire the ambition and arouse the sympathies of our chil- •
dren's children, as they did those of our fathers in days gone
by ; and yet there is a danger lest we undertake responsi-

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bilities beyond our means, and find ourselves engaged in
contests utterly needless in the circumstances of the case,
and certain to result in a vain effusion of blood, and expen-
diture of money. As far as South Africa is concerned, this
is emphatically the case. Originally the Cape Settlement
was but a fort for the protection of Dutch ships on their
way to India. When we took it from the Dutch, it was but
a small colony at the best, and now one Colonial Governor
tells us we must annex the whole country as far as the
Zambesi. This is rather an expensive operation, and it is
not pleasant to the British taxpayer to be told, as was stated
by Mr. Noble, an official of Natal, at the meeting of the
Colonial Institute a year or two since, that if we are true to
the position and privileges which Providence has assigned
us in giving us such rich possessions on the threshold of
Africa, we have before us the glorious destiny of working
towards the regeneration of a whole quarter of the globe,
of extending the domain of freedom and the boundaries of
Christian civilisation into the interior of the Dark Conti-
nent. Of course, the sentiment was received with cheers.
The Colonials were present in great force on the occasion,
and the more money we spend on South Africa the better
for them ; but the sentiment is one very natural to the
British nation, which appears to believe that the universe
was created for the sale of Manchester cottons, Birmingham
muskets, and Sheffield ware ; and it is also one very dear to
Exeter Hall, which is always asking, in accents more or less
emphatic but feminine —

" Shall we to lands benighted
The lamp of life deny ? "

forgetting how ready is the retort, " Physician, heal thyself,"
and the contrast there is between the modern missionary
and the Apostles, who, in accordance with the Divine com-
mand, went forth to preach the Gospel. Few Englishmen
will deny that it is a blessing greatly to be desired that men
should become Christians, whether they be black or white,
and equally ready are they to admit that commerce is the
surest bond of rpeace and creator of national prosperity.

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But a question may be raised as to how Christianity is to
be best spread, and as to how the true interests of com-
merce are to be advanced. Sir Bartle Frere, the recent
ruler of South Africa, may be considered to be the head of
the school of which Mr. Noble is an illustrious exponent.
To another of that school, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, we
owe the annexation of the Transvaal. Sir Arthur Cunyng-
hame, late Lieutenant-Governor and Commander of the
Forces in South Africa, is of a similar way of thinking.
Already he begins to talk of future annexation. The Orange
Free State, he tells us, must join the South African Con-
federation. We must have a harbour in Delagoa Bay,
which the award of Marshal Macmahon, unfortunately for
the true interests of that part of the world, handed over to
the Portuguese ; and we must have a further slice of Zulu-
land. Thus it appears, while Sir Bartle Frere plunged us
into a bloody contest in Zululand, in which we gained
no glory, and which already has tarnished the honour of our
flag ; now that is over, the process of annexation in the
interests of commerce and Christian civilisation will still
have to go on. Before, in such a cause, the British soldier
has shed his last drop of blood, and the British taxpayer
has parted with his last farthing, it is well to pause, and fco
ask what are the results of Imperialism in South Africa,
and whether the investment is remunerative. Of course,
money can do everything. As I once heard an old farmer
say, you can grow turnips on the top of your head if you
only put enough soil there ; but, then, that is a question of
cost, and the general impression is — right or wrong, I stay
not here to inquire — that such a mode of raising a turnip
crop is anything but economical. With money we can crush
out all the savage hordes, not of Cetewayo alone, but of all
the Kaffirs whom we have allowed to increase and multiply
in our midst. With money we can plant missionaries in
every fever- stricken swamp, all over the African continent.
At present the number and diversity of missionaries is
somewhat a perplexity to the inquiring Zulu, but that per-
plexity will vanish as he sees how these Christians love one
another ; and if he be inclined to underrate them, and to

A 0

( 20 )

treat them disrespectfully, in time he will know better.
Captain Aylward writes that a missionary, himself, and
another were on their way from Bushmans to Mooi River,
when a Zulu passed by the missionary, and saluted
him as " Umbunga." " My companion was instantly
off his horse, and, being a powerful, active man, nearly
six feet six inches high, made no difficulty in catching
the nigger, whom he held easily with his left hand.
He said a few words in Kaffir, and then set vigorously to
work thrashing his captive, who, grovelling on his knees,
yelled out incessantly, * Inkosi ! Umfundisi ! Umfundisi f
Inkosi ! ' When the flogging was over, I asked my clerical
friend what was the matter, and what was the meaning of
the scene. He said, with much delight, evidently thinking
he had done a most virtuous action, ' The black villain
saluted me as " Umbunga" (white man), although he could
plainly see by my dress I was an Inkosi and a teacher. I
have, however, taught him to respect my robes.' " If all
our missionaries are thus muscular, and thus ready to
redress a wrong, real or imagined, it is evident we may
expect results which may be received with cheers in Exeter
Hall. Conversion will proceed apace.

To understand our rule in South Africa, we must first
realise our exact position there. The colonies, taken alto-
gether, are about 450,000 square miles, or equal in size to
united Germany, France, Belgium, and Holland. The total
population is rather more than two millions, of which about
440,000 persons are white. With the exception of Delagoa
Bay, there is not a good harbour all along the coast. The
country is subject to drought, and seems chiefly to be
inhabited by diamond diggers, ostrich farmers, and wool
growers. Its great agricultural resources are undeveloped,
because labour is dear, and all carriage to the coast is
expensive. The English never stop in the colonies, but
return to England as soon as they have made a fortune.
Living is quite as dear as in England, and in many parts
dearer. In the Cape Colony the chief amusements of all
classes are riding, driving, shooting, and billiards. In the
interior there are fine views to be seen, and in some quarters

( 21 )

an abundance of game. The thunderstorms are frightful ;
the rivers, dry in summer, are torrents in winter. The
droughts, the snakes, the red soil dust, and the Kaffirs, are
a perpetual nuisance to all decent people. ' " Although
South Africa is a rising colony," writes Sir Arthur Cunyng-
hame, " I hardly think it offers to the emigrant the chances
which he would obtain in Australia or New Zealand. South
Africa is not a very rich country. Labour is hard to obtain,
and it will be years before irrigation can be carried on
a sufficient scale to make agriculture a brilliant success.
Nevertheless, land is so abundant that the energetic colonist
is sure, at least, to make a living, and provided he does not
drink, has a good chance of becoming a rich man." A great
deal of money is made by ostrich farming and sheep grazing,
but they are occupations which require capital. As to
cereals, it pays better to buy them than to grow them. A
cabbage appears to be a costly luxury, and the price of
butter is almost prohibitive. " South Africa," wrote a
Saturday Reviewer recently, " is the paradise of hunters,
and the purgatory of colonists." The remark is not exactly
true, but for all practical purposes it may be accepted as the
truth. If this be so, how is it, then, it may be asked, we
English have been so anxious to get possession of the
country ? The answer is, We hold the Cape of Good Hope
to be desirable as a port of call and harbour of refuge on
our way to India ; but the opening of the Suez Canal has
changed all that, and the reason for which we took it from
the Dutch in 1806 does not exist now. Whether the
country has ever made a penny by the Cape remains to be
proved.

In taking possession of the Cape of Good Hope, we found
there a people whom we have annexed against their will,
and of whom we have made bitter enemies. These were
the original Dutch settlers, or Boers, mixed with whom
were descendants of the French Huguenots — a primitive,
pastoral people, with a good deal of the piety of the Pilgrim
Fathers, and who set to work to exterminate the pagans
much after the fashion of the Jews, of whom we read in
the Old Testament. Their plan of getting rid of the native

( 22 )

difficulty was a very effective one. They either made
the native a slave, or they drove him away. Mr.
Thomas Pringle, one of our earliest colonists, says,
" Their demeanour towards us, whom they might be sup-
posed naturally to regard with exceeding jealousy, if not
dislike, was more friendly and obliging than could, under all
the circumstances, have been expected." They were, he
says, uncultivated, but not disagreeable, neighbours, ex-
ceedingly shrewd at bargain making ; but they were civil
and good-natured, and, according to the custom of the
country, extremely hospitable ; and the same testimony has
been borne to them by later travellers. They lived as
farmers, and the life agreed with them. The men are finely
made, and out of them a grand empire might be raised. In
1815 they made an effort to shake off the British yoke. A
Hottentot, named Booy, appeared at the magistrate's office
at Cradock, and complained of the oppressive conduct of a
Boer of the name of Frederick Bezuidenhout. Inquiry
was accordingly made. The Boer admitted the facts, but,
instead of yielding to the magistrate's order, he boldly
declared that he considered this interference between him-
self and his Hottentot to be a presumptuous innovation
upon his rights, and an intolerable usurpation of authority.
He told the field-cornet that he set at defiance both himself
and the magistrate who had sent him on this officious
errand, and, to give further emphasis to his words, he fell
violently upon poor Booy, gave him a severe beating, and
then bade him go and tell the civil authorities that he
would treat them in the same manner if they should dare
to come upon his grounds to claim the property of a
Hottentot. It must be remembered that when the Boers
were handed over to us, without their leave or without their
consent being in any way asked, each Boer had perfect
coutrol over the liberty and life and limb of every Hottentot
under his control. It was only thus he believed his property
was safe, and his throat uncut. But to return to Bezuiden-
hout. The Cape Government could not allow his defiance
to pass unheeded. An expedition was sent out against him,
and he was shot. The affair excited a great sensation in

( 23 )

the country. At a numerous assemblage of the Boers in
the neighbourhood it was resolved to revenge his death.
They did more ; they resolved to be independent of the
hateful British yoke ; but, it is needless to add, in vain.
England, after putting down Napoleon, and triumphing at
Waterloo, was in no mood to be defied by a handful of
Dutch farmers in a distant quarter of the globe. But the
Cape Government had Kaffir wars to fight, and they could
not afford to treat the Boers as absolute enemies, and they
were rewarded with a large portion of the territory won
from the Kaffirs in 1819. But this was not sufficient for
their earth-hunger. They crossed the boundaries, and, with
their lives in their hands, planted themselves among the
savages. In 1838 they went off still further from British
rule. In that year the slaves were manumitted, and a sum
of money was voted as a compensation to the Boers. To
the shame of the British Government, it must be confessed
that the equivalent was never paid them. Despairing of
ever receiving it, they sold their rights to Jews and middle-
men, and trekked far out into the country into the districts
known as Griqualand, Natal, the Orange Free State, and
the Transvaal. It is because we have followed them there,
when there was no need to have done so, that we are now
engaged in a costly and bloody war. First we seized Natal,
then we took possession of the Diamond Fields, and our
last act was the annexation of the Transvaal. How far
this system of annexation is to spread it is impossible to
say. It is equally impossible to state what will be its cost
in treasure and in men. It seems equally difficult to say
upon whom the blame of this annexation system rests. It
really seems as if we were villains, as Shakespeare says, by
necessity, and fools by a divine thrusting on. We should'
have left the Boers alone. They were not British subjects,
and did not want to be' such. Natal was not British
territory when they settled there, neither was the Orange
Free State Territory ; and, at any rate, in 1854 their
independence, which had been persistently fought for, and
nobly won, was acknowledged by the British Government
as regards the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

( 24 )

Surely in South Africa there was room for the Englishman
and the Boer, and if it had not been for the dream of
Imperialism, which seems to dominate the brain of our
colonial rulers, the two nations might have lived and
flourished side by side. The Boer, at any rate, has made
himself at home on the soil. It agrees with him physically.
In the Orange State and the Transvaal he made good roads,
and built churches and schools and gaols, and turned the
wilderness into a fruitful field. In reply to the English who
pleaded for annexation, he said, " We fled from you years
ago ; leave us in peace. We shall pay our debts early
enough ; your presence can but tend to increase them, and
to drive us through fresh wanderings, through new years of
bloodshed and misery, to seek homes whither you will no
longer follow us. We conquered and peopled Natal ; you
reaped the fruits of that conquest. What have you done
for that colony ? Do you seek to do with our Transvaal as
you have done with it — to make our land a place of abomin-
ation, defiled with female slavery, reeking with paganism,
and likely, as Natal is, only too soon to be red with blood?"
But when this was our English rulers had made up their
minds to get rid of the innumerable complications of South
Africa by a Confederation — of which no one is mad enough
to dream now.

" The Transvaal," wrote one who knew South Africa well
— the late Mr. Thomas Baines — " will yet command the
admiration of the world for the perseverance, the primitive
manliness and hardihood of its pioneers." As a proof of
advancing prosperity, when he was there in 1860 its one-
pound notes had risen in value till four were taken for a
sovereign, and several hundred pounds' worth had been
called in and publicly burnt upon the market-place. It is a
proof of the simplicity of the people that on that occasion
the Boers and Doppers (adult Baptists) crowded wrathfully
around, and bitterly commented on the wastefulness of
their Government in wickedly destroying so much of the
money of their Kepublic ; while others, of more advanced
views, discussed the means of raising them still further in
value, and sagely remarked that because they had been

( 25 )

printed in Holland the English would not take them, but
that if others were printed in London they would certainly
be as good as a Bank of England note. In the Volksraad
(House of Commons) now and then some amusing scenes
occurred. The progressive party wanted, one day, to pass
some measure for the opening and improvement of the
country, when the opponents, finding themselves in a
minority, thought to put the drag on by bringing forward
an old law that all members should be attired in black
cloth suits and white neckerchiefs. This had the imme-
diate effect of disqualifying so many that the business of
the House could not be legally conducted ; but an English
member who lived next door, slipped out, donned his
Sunday best, with a collar and tie worthy of a Christy
Minstrel, and resumed his sitting with an army that
completely dismayed the anti-progressionists. Sir Arthur
Cunynghame testifies to this simplicity as still the charac-
teristic of the Dutch. '* Some little time before our arrival,"
he writes, "a German conjurer had visited this distant little
village, when the Doppers were so alarmed at his tricks that
they left the room in which he was exhibiting, and, assemb-
ling in prayer, entreated to be relieved of the devil who had
come amongst them." Sir Arthur adds the story of a Jew,
who in dealing with a Boer had made a miscalculation,
which the Boer pointed out, appealing to his ready -reckoner.
Not in the least taken aback, the Israelite replied, " Oh,
this a ready-reckoner of last year ! " and the poor Boer was
done. A further illustration of their simplicity is to be
found in the fact that when they trekked from the Cape
they fancied that they were on their way to Egypt, and,
having reached in the Transvaal a considerable river which
falls into the Limpopo, thought they were there, and called
it the Nyl — a name which it still retains. In accordance
with their serious teaching, they gave Scriptural names to
their settlements and villages ; and if they were severe on
the natives, and ruled them with a rod of iron, did not the
Jews act in a similar manner to the Hivites and Hittites,
and did not Samuel command Saul to hew Agag in pieces
before the Lord ?

A 7

( 26 )

Major Ashe, the latest writer on the subject, in his
history of the Zulu campaign, thus ably describes the
African Boers : — " The typical Boer is doubtless a pattern
of hospitality, simplicity of heart, fondness for his home
and family, and of those general domestic attributes which
are so dear to an Englishman. But in his relations and
contact with the native races and real owners of the soil,
the Dutch Boer seems to lose all sense of reason and
justice, and to remember only those early and blood-stained
annals of pioneering, when the white man and the black
neither gave nor asked for quarter in their struggle for
supremacy in the land. Indeed his intolerance of a native
is so intense that he cannot be induced to look upon him
as a human being, but he regards the unfortunate aboriginal
as a wild beast to be hunted and shot down. But the Boer
has his fairer side, although his type has as yet been un-
changeable. As he existed when he ruled in Cape Colony
in 1808, so he now exists in the present day in his settle-
ments in the interior. He is uneducated, uncultivated,
unprogressive, and obstinate ; but he developes qualities
under adverse circumstances which must command English
respect. He is certainly domestic as far as his own family
circle, but, at the same time, the reverse of gregarious in
regard to the world in general. When he first commences
to farm and settle he likes to possess not less than 6,000
and not more than 20,000 acres of good undulating ' veldt/
When he has obtained this, he starts in his waggon with
his wife, his children, his scanty supply of goods and
chattels, his cattle and sheep, and his only literature, the
family Bible. He selects a good spring of water, being
careful that no neighbour is located within at least ten
miles. He builds his house with one large central hall,
with the kitchen in rear, and four or five bedrooms opening
out of the hall, all on the ground floor, and sometimes with
a wide verandah outside. Kraals for his cattle, fences to
his garden, and enclosures of 50 or 100 acres are quickly
run up ; and so fertile is the soil and so favourable the
climate, that in four or five years his garden will be full
of oranges, lemons, citrons, peaches, apricots, figs, apples,

( 27 )

pears, and vines. His herds and flocks multiply, his wheat
and Indian corn thrive, and thus he lives in a rude but
grateful abundance. His sons arrive at manhood and
marry ; his daughters are sought as wives, and if the land
is good and plenty they remain and farm near, and for each
generation and new family a new house is built a few
hundred* yards from the original. More acres with each
generation are brought under the plough, and the man
who is a good farmer, good father, and good husband cannot
be brought to see that he must not covet his neighbour's
land when that neighbour happens to be a black man !
Without sentiment, without tenderness, and without a
particle of enthusiasm, and with the most circumscribed
intellectual horizon, he has a stubborn practicability which
is admirably suited for the work of a pioneer, but which
never developes into a power of civilisation amongst savage
tribes."

It is to be feared that the Boers have never had justice
done to them by our rulers. We had no claim on them. It
was to escape British rule that they, with their wives and
children, their men-servants and maid-servants, their oxen,
and their sheep, their horses and their asses, went forth
into the wilderness. Even Mr. Trollope admits that when
they took possession of Natal, " there was hardly a native
to be seen, the country having been desolated by the King
of the Zulus. It was the very place for the Dutch, fertile
without interference, and with space for every one." There
they would have settled, as did the Pilgrim Fathers on the
other side of the Atlantic, and built up a flourishing State,
but we followed them, and drove them away. If they had
been allowed to remain, the English Government and the
English people would have been saved a good deal of
trouble. At any rate, we should never have heard of the
native difficulty in Natal — the difficulty which keeps away
the emigration required to develop the resources of a country
happily situated in many respects ; the difficulty which must
ever be felt by a handful of English in the presence of a
horde of polygamous and untutored savages who will not
work, and who, alas ! are not ashamed to beg. Natal, had

A 8

( 28 )

the Dutch been left peaceably in possession of it, would
have been by this time the home of a God-fearing, civilised
community, instead of swarming with Pagans who have fled
there from the cruelties of their native kings, and who learn
to treat their protectors with insolent contempt. In Natal,
the English shopkeeper has to speak to his customers in
their own language. "Where the Boers hold sway it is
otherwise. In the Dutch parts of the Cape Colony, Captain
Aylward writes : " The coloured people are tame, submis-
sive, and industrious, speaking the language of their in-
structors and natural masters. As I proceeded further on
my journey through the Transvaal," continues the same
writer, " I saw in various directions gardens, fruitful
orchards, and small, square houses in the possession of
blacks, who were living in a condition of ordinary propriety,
having abandoned polygamy and other horrid customs
resulting from it. So great an improvement I had not
noticed during any part of my previous residence in Natal."
It is a pity that we have made the Boers our enemies ; and
the worst of it is, in their determination not to be English
the women, according to Captain Aylward, have been a
wonderful aid to the men. They have suffered for that
spirit. It has called them from the homesteads built by
their fathers, the rich lands where the grapes clustered
and the sheep fattened, and the fields were white for
the harvest. In 1841 Major Charteris wrote : " The
spirit of dislike to English rule was remarkably domi-
nant among the women. Many of those who had formerly
lived in affluence but were now in comparative want, and
subject to all the inconveniences accompanying the insecure
state in which they were existing, having lost, moreover,
their husbands and brothers by the savage, still rejected with
scorn the idea of returning to the colony. If any of the
men began to drop or lose courage they urged them on to
fresh exertions, and kept alive the spirit of resistance within
them." Sir Arthur Cunynghame has nothing but praise for
the Boers. On his way to the Diamond Fields he stopped at
Hanover, which, he says, " has a grand appearance, the
Dutch minister's house, standing in the centre, being quite

( 29 )

a palace." It was built by the subscriptions of his parish-
ioners. The honours which the Dutch lavish on the minis-
try are worthy of remark. Equally worthy of remark is
their hospitality and their piety. The farmer gives his
guest the best entertainment he can provide, and " before
the family retires to rest the large Bible is opened and the
chapter appropriate to the day is read." On another occa-
sion, Sir Arthur's party encamp near the residence of a rich
Dutch farmer, who refused admission to his house, and
would not even sell them an egg ; yet he records the fact
that, " late in the evening the sounds of the Evening Hymn
floated over the plain, the nasal twang of the patriarch being
distinctly heard leading the choir, while female voices, with
their plaintive notes, chimed in. It is pleasant," adds Sir
Arthur, " to hear in these lone lands such evidence of a re-
ligious sentiment pervading the community, and it is an
assurance that the people are contented and happy." Sir
Arthur writes : — " There are no finer young men in the world
than the young Dutch Boers, who are generally of immense
height and size, and very hardy. Their life is spent in the
open air by day, and frequently at night they sleep on the
veldt, with no tent or covering. Men more fit for the
Grenadier Guards, as to personal appearance, could not be
found. Some of them are plucky. A Boer had part of his
hand blown off by the bursting of his gun. Having no
doctor near, he directed his son to bring his hammer and
chisel, and shape off his fingers." As an Irishman, Captain
Aylward is enthusiastic as regards the personal charms of
the ladies. Many of the elder ones even, he admits, are
not uncomely, and in the wild neighbourhood of Lydenberg
itself, he tells us, are to be seen some bearing traces of
beauty of no ordinary character, whose lives, he says, some-
what unnecessarily, are useful, adorning, and cheering the
homes of their husbands and children. These people are
somewhat unlettered, and very phlegmatic. " They do not
wish," writes Sir Arthur Cunynghame, " to move ten miles
from their own door, nor to see one who comes from ten
miles beyond it." Their moral discipline also seems some-
what severe. " In the little fort." writes Captain Aylward,

( 30 )

" was an English storekeeper, named Glynn, whose
daughters had a piano, on which they would occasionally
play dance and other profane music. This was a source of
great annoyance to their pious neighbours, who, in many
respects, resembled our early Puritans. It was requested
that the piano should be silenced, as the music might tempt
the anger of Heaven if persisted in during a time of war
arjd trial. If a girl in the laager were frivolous or light in
her conduct, she was liable to be arrested, and brought
for trial before the Fathers of the Church, from whom she
might receive a severe caution, or even the punishment of
removal." At Lydenberg, at the time of Sir Arthur's visit,
an altercation had taken place on the unrighteousness of
dancing, for which a party was tried by the Synod ; but an
appeal was made to the Court, and this appeal formed an
important epoch in the history of the town. To show how
primitive these Boers are, let us take the following story : —
A schoolmaster was lately appointed in Zoutspanberg. One
.of his earliest lessons was to teach the children that the
world turned upon its own axis. He also endeavoured to
make them understand the revolutions of the heavenly
bodies. The children went home, and were impertinent to
their parents, and to]d them that the earth went round the
sun. The elders of the district met, and consulted regard-
ing these new doctrines, and finally agreed to refer the
subject to the minister, who requested the schoolmaster to
explain. The schoolmaster said, " I teach them nothing
but the movements of the heavenly bodies, and that the
earth revolves round the sun." The minister answered,
" Well, this may be true, no doubt, and what the earth does
in Holland ; but it would be more convenient at present if,
in the Zoutspanberg, you would allow the sun still to go
round the earth for a few years longer. We do not like
sudden changes in such matters." The schoolmaster took
the hint, and the sun continued to go round the earth as
usual. The power of the minister of a parish is very great.
A great deal depends upon him for the improvement and
well-being of the town. Many a time it was said to Sir
Arthur, when he observed that a town was flourishing,

( 31 )

" Yes, we are fortunate in our minister ; " and when it was
falling back- it was, " Ah ! all will alter when we get rid of
our present minister."

I call one witness more — Lieut.-Col. Butler, who, in his
"Rovings Ee-told," tells us: — "The Boer is a fearless and
practised rider and an unerring shot. Life in the ' Veldt '
is familiar to him in all its aspects. He can rough it with
any man, tame or wild, the world over ; nevertheless he is
not a soldier ; he will fight Zulu or Bechuana or Basuto,
but then he will have the long flint 'roeer' against the
arrow or the assagai, or the Westley-Richards breech-
loading rifle against a rusty musket. He is ever ready
to take the field : his rifle and gun are in the room-corner •
his ammunition-pouch is ever full ; his horse (knee-haltered
or in the stable) he can turn out at short notice. Never-
theless he is not a soldier, and he never will be one. In one
of the many boundary disputes arising out of the diamond
discovery, a party of Boers and Englishmen met in opposi-
tion near a place called Hebron, on the Vaal River. As is
frequently the custom in such cases, the anxiety for battle
diminished with the distance between the opposing forces,
and a parley was proposed by the respective leaders when
the hosts came within shooting proximity. There hap-
pened to be in the ranks of the party a native of Ireland,
who naturally did not at all relish the pacific turn affairs
seemed to be assuming. While the leaders debated the
settlement of the dispute, Pat left the ranks of his party,
and, approaching the place of consultation, demanded of
his chief (now busily engaged with the Boer commandant
in smoking and debate) if he and his friends on the hill
might be permitted to open fire upon their opponents
before any further discussion on the cause of quarrel was
proceeded with. The Boer, alarmed at this sudden pro-
position to defer diplomacy to war, asked the meaning of
such a bloodthirsty request. ' The boys want the word to
fire,' replied Pat, ' because they are so mortal hungry.'
Not altogether perceiving the force of the reasoning, but
deeming it wise to remove such an evident casus belli, the
Boer commander at once sent forward a sheep and an ox

( 32 )

to appease both the food-hunger and thirst for blood o
the opposite side ; and as the map of South Africa presents
Hebron on the Vaal Kiver without those two crossed swords
indicative of a field of fight, it may be presumed that
matters ended with no greater sacrifice of life than that
of the animals which Pat led back in triumph to his
hungry comrades."

It is to the credit of these people that they have a consis-
tent native policy. No faith is to be held with Eome.
"Delenda est Carthago" is their motto. They leave the
natives to quarrel among themselves, while our English
policy has been to play off one petty savage chief against
another, and to arm and strengthen the natives with whom
we are ultimately to fight. The natives see through this,
and argue, as Sir Arthur Cunynghame testifies, that the
English fear them, else why, they ask, do they give them such
high wages ? or why do the Government allow them to buy
arms ? It is some such feeling that urged on Cetywayo into
his unfortunately hostile attitude. He considered that we
were his allies against the Boers, and thought we annexed
the Transvaal for him and his savage followers. Up to the
annexation he and the English were on friendly terms. At
the commencement of the Zulu war, it seemed that the
Boers were reluctant to fight for English rule, and some of
the colonial papers hinted that they were a danger and a
menace. Was that to be wondered at when we remember
how we have always sacrificed them to the natives ? The
Free States newspaper complained that " our British
neighbours have established at the Diamond Fields free
trade in guns and ammunition, in spite of all treaties with
the Bepublic, and even in spite of their own professed
policy in the Cape Colony. Griqualand West permits the
supply of guns and ammunition to the natives — Zulus and
Basutos — without hindrance, whilst Earl Carnarvon requests
all South Africa to meet in a friendly conference, because of
the native question and Zulu difficulty. British traders
supply Her Majesty's enemies and ours with guns and
ammunition to any extent, in order that they may be
better prepared to fight us when the next struggle may

( 33 )

commence ; and, worst of all, British commerce, repre-
sented by colonial shopkeepers and merchants, who, to fill
their own pockets, would not for a moment hesitate to
bring ruin on the colonial farmers and Republican Boers,
cry out that it is preposterous to stop the trade in guns."
Assuredly, the Boers had ample reason to complain of the
Imperial policy in South Africa. There is little to be said for
our dealings with them after they had removed out of our
rule. That we had no right to annex the Diamond Fields,
the sum we offered in compensation may be considered as
fair evidence ; and the annexation of the Transvaal, besides
being a crime, was a blunder for which we are now paying
dearly in person and in purse. It has been shown that the
cry for annexation raised was merely " an ignorant expres-
sion of the dissatisfaction of a mean and contemptible
minority " — a set of greedy speculators and disreputable
office-seekers, who grossly deceived the English officials,
who were not naturally averse to the power and prestige a
new command would give them. The Kepublic was not
insolvent, nor was it unable to hold its own. In the war
with the Basutos, contrary to the assertion of Mr. Trollope,
the Burghers were everywhere victorious, nor was it stained
with slavery, as, if so, when Sir Theophilus Shepstone
immediately annexed it, we should have heard of a whole-
sale emancipation ; nor was the step taken by the will of
the people. The only argument for the step was that we
were obliged to take it in order to prevent our own house
catching fire, and the result has been the conflagration
we were so anxious to avoid. Sir Theophilus Shepstone
annexed the Transvaal, and our house caught fire in
Griqualand West, and Secocoeni broke out war into war ;
and, lastly ; we had the tragedy of Isandula. We shall
never be safe till we have the Transvaal, argued Sir Theo-
philus Shepstone and his friends. Then, argued the latter,
now that we have the Transvaal, we are bound to go to
war. This reasoning was irresistible to Lord Chelmsford,
who, in a despatch dated September, 1879, says, " So long
as Natal and the Transvaal had separate interests, the
policy of the chief of the Zulu nation was to play off the

( 34 )

former against the latter. . . . With the annexation
of the Transvaal this state of things virtually came to an
end."

Well, we annexed the Transvaal, and scarcely a word was
said about it in the House of Commons. However, when
the General Election was impending, and a gigantic effort
was to be made to place the Liberals in office, great states-
men were not backward in protesting against what they had
sanctioned in Parliament. Mr. Gladstone, as was to be
expected, was especially emphatic. He who has pleaded so
powerfully the cause of the Bulgarian Christians, who con-
tended against such cynical scoffers as Mr. Lowe, that the
unenfranchised to whom he was about to give votes, were
our own flesh and blood, naturally had something to say
for the Boers. In his Midlothian speeches in 1878-9 this is
what he did say : —

" The Government have annexed in Africa the Transvaal
territory, inhabited by a free European, Christian, Kepub-
lican community, which they have thought proper to bring
within the limits of a monarchy, although out of 8,000
persons in that Republic qualified to vote upon the subject,
we are told, and I have never seen the statement officially
contradicted, that 6,500 protested against it. These are
the circumstances under which we undertake to transform
republicans into subjects of a monarchy." — November 25th,
1879.

" The Transvaal is a country where we have chosen, most
unwisely, I am tempted to say insanely, to place ourselves
in the strange predicament of the free subjects of a mon-
archy going to coerce the free subjects of a republic, and to
compel them to accept a citizenship which they decline and
refuse. But if that is to be done it must be done by force."
—November 26th, 1879.

"You have the invasion of a free people in the Transvaal."
—December 5th, 1879.

" We have undertaken to govern despotically two bodies
of human beings who were never under our despotic power
before, and one of them who were in the enjoyment of
freedom before. We have gone into the Transvaal territory,

( 35 )

where it appears — the statement has not been contradicted —
that there were 8,000 persons in a condition of self-govern-
ment, under a Eepublican form. Lord Carnarvon announced,
as Secretary of State, that he was desirous of annexing their
own territory if they were willing. They replied by signing
to the number of 6,500 out of 8,000 a protest against the
assumption of sovereignty over them. We have what you
call ' annexed ' that territory. I need not tell you there
are and can be no free institutions in such a country as that.
The utmost, I suppose, that could be done was to name
three or four or half a dozen persons to assist the Governor.
But how are they chosen ? I apprehend not out of the
6,500, but they are chosen out of the small minority who
were not opposed to being annexed. Is it not wonderful to
those who are 'freemen, and whose fathers had been freemen,
and who hope that their children will be freemen, and who
consider that freedom is an essential condition of civil life,
and that without it you can have nothing great and nothing
noble in political society, that we are led by an Administra-
tion, and led, I admit, by Parliament, to find ourselves in
this position that we are to march upon another body of
freemen, and against their will to subject them to despotic
government." — Birthday Speech, 29th December, 1879.

" The Prime Minister spoke of his difficulties in Europe
and difficulties in Asia. He omitted, gentlemen, Africa ; he
did not say we had created any difficulties for him there ;
but there he has contrived, without, so far as I am able to
judge, the smallest necessity or excuse, to spend five millions
of your money in invading a people who had done him no
wrong ; and now he is obliged to spend more of your money
in establishing the supremacy of the Queen over a com-
munity, Protestant in religion, Hollanders in origin, vigorous
and obstinate and tenacious in character even as we are
ourselves, namely, the Dutchmen of the Transvaal." —
March 18th, 1880.

Unfortunately, the Boers have taken Mr. Gladstone at
his word. It is a pity they forget how circumstances alter
cases — how, out of office, a statesman talks in one strain,
and in office another.

( 36

But to return to South African Imperialism. Ex uno
disce omnes. One example will suffice of the way in which
that theory of dominion universal, from the Cape to the
Zambesi, which appears to dominate over the official
Englishman, when he has anything to do with Africa, acts
in a mischievous manner, may be seen in the case of
Griqualand East, formerly called No Man's Land, which
was some years since a sort of neutral territory. In time
the Griquas, or bastards, settled there. They were an
industrious people, and far more advanced in civilisation
than any other native tribe. They had large flocks of
cattle and sheep, and were wealthy, with good furniture
and houses, and prospered under the rule of their President,
Adam Kok. Many new buildings, such as churches and
schools, were being erected when Sir Cunynghame visited
them, arid many new stores put up. He writes : " In the
afternoon we attended the native service carried on in the
Dutch language. It was impossible for me to follow it ; in
fact, the discovery that the sermon related to the Prodigal
Son formed the limit of my knowledge of what was going
on. The congregation appeared attentive, and the clergy-
man in earnest." Not long after the visit, it was decided
by the British that they should annex the country, and
Adam Kok was pensioned off with a thousand a year, which
he did not, however, long enjoy, as he was soon killed by a
carnage accident. At a meeting of the people on the sub-
ject, Captain Adam Kok complained, as, indeed, he had
every reason to do, of the hasty and arbitrary manner in
which Government were assuming authority in his country.
They had their own cannon, fire-arms, and ammunition,
bought with their own money, and after being left for thir-
teen years entirely to their own resources, without any pre-
liminary notice, he said, the Cape Government stepped
coolly in and took possession of them and their property.
When the Government laid out the Kat Biver Settle-
ment of Hottentots, they gave the settlers seed, corn,
ploughs, and various other things to help them. But the
Griquas were not so treated. They had to do everything
for themselves, and we were bound to regard them not as

( 37 )

enemies to be put down, but as friendly allies to be encou-
raged and preserved.

How long is this system to be pursued ? The Transvaal,
I wrote in 1879, is getting into a worse state every day. It
has vast resources which cannot be developed. It is im-
porting flour, when it might be a great corn-producing
country. It has no manufactures, and its exports are few.
Captain Aylward writes : — " The Boer party complain
bitterly of the annexation. They say our liberties have
been unnecessarily taken from us, and our country annexed,
not only against the will of the majority, but in utter
defiance of Lord Carnarvon's instructions, which state that
no such proclamation shall be issued by you (Sir Theophilus
Shepstone), unless you shall be certain that the inhabitants,
or a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature, desire
to become our subjects." The Boers also object to the
annexation, because they believe that the arguments put
forward by Sir Theophilus Shepstone are not borne out by
facts, and they are still more angry because they believe
the annexation was brought about by false pretences, ac-
companied and strengthened by attacks made upon their
honour and character by a party Press interested in their
destruction. They say further, that the terms of the
Annexation Proclamation have not been adhered to, and
this party, undoubtedly the strongest in the country, appeals
to England to do them justice and restore to them their
country. The railway party who want a connection with
the natural outlet of the Transvaal, Delagoa Bay, are dis-
contented, and so are the very men who were the first
to applaud annexation. As it is, it seems, the Transvaal
must end either in anarchy or martial law, and will be a
heavy burden on the British tax-payer for many years to
come. Mr. Trollope himself admits that it is not easy to
justify what we have done in the Transvaal. " If there
be," he writes, " any laws of right and wrong, by which
nations should govern themselves in their dealings with
other nations, it is hard to find the law in conformity with
which that act was done." And Mr. Trollope is right.
Undoubtedly it was an act of injustice of which we have

( 38 )

not yet seen the bitter end. There is little chance of that
injustice being undone. The Dutch are poor and far away.
It is the old, old story of the wolf and the lamb over again.
We have made so little of South Africa, we might leave the
Boers alone. All that we can say against them is that
when it was the fashion for West Indian planters to mal-
treat their slaves, they often did the same.

The Boers (this was written in 1879) are becoming more
discontented, as well they may, and there is no sign of this
discontent ceasing. In the beginning of February, 1879,
they held a large meeting at Wonderfontein to receive the
report of the visit of the deputation, Messrs. Kruger and
Joubert, to Europe. The latter is reported to have said : —
" My brethren and fellow-countrymen, — I am very glad to
see you all spared by God in this our beloved country. I
wish and hope the best, also, with regard to your families.
You have deputed us on a mission of the utmost importance
to yourselves. I know you are awaiting our report with
deep anxiety. I know your feelings and your wishes — aye,
I share your anxiety, and, therefore, I will not detain you
long by words. Know, then, that I cannot report to you so
favourably as you had expected that the all-powerful British
Empire had acknowledged your rights so that you may, as
had been said by Joshua to Caleb, be strong and possess the
country which God has given you. No, brethren, England
has annexed your country, and will keep it, and I may not
mislead you by telling you that you cannot stop the
superior power of England. Therefore, take heed for your-
selves, and don't do anything of which you may repent for
ever, and which may plunge yourselves, your families, and
others into deeper misery still. Pray to God for wisdom ;
be prudent, and act wisely. Who knows, God may help us
and grant relief. You had sent us to ask back your in-
dependence. What we have done for it you already know
from the newspapers, and the rest you will learn from the
books or pamphlets which we had printed. In how far you
will decide that we have done our duty we leave to you. I
do not care for myself, but I do for the country, and the
people, and where I feel my own shortcomings and weak-

( 39 )

ness, I am satisfied before God and my conscience that I, if
I have not obtained what you, what I, and the people have
desired, I have done for it what I could. And with this I
wish God's greatest blessings for yourselves and the
country." Other speeches were delivered of a more angry
and exciting character. It was intimated that we got our
Empire by robbery. Mr. W. Pretorious said the High
Commissioner promised much, but all he wanted was to get
back his independence. Said another speaker* amidst
enthusiastic cheers, England might annex and oppress
them, but it could never give them an English heart. Some
resolutions were moved, of which the following was one : —
" The committee, supported by the people, cannot be satis-
fied with the reply of the English Minister, Sir Michael
Hicks-Beach, and resolve to continue to protest against the
injustice committed, and, further, to devise ways and means
with the people for attaining their object." After the
meeting, some people having torn to pieces the printed
copies of Sir Bartle Frere's letter, Mr. Joubert strongly
condemned the stupid proceedings, and requested the people
to act wisely and with judgment. On the Sunday religious
services were held, and on Monday a further meeting
took place. Ultimately it was resolved, " That the com-
mittee, having learned the opinion of the people ex-
pressed in their memorials, and the expressed wish of
the people not to submit to British supremacy, but to abide
by the protest of April 11, 1877, proposes to the committee
a deputation to acquaint Sir Bartle Frere therewith, and at
the same time to assure His Excellency of their full co-
operation for the advancement of the whole of South
Africa, provided the annexation be rescinded." Clearly,
I wrote in 1879, when we have settled with Cetewayo, we
shall have a little trouble with the free people of the
Transvaal. According to the Natal Mercury of that date,
we had better leave them alone.

The following, says the Natal Witness, is a translation of
the oath of mutual allegiance taken by a great number of
respectable Transvaal Boers at the Wonderfontein meeting.
It will strike most people that this oath is the oath of men

( 40 )

who are to be respected. It will also strike them that such
men are likely to secure the sympathy of the great bulk of
the English nation: — " In the presence of Almighty God,
the Searcher of hearts, and praying for His gracious assist-
ance and mercy, we, burghers of the South African Eepublic,
have solemnly agreed, for us and for our children, to unite
in a holy covenant, which we confirm with a solemn
oath. It is now forty years ago since our fathers left the
Cape Colony to become a free and independent people.
These forty years were forty years of sorrow and suffering-
We have founded Natal, the Orange Free State, and the
South African Eepublic, and three times has the English
Government trampled on our liberty. And our flag, bap-
tized with the blood and tears of our fathers, has been
pulled down. As by a thief in the night has our free Ee-
public been stolen from us. We cannot suffer this and we
may not. It is the will of God that the unity of our fathers
and the love to our children should oblige us to deliver unto
our children, unblemished, the heritage of our fathers. It
is for this reason that we here unite, and give each other
the hand as men and brethren, solemnly promising to be
faithful to our country and people, and looking unto God,
to work together unto death for the restoration of the
liberty of our Eepublic. So truly help us, God Almighty."
Till Sir Bartle Frere appeared upon the scene at the
Cape, men ridiculed the idea of another Kaffir war. Then
all was changed. The following is an extract from a letter,
dated February 12, 1879, received by a gentleman in London
from a well-known merchant at the Cape : — " Who is re-
sponsible for the fearful loss of life which has taken place
in Zululand ? This is now the question of all questions ;
but we fear that it will drop out of sight, as the iniquitous
proceedings perpetrated here during the late so-called war
have done. The Zulus will, of course, be crushed, as
* Might is Eight ' seems now to be England's motto. Sir
Bartle Frere and Lord Chelmsford must answer for the part
they have played, and for the consequences of the tragedy
they have caused. Never was there a greater mistake than
the Frere- Sprigg native policy. We have not right on our
side, and we have not the force to carry it out, even if we

( 41 )

had. We have made enemies of the loyal Gaikas, of the
Basutos, of the Fingoes, of the Zulus, and of every other
tribe in South Africa, by our harsh and unjust treatment of
them. The appointment of Sir Bartle Frere as Governor,
and of Mr. Sprigg and his party to power, are the greatest
misfortunes which have befallen this country for fifty years."

The South African correspondent of the Daily News,
writing from Maritzburg, March 2, 1879, says : — " It is now
only too evident to every one that Sir Bartle Frere' s policy
has been most mischievous in its effects upon South African
interests. More has been done since he landed at Cape-
town, two years ago, to produce discord and- unsettlement
than, it is to be feared, can be undone for many years to
come. Friendly tribes have been exasperated; colonists
have been ridden over rough-shod, and now it would seem
that the High Commissioner is bent on bringing about the
last and final evil, by engaging in a war of conquest with
the Transvaal Boers. There is a strong and increasing feel-
ing throughout South Africa that the annexation of the
Transvaal must be reversed. When that act took place it
met with very wide approval, for two reasons — first because
it was believed that the majority of the Boers were consent-
ing parties ; and next, because it was believed that the act
might tend to bring the two great European nationalities
closer together. The return of the second Transvaal depu-
tation has brought to light the fact that the majority of the
Boers were by no means consenting parties. They com-
plain, too, and justly, that not one of the promises made at
the time of the annexation had been fulfilled. If the acts
of the annexation were repealed, and time allowed for the
bitter feelings engendered by it to subside, there is little
doubt that the Boers would be found willing to come into
some sort of confederation with the other South African
States, and there can be no doubt that if the Transvaal
came in willingly the Free State, whose capital, Bloem-
fontein, is regarded by many as the natural capital of
South Africa, would come in also."

What is to be the end of our system of annexation in
South Africa ? Our Pro-Consuls far away from the healthy
criticism of the English Press, and possibly better trained

( 42 )

in ancient than modern history, dream imperial dreams, and
the public at home applauds when a magnificent success
crowns their work. In the case of Sir Bartle Frere there
has been a failure, and he will have to pay the penalty ;
while demagogues who, like the Irishman who when landed
in America, and asked for his vote for the opposition candidate,
immediately promised it, remarking he was " again all Govern-
ment," see in the failure the hand of Earl Beaconsfield, and
hold him up to scorn and contempt. It is clear what has
been done at the Cape is only in accordance with the whole
past of colonial rule, not merely there, but in every quarter
of the globe. We could not leave the Boers alone, who
stood as buffers between us and the surrounding savages.
We must follow them over desert and plain and swamp and
river and rock and bush. The colonist reaped, at any rate,
a benefit from such a policy, for he made profitable con-
tracts for his waggons and horses; and there was a refresh-
ing stream of English gold, which otherwise would have
been dried up. The Book of Nature might say, Leave the
Boers and the savages alone ; but to a highly-cultured
people the Book of Nature is a blank, and the passions and
prejudices, and fears and hopes, of the passing hour are the
only considerations by which the public and the puppets it
places in office are moved. Some of us still talk of the New
Testament ; but he who were to quote it, even after Mr.
Speaker had said his prayers, in our High Court of Parlia-
ment, as bearing in any way on national policy, would be
as much laughed at as Dr. Kenealy or Major O'Gorman.
Meanwhile time will solve the problem — the storm will
blow over. The mob and the pictorial papers will glorify
the returning heroes who have crashed a savage who was
mad enough to defy on his own behalf and on that of his
people the British power, and the British public will have
to pay the bill — not, unfortunately, the hard-working, over-
taxed working man ; he is a myth, as much so as a mer-
maid or a griffin ; but that large middle-class, on whom the
tax-gatherer instinctively preys ; who have been shorn so
often that it has become to them a second nature ; who have
been the mainstay of the country, but who are fast becoming,
under the weight of Imperial taxation for Imperial schemes,
an extinct race.

CHAPTEE III.

OUB KAFFIB WABS.

Weiting two or three years ago, Captain Aylward, in his
work on the Transvaal, indicated that South Africa would
be a burning question for the British taxpayer in the
summer of 1879. That period of time has passed, but
before then the question came to the aggrieved indi-
vidual aforesaid in an unpleasantly novel and alarming
manner. In spite of instructions from home, Sir Bartle
Frere at once initiated an aggressive war on the Zulu
nation, which represented an expenditure of a million
and a half, and which, before it was fought out to
the bitter end, occasioned the expenditure of a much
larger sum. In a time of unexampled commercial
distress, when thousands of homes have been made
desolate ; when tender and delicate women who have been
nursed in luxury and comfort have been deprived of their
daily bread ; when grey-haired old men have found them-
selves after the struggle of a life made paupers ; when the
most the majority of us can do is to meet the inevitable
expenditure of the passing day — we were committed, in
accordance with the Imperial instincts of officials in high
quarters, to a warlike policy of which none could tell the
result or calculate the cost. This, alas! is no new thing
where our South African colonies are concerned. A war is
begun by a blundering ruler, or in accordance with the
wishes of interested parties, and the ignorant public at
home has to pay the bill. Sir Arthur Cunynghame, in his
last work, expresses the hope that for the Kaffir wars which
were in existence when he was at the Cape the British tax-
payer would not have to pay ; nevertheless, in the Budget

( 44 )

^£344,000 are put down for the Transkei War. Mr. Trollope
goes a step further, and plainly shows that the colonist,
whether as farmer or labourer or trader, is much better off
than men of the same class at home, and that it is unjust
we should be taxed by an immense military expenditure for
their benefit alone. Speaking of the Transvaal, he adds,
u Great as is the Parliamentary strength of the present
Ministry, Parliament would hardly endure the idea of pay-
ing permanently for the stability and security of a Dutch
population out of the British pocket." But Parliament
will take money out of British pockets with which to
fight the Dutch population. It is to be questioned
whether we as a people have been pecuniarily benefited by
South African colonies. They offer no such advantages as
a field of emigation as New Zealand or Canada or Australia.
The emigrant is afraid of a Kaffir War, and he goes elsewhere.
If the colonists had to pay for their own wars, we should
have had fewer of them, and by this time they would have
been in a much more flourishing condition. Nor should we
have been trembling, as we were at one time, lest any morning
we might hear the Zulu army had marched into Natal and
had not left a white man alive to tell the tale of the terrible
tragedy that ensued. I maintain there will be no end to
these Kaffir scares and Kaffir wars so long as the men and
money of the mother country are so employed, and so long
as the colonial governors are allowed to rush into war. If
a man goes to live in South Africa he should do so with the
feeling that he runs a certain risk, and that knowledge
would make him live on good terms with the natives.
High interest, as the late Duke of Wellington is reported to
have said, means bad security. In a similar manner, we
may say, cheap land means bad security ; and the farmer
who buys the freehold ol his farm in Natal for less than the
rent he has to pay for it at home cannot expect to be
as secure in purse or person as a farmer in the Weald of
Kent.

War is the inevitable result of the way we have gone to
work in South Africa. In the sparsely-peopled land of
North America the key-note of settlement is struck at the

( 45 )

moderate figure of 200 acres to the settler ; in South Africa
it has been fixed at twenty times that sum ; and 4,000 acres
make the minimum of land upon which the pioneer of civili-
sation will begin his work. And what is the result ? Why,
that in South Africa our settlers spread themselves farther
and farther out in defenceless isolation — people a territory
as large as France with the population of a tenth-rate Enghsh
town — drive the natives back into more compact masses
outside our frontiers, who, naturally covetous of the lands of
which we have dispossessed them, are anxious and ready to
fight with us whenever an opportunity occurs. Very clearly
we are shown that the late Zulu war was the result of the
annexation of the Transvaal. " For thirty years," writes
Colonel Butler, " the emigrating Dutch had acted as a
buffer between us and the native races. By the annexation
of the Transvaal we removed that buffer and placed our-
selves face to face with the black man along seven hundred
miles of frontier. Nay. we did more than that, we stepped
at once into a legacy of contention, oppression, and injustice,
from which it was almost impossible to escape." In the
Diamond Fields we created a new danger, inasmuch as it
brought together all the representatives of the various black
races scattered over the continent ; bands of twenty tribes
whose common brotherhood has been laid ages and ages
ago, amidst the wars and wanderings of a time before the
white man came. In the vast school-room at Kimberley,
the prizes given were rifles and ammunition; the lesson
taught was identity of interest against a common foe.

Lieutenant-Colonel Butler may well complain that in
these busy times people have no time to inquire into an
injustice, and that they quickly grow tired of the whole
subject. And even the novelty of an unrighteous war soon
wears off. Still we cannot but quote what he has to say on
the origin of native wars: — " There is nothing more easy,
said a veteran Cape statesman to the writer, than to get up
a war in South Africa. If I had only known that the
Government wanted such things, I could have given them a
score of Kaffir wars in my time. He spoke the soberest
truth. A wild or semi- wild man is always ready to fight if

( 46 )

wrong be put upon him. It is the only method of obtaining
redress or vengeance that he knows of. He has no means
of separating the acts of irresponsible white men from the
government under which they live. The only government
he can understand is that personal rule which makes the
chief and the subject alike answerable ; and hence every
trader carries with him, in his dealings with natives, the
character of the nation to which he belongs. Yet wherever
I have gone, among wild or semi-wild men. I have found one
Idea prevalent in the minds of white men trading with
natives. That idea was that it was perfectly fair and legi-
timate to cheat the wild man in every possible way. One
hundred years ago it was considered right to cheat the black
man out of his liberty and sell him as a slave. To-day it is
the natural habit of thought to cheat the black man out of
Iris land or out of his cattle. In the coast region of Natal
the coin known as a florin is called among natives a Scotch
half-crown. The reason of the title is simple. A few years
ago an enterprising North Briton went to trade with the
natives in that part of the country. He did not barter —
lie paid cash for what he bought. Curiously enough he
always tendered half-crowns in payment. Months later the
natives found that their half-crowns were worth only two
shillings each ; and since that time the florin, along the
coast, bears the name of ' Scotchman. ' Instances of a
similar kind could be multiplied until the reader would be
tired of their iteration.' '

What is to be done with the African is a question which
concerns us all. America, at the time of its discovery, said
to contain fourteen million Indians, to-day does not contain
four hundred thousand. Alas ! for us, the African will not
die off like the Indian. Nor can we much wonder that we
do not find him a hopeful subject from the missionary point
of view. " In nine cases out of ten," writes Lieutenant-
Colonel Butler, " we have taken or bought or tricked his
land from him ; we have killed or chased away the wild
animals that roamed upon it ; we have shouldered him out
into the remote mountains or regions unfitted for our present
wants. He learns our knowledge after a little time ; but

( 47 )

that is only as a light held out to show how miserable is
the position he has accepted — the position of a Christian
pariah." In one respect, certainly, the Boers were wiser
than ourselves. In our greed for diamonds we gave the
natives all the guns and ammunition they required. It was
our diamond diggers who gave the Zulu king the power, to
crush which, we had to enter on a war for which the British
taxpayer had somewhat heavily to pay ; while the greedy
colonist pocketed his golden gains. South Africa altogether
is an expensive luxury. The colonists will not work. All
that we get is wool, ostrich feathers, diamonds. Farming
is quite at a discount, and yet there the land is specially
fitted for the farmer and the agriculturist. The only farmer
was the old-fashioned Boer, at one time hospitable and ever
ready to welcome the stranger at his gate ; now naturally a
hater, and with good reason, of the British name.

In 1811 was our first Kaffir war. It was waged on our
part in the most cruel manner — no quarter was given by the
white man — no prisoners taken — all were slaughtered till
the Kaffirs were driven backwards and eastwards across the
Great Fish Eiver. In 1819 we had another fight, as was to
be expected. Wars lead to wars. What the sword wins
the sword only can retain. Lord Charles Somerset, who
had Imperial ideas of the most pronounced character, took
it into his head to elect G-aika as the sole head of Kaffirland,
wThen in reality the paramount chief was Hintza. In 1818,
by seizing the wife of one of the latter's chief councillors,
and other aggressive acts, Gaika drew upon himself the
enmity of his superior, and was defeated in a fierce battle
with great slaughter. After the defeat Gaika appealed to
the British Government to assist him, not in bringing about
a reconciliation, but in making war on his enemies. Ac-
cordingly a powerful force of regular troops and armed
colonists, to the number of 3,352 men, under Colonel
Brereton, was despatched to fight on behalf of this wretched
savage. The reward of their valour consisted in more than
30,000 head of cattle, of which 21,000 of the finest were
given to the colonists and the rest to Gaika. As a natural
consequence, the plundered tribes, rendered desperate by

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famine, crossed the Fish Kiver in great numbers, drove in
the small military posts, and compelled the border colonists
to abandon their dwellings. Additional troops were sent to
the frontier, and a plan was formed for the re-invasion of
Kaffirland. But before that plan was carried out, the Kaffirs,
to the number of 9,000, led by Makanna, attacked G-ra-
hamstown, and would have taken it had not the leader, in
accordance with the custom of the heroes of his country,
sent a message overnight to inform Colonel Willshire, the
British commandant, that he would breakfast with him
next morning. This gave the British time to prepare, and
the result was 1,400 Kaffirs were left dead on the field.
After this Colonel Willshire and Landdrost Stockenstrom
advanced into the enemy's country, carrying fire and
slaughter everywhere. At length Makanna, to obtain better
terms for his people, freely surrendered himself into the
hands of the English ; but this act had no effect on the
latter, who proceeded to drive away the Kaffirs and to annex
3,000 square miles of fertile territory. The Kaffir, of course r
became more incensed against us than ever. He saw his
lands taken away, and an inferior chief placed, as it were, in
power; but for a while, however, we had no regular fight-
ing, only occasional brushes in consequence of cattle stealing,
real or pretended. There is a foray recorded in the Gape
Government Gazette of 1823 as a very meritorious affair. At
daybreak on the 5th, Major Somerset, having collected his
force, passed with celerity along a ridge, and at daylight had
the satisfaction of pouring into the centre of Makanna's kraal
with a rapidity that at once astonished and completely over-
set the Kaffirs. A few assegais were thrown, but the attack
was made with such vigour that little resistance could be
made. As many Kaffirs having been destroyed as it was
thought would evince our superiority and power, Major
Somerset stopped the slaughter, and secured the cattle to
the amount of about 7,000 head.

Strange to say, this mode of impressing the Kaffir with
the fact of our superiority and power only made matters
worse, and the commissioners of inquiry had to report, in
July, 1825, that the annexation had entailed expenses upon

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the Government and sacrifices upon the people in no degree
compensated with the acquirement of the territory which
was the object of it. A similar remark may be made at the
present time, for, as soon as a colony gets strong enough, its
first effort is to fight the mother country with a hostile
tariff. It seems then, as now, nothing was easier than to
get up a casus belli. Mr. Thomas Baines, the great African
traveller, illustrates in an amusing manner what is meant
by justice to the natives by some of our colonists. " I was
speaking to a friend," he writes, " respecting the new dis-
coveries, and we both agreed that it would be wrong to
make war upon the natives and take the gold-fields away
from them." " But," said my friend, " I would work with
foresight. I would send cattle farmers to graze their herds
near the borders, and the Kaffirs would be sure to steal
them ; but if not, the owner could come away, and he could
even withdraw his herdsmen and let them run night and
day, then the Kaffirs could not resist the temptation. We
could go in and claim the stolen cattle, and if the Kaffirs
resisted and made war, of course, they would lose their
country."

Our next Kaffir war was, as all our Kaffir wars were, dis-
creditable to ourselves. The war was not only, writes Mr.
Trollope, bloody, but ruinous to thousands. The cattle
were, of course, destroyed, so that no one was enriched.
Of the ill-blood then engendered the effects still remain.
Three hundred thousand pounds were spent by the British.
But at last the Kaffirs were supposed to have been con-
quered, and Sir Benjamin D'Urban triumphant. Lord
Glenelg himself, however, declared that the Kaffirs had
" ample justification." It seems to an impartial observer
that the war was entirely brought about by the English.
After his expulsion from the Kat Eiver, Macomo, the son of
Gaika, retired to the banks of the Chumie, but so far from
instigating his people to plunder the colony, he appears to
have done his best to restrain them. On that head we have
abundant testimony, but it suited the Colonial Governor
to have him and his brother Syalie removed, and re-
moved they were under really aggravating circumstances.

( 50 )

Our own soldiers did their work well, and we have graphic
pictures of burning villages, ruined cultivations, and people
driven away like wild beasts. The chief was sulky, writes
Colonel Wade, and well he might be. Another cause of
the war was the frontier system, which constantly led to
collisions with the natives. As the Chief Tyalie declared,
*' Every year a commando comes, every week a patrol
comes, every day farmers come and seize our cattle." It
was then the infuriated natives swept over the colony, to
be in turn driven back. The murder of the great chief
Hintza appears to have been an extraordinarily brutal one.
" It is stated to me," writes Lord G-lenelg, " that Hintza
repeatedly cried for mercy, that the Hottentots present
granted the boon, and abstained from killing him ; that this
office was then undertaken by Mr. Southey, and that then
the dead body of the fallen chief was basely and inhumanly
mutilated."

Under Sir Peregrine Maitland we had a fourth Kaffir
war. Almost his first act was to commit an unpardonable
sin in Kaffir eyes — the erection of a fort in their territory.
As they said in their own expressive language, the new
chief smelt of war, and war soon came. A Kaffir stole an
axe ; he was sent to Grahamstown to be tried at the circuit
court. The chief Tola said that was contrary to the treaty
that all such offences were to be tried at Fort Beaufort.
The plea was in vain — the man was sent ; an attempt was
made to rescue him, and a Hottentot policeman was shot.
At once the English took the field to avenge the insult in
blood.

In 1850 the fifth Kaffir war arose, and the inhabitants of
one advanced military village after another were murdered.
This went on for nearly two years, but was at last sup-
pressed by dint of hard fighting. It cost Great Britain,
wrote Mr. Trollope, upwards of two millions of money,
with the lives of about four hundred fighting men.

Our Natal territory cost us a little war initiated by Sir
George Napier in 1841. At first the war went very much
in favour of the Dutch. Then a larger force came, and the
Dutch succumbed to numbers. It was not, however, till

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1843 that the twenty-four still existing members of the
Volksraad declared Her Majesty's Government to be
supreme. In the case of the Orange Free State we had a
war which resulted in our beating the Dutch and winning
the place, only to relinquish it again. Our rule in Natal led
to our little war with King Langalibalele, who had come
to live in Natal as king of the Hlubi tribe, who is now
living, after a good many lives had been lost, near Cape-
town at an expense to the Government of £500 a year. In
England it was felt that the chief had been unfairly used,
the trial was adjudged to have been conducted with over-
strained rigour, and the punishment to have been too
severe. There would have been no war at all had it not
been for the blunders of mischievous go-betweens. Then
came the Zulu War, of the bitter incidents of which
it is needless to speak. And now once more we are at
war, and a cry has been raised for the extermination
of the Boers as an independent nation ; and when that is
over, there will be fresh hordes of hostile natives to be fought,
new lands to be annexed, a scientific frontier to be gained,
and the colonists will make fortunes out of the millions
thus spent. I ask in sorrow, How long is England to be
strained and denuded of men and money for these costly
wars ? Surely it is a reproach alike to the Christianity and
Statesmanship of our time that we have not yet hit on a
more excellent way.

CHAPTEE IV.

A PLEA FOB THE KAFFIB.

At the present moment — this was written in 1879 — we are
witnessing a sorry spectacle for a Christian nation : that of
a whole people hemmed in in one corner of Eastern Africa,
waiting to be swept off the face of the earth by the finest
soldiers and the most scientific instruments of murder
England has at her command. Their crime has been that
in defending their native soil from the tread of the foe, they
annihilated an English regiment, and for such an act there
is no hope of pardon, in this world at least. From every
corner of the land, from the pulpit and the Press, from the
hut of the peasant and the palace of the prince, from the
cad of the music-hall and the statesmen of Downing Street,
there has risen a cry for revenge ; and that we shall take a
full and fierce revenge there can be no doubt. Already in
England and in Africa the blood-stained demon of war has
sown her seed and reaps her harvest ; already there have
been bitter tears shed over hundreds of fallen heroes in
desolated homes, and women wail and children vainly cry
for loved ones whose bones now bleach the distant plain of
Isandula. And there will be sadder and darker tragedies
yet to come if the wild instincts of the people are to be gra-
tified and the Zulu Kaffirs are to be exterminated. They
are now represented as savage hordes, whose existence is
incompatible with English rule. Let me plead that they
are not such as they are represented, and that it is better
that we make them friends. Cetawayo, by not crossing the
Tugela and sweeping with fire and slaughter through Natal
when that colony lay stricken and terrified at his feet, has
set us an example of forbearance which it were wise to imi-

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tctte. If we fail to do so, the blood feud between us and his
people can know no end. They in their turn will nurse a
spirit of revenge, and the Kaffir wars of the future will be
fiercer and more cruel than any we have hitherto known.

There is much in the Kaffirs that should make them
friendly with the English people if fairly treated. One well-
known writer states that they are keen observers of cha-
racter, and have great contempt for a man who gets drunk,
or who does not keep his word. Kaffirs should be treated
with kindness, fairness, and firmness. They have an accu-
rate idea of justice, and appreciate the administration of
just legislation, wrote Mr. Wilson, late a resident magistrate
in Natal. In their wild state they are innocent, quiet, un-
offending, and hospitable, and it is only when they live close
to a European town that they acquire the bad habits of the
white race, and with the cunning instincts natural to them
become dangerous to the community. Said another colonist,
at a conference recently held at the African section of the
Society of Arts, mentally they were equal to white men.
Dr. Mann, who has lived twenty- five years in Natal, and
who has written a large work on that colony, declares that
the Kaffirs had great ability, and, even without education,
seemed a much higher race intellectually than the lower
class of the agricultural population in England. In fact, he
would rather go to a Kaffir for a response to an appeal to
his reason than to an English labourer. Twenty years ago
said Mr. Eichardes, they brought comparatively nothing,
but now they were great customers to the British merchant.
As a further proof of how a Zulu Kaffir could rise in the
world, Dr. Mann mentions the case of one he knew who
could not read, who borrowed on his own credit £500 to buy
a sugar mill, and obtained a further loan from the Govern-
ment to get it to work, and who, in three years, paid off the
loan, and became a prosperous manufacturer. It seems a
pity to kill off such people — a people by nature intended to
be our customers and allies and friends. Much more than
this may be said. " Kaffirs seem," writes Lady Barker, " a
very gay and cheerful people, to judge by the laughter and
jests I hear from the groups returning to their kraals every

( 54 )

day by the road just outside our fence." A similar testimony
was borne by Mr. Eobert Eichardson in a paper read by
him a year or two since at a meeting of the Society of Arts.
" The Zulu," he said, " may not be dignified, but manliness
and good temper are written on his cheerful countenance ;
and he is not only groom and cattle herd, but domestic
servant, and performs with alacrity the least honourable
service about a house. If Natal lambs don't skip, as the
Surveyor-General once said, at least the Natal servant does,
for his errands are done at a trot, cutting capers, while he
sings with an appearance of great enjoyment in his own
music. Brimful of humour, he is essentially a laughing
animal, and having few wants or comforts, he rivals Mark
Tapley in being jolly under creditable circumstances. All
things considered, the Natal Zulu is a better servant than
the (Cape) frontier Kaffir."

There is much that is good in these Kaffirs. A corre-
spondent of the Cape Mercury wrote : " It is said the Kaffir
language has no word for gratitude ; but, nevertheless, the
Kaffirs are not all void of it. A native man in good circum-
stances lent a brick waggon gratis to convey Mr. Conway
and family to the house of his father-in-law, Mr. Conway
being at the time very ill. Unfortunately, after his arrival,
he died, leaving his wife and family not very well off. The
other day the native arrived to take home his waggon which
he had kindly lent, and found that if he took it he would
leave Mrs. Conway without any means to make an inde-
pendent living. To the astonishment of all present, he
said, ' I don't forget good deeds done to me by Conway
before poverty overhauled him, and to show that I am
sincerely sorry for his family I here make you, his widow,
a present of my waggon and gear now in your possession to
enable you to provide for his children.' The value of the
waggon was £60."

In contrast with this is the utter indifference displayed by
too many colonists as to the welfare of the Kaffirs. " The
other day," says a writer in a Colonial paper called the
Independent, " a wheelbarrow tumbled over the Kimberley
(Diamond fields) reef on to the head of a Kaffir. His master,

( 55 )

with some irritation, inquired of the employer of the careless
servant, ' Do you want to kill my Kaffirs ? ' The reply was
an indignant query, * What about my wheelbarrow ? It's
smashed, and your Kaffir isn't hurt.' "

But enough of this. According to all writers the Kaffir is
deeply impressed with a sense of English superiority. Let
us now show him our true superiority; that we war not
with him, that we desire not his land, that we are as
merciful as we are strong. Cetewayo's young men have
washed their spears in blood, and ours have fallen under
circumstances which have created an abiding sense of their
heroism in every Zulu breast. Have we no wise men among
us who can stand between the living and the dead, and calm
the natural passions of the hour, and stay the ravages of
war ? If there be not such, our task is an endless one to
fight and conquer, merely to fight and conquer again. The
soldier cannot solve the difficulty ; he merely postpones it
for a time.

Failing to do justice to the Kaffirs we are left to a very
undesirable alternative. If we cease to rule by kindness,
we must do so by brute force. Contemplating this delightful
state of things, the Natal Witness of the 8th of February
says : — " Civilisation has become unmistakably aggressive.
The result which it was hoped might be gained by the quiet
influence of the plough-share and the railway, is now
destined to be effected, under the guidance of Sir Bartle
Frere, at the point of the bayonet. The great herald of
peace, whose feet were to be so beautiful upon the moun-
tains, has become the genius of war. "Whether Sir Bartle
Frere foresaw this, we are not aware, nor are we aware
whether he likes his position. We will not even argue
whether he is right or wrong in believing that civilisation
must be aggressive. Judging by history, we incline to the
opinion that he is right, and if he is right, then the hope of
producing the social amalgamation we have referred to was
a vain hope altogether. But whether it is a vain hope or
not, let us not deceive ourselves about one thing — that it is
now extinguished. The ship of State has been put about on
the other tack, and is at the present moment, it must be

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owned, making very bad weather of it. Whatever is now
done by way of civilising the native population in South
Africa must be done by force. We do not necessarily mean
such physical force as is employed in a pitched battle. We
mean rather this — that the native population must hence-
forth be ruled by a show of military strength rather than by
trust in British justice or regard for commercial advantages.
This, we say, may be right ; it may in the very nature of
things have been unavoidable. But do not let us deceive
ourselves about it. The fact is so, and we must make the
hest of it or the worst. If the Home Government will be
content to keep a large military force in South Africa for
thirty years to come, and if South Africa can afford to pay
for it ; or if, failing this, the British taxpayer will be kind
enough to pay for the protection of the colonies which will
not be worth protecting if he does not pay — if all this comes
to pass, then for thirty years South Africa will be a place
which, though utterly useless as a field for immigration, a
place in which certain classes of people can live. But then
will these things be done? Will England be content to
keep such a body of troops in South Africa? Can South
Africa pay for them ? And, if South Africa cannot, will the
British public pay? These are questions most seriously
affecting our future, and which for the present we leave to
be answered by our readers as best they may be able."
Such is a colonial aspect of what is emphatically a colonial
question.

We hear in these days so much about the Zulu that we
are apt to forget that in South Africa we have any one else
to deal with. In fact the coloured people with whom our
whites more or less come into contact, are estimated by
Mr. Trollope, our best authority on the subject, at 3,000,000,
and with the exception of the Korannas, and the Bushmen,
who inhabit Namaqualand, a region where only copper is to
be found, are a very superior race of men, well-built, with
good capabilities, mental and physical. It is to be questioned
whether the danger in the recent system of government at
the Cape, which places power in the hands of the white
colonists alone, is not calculated to create discontent among

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the numerous and high-spirited people around. It is much
to be regretted also, that we have not yet been able to adopt
a steady and consistent policy with the native tribes. The
great civilising agency of our time is the British trader, and
at the Kimberley mines he has set the native to work ; but
more than this is required if the native is to be elevated
and to be taught to take his proper place as a labourer in
the great harvests of the world.

If the reader looks at a map of South Africa, he will find
that it is divided into many districts, some of them of
immense extent — hundreds of miles apart, and inhabited
by peoples under varying rulers, and with varying interests.
The Cape, for instance, has little sympathy with Natal, and
the great Namaqualand has little in common with the
Transvaal. In the latter country, as is well known, we
have a community hostile to English rule, while the Orange
Free State, on each side hemmed in by English dominions,
maintains a precarious independency of its own. A grand
South African confederation is a beautiful idea ; but there
does not seem much chance of carrying it out just now.
Meanwhile we go on annexing all the surrounding country,
much to the discontent of the natives themselves.

At present the great difficulty is the native population.
According to all accounts, they are in an unsettled and
agitated state. Of the original Hottentot we do not hear
much. Mr. Trollope believes that the bulk of the popu-
lation of the Western Province of the Cape Colony is
Hottentot, who has, however, long given up all idea of
independence. The Dutchmen and the Englishmen also,
who are to be met with in the East and West alike, are not
likely to give much trouble ; but as we get further from the
Cape, and the white population is sparser, the difficulties
increase. It is true there is no chance of a Kaffir scare in
that part of Africa bordering on the Atlantic, nor in the
Kalakari desert on the North is there any danger to be
apprehended ; but it is as we get nearer the Indian Ocean,
and especially after we have crossed the Kei, and come into
Kaffraria proper, that we find ourselves in the presence of a
native population, always required to be watched with a

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careful eye. There dwell the Galekas, who, to the number
of 66,000, under Kreli, have only recently been put down.
They and the Tembus, and the Pondos, and the Bomvanas,
and the Fingos, inhabit all the district till Natal is reached.
Amongst some of them a British Besident resides ; in all
they do pretty much as they like. Of Natal and its 300,000
Kaffirs it is needless to say more here. In the same neigh-
bourhood are the Griquas; but they are bastard races. The
Balongas of Thaba 'Ncho, who dwell under the shelter of
the Orange Free State, and the Basutos, are a branch of
the Bechuanas, who inhabit that part of the Kalakari desert
bordering on Griqualand and the Transvaal. Of the black
African races, the Sou th-E astern people whom we call
Kaffirs and Zulus are, probably, the best. They are not
constitutionally cruel ; they learn to work readily, and they
save property ; but even at the Cape, where they will have
power at the voting-booth, Mr. Bowker, the late com-
mandant of the Frontier Mounted Police, says :— " As a
nation, they hate the white man, and look forward to the
day when he will be expelled the country." Mr. Trollope
remarks of the native that he is a good-humoured fellow,
whether by nature a hostile Kaffir, or submissive Fingo, or
friendly Basuto ; but, if occasion should arise, he would
probably be a rebel. The two names most familiar to the
English readers are the Gaikas and Galekas, who have both
given us a good deal of trouble. Sandilli, with his Gaikas,
have long been subjected, though they have not been re-
garded as peaceable as the Fingos and the Basutos. The
total population of the region beyond the Kei is stated to
be 500,100, of whom, with the small exception of the
Griquas, all are Kaffirs.

Our special friends among the natives are the Fingos — a
tribe originally driven from Natal by the warrior Chaka,
among the Galekas, by whom they were enslaved and
regarded as Kaffir dogs. We English took pity on them,
released them from slavery, and settled them somewhere
near the coast between the great Fish Kiver and the
Keishamma, and their old masters, the Galekas. There
they were a perpetual eyesore to their former masters. In

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the first place, they had for their 50,000 souls 2,000 square
miles, while that left for the 66,000 Galekas was not more
than 1,600 miles. Again, the Fingos have been a money-
making people, possessing oxen and waggons, and gradually
rising in the world. For a time, as was to be expected,
mischief between the two tribes was brewing, and in 1877 a
drunken row precipitated the two into war. We rushed
into the war to defend the Fingos, and Kreli, who had no
desire for a struggle with the English, was beaten, and his
country annexed. The Basutos, who have given up fight-
ing since the days of their great king Moshesh, number
about 127,000. In the map they are now included in the
Cape Province ; but they border the Orange Free State —
lying between it and Kaffraria. In 1868 they became, after
a wearisome contest with the Dutch, so worried by the
latter, that they implored the British to take them as
subjects. The Basutos are not Kaffirs, but a branch of the
Bechuanas, as are the Balongas, who live peacefully under
the shelter of the Dutch in the Orange Free State. As
their land is the very best on the Continent for agricultural
purposes, they have bought a great many ploughs, are great
growers of corn and wool, and naturally, as is the case with
such people, are friends of peace and great lovers of money.
At one time they were cannibals. For a long time they
were terrible fighters, and that they have become what they
are may be quoted as a fine testimony to the civilising
influences of the trader. At the same time, it will not be
difficult to make enemies of them. One of their chiefs —
Morosi — has, taking advantage of the Zulu war, attempted
a little emeute on his own hook. We are glad to find, as
was to be expected, that he has got the worst of it.
In a letter dated March I, from Alrival North, the writer
says : — " I wonder the Government are not more active
in their movements, and send a proper force to crush him at
once, as it is believed here that if Morosi gets the least
advantage the whole of Basutoland will be in a blaze.
Sprigg will find that the Disarming Act will cost the colony
more than he expected, and the Basutos, who are supposed
to be loyal, are not at all inclined to give up their arms, and

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I am sure will not do so without a struggle." Sir Garnet
Wolsley said as much, and the prophecy has been fulfilled.
We are now at war with the Basutos, and the following is
their petition which has been addressed to England : — " The
petition of the Basuto chiefs for peace is signed by Lero-
thodi, Letsea, Joel Molappe, and other chiefs of Basutoland,
and is sent to Sir George Strahan on behalf of themselves
and their people. They state that for 12 years they have
lived peacefully under the Queen's Government as loyal
subjects paying all taxes, and using arms in defence of the
interests of her Majesty. They refer to a petition from
Letsea, their late paramount chief, to Sir Bartle Frere,
making the same declaration of loyalty. They complain
that the Cape Government was confiscating their land for
the benefit of Europeans, which was believed to be the
beginning of the confiscation of the whole of Basutoland
and the extermination of the rightful owners. Next came
the order to disarm, although the only arms they had were
purchased under permits from Government officers, and had
been used, and were ready again to be used, in defence of
the Queen's sovereignty. Mr. Sprigg (the Cape Prime
Minister) himself said that the Basutos should not be dis-
armed * until the surrounding tribes had been disarmed and
a strong protective force established in Basutoland. This
protective force has never been established, though pro-
mised. The Basuto people will willingly and cheerfully
obey the laws and orders of her Majesty the Queen, but we
pray you to beseech her Majesty to allow us to retain our
arms and our country. We pray you also to beseech her
Majesty to cause war and bloodshed to be stopped in our
country. Our fields are being devastated, our homes de-
stroyed, our wives and children have to flee to the moun-
tains for shelter, where many perish of hunger and disease.
Her Majesty too is a woman. We know we are unable to
fight the white man. We do not want war. We want
peace. Give us peace. We have always been told that her
Majesty is powerful, but just also. Therefore we believe
she will hear this our prayer.' "

The latest phase of the Basuto question (says the Pall

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Mall Gazette) does not hold out much hope of a speedy and
moderate settlement. Sir Hercules Kobinson, notwith-
standing his earnest desire to bring about a peace, cannot
control the action of his Ministers, who have forwarded to
the Basutos an ultimatum, the terms of which will almost
certainly be rejected. The war will therefore be carried on
to its bitter end, and the Basutos, after a prolonged resist-
ance, will be wiped out of the map of South Africa. It has
been suggested that Sir Hercules Kobinson ought to put
pressure upon his Ministers, and to insist upon the imme-
diate summoning of the Colonial Parliament. It is, how-
ever, perfectly clear that such a step would be contrary to
those principles of constitutional government which we
thrust upon the Cape colonists less than ten years ago. If
the Cape Parliament, the meeting of which has been fixed
for the 25th of March, could be at once convoked, there
can be little doubt that affairs would assume a different
aspect. For this very reason, however, the present Cape
Ministry will do nothing to hasten its assembling. Only
by a coup d'etat could Sir Hercules Bobinson ignore their
wishes. And, no matter how great the emergency, a coup
d'etat is not a thing to be encouraged.

The Gaikas who inhabit the district around Frankfort
and King William's Town have been British subjects for
five-and-twenty years ; but it is said that our recent policy
has also much alienated them. These are the men on
whose future relationship depends the fate of South Africa.
Under his own chief in the forest, says Mr. Froude, the
Kaffir is at least a man trained and disciplined ; under Euro-
pean authority he might become as fine a specimen of
manhood as an Irish or English policeman. It is to our
shame that we have left him almost entirely to himself,
and that even our missionaries have done little more than
teach him to sing hymns. Lovedale is, however, an im-
portant testimony to the worth of missionary enterprise
when it takes an industrious turn. There carpentering,
waggon-making, blacksmithing, printing, book-binding,
cabinet-making, and farmwork are all successfully carried
on. At King William's Town young native men, trained at

( 62 )

Lovedale, may be found employed as writers in attorneys'
offices, steadily performing their work, and with satisfaction
to their employers. At Edendale the Be v. James Allison
commenced a still greater work. He bought a block of
land near Maritzburgh, and divided it into sections suitable
to humble purchasers. These purchasers were natives;
his conditions were payment for these lands by instalments,
and the complete surrender of polygamy. The people are
described as industrious and prosperous, they subscribe to
build their own chapels, and when their numbers increase
beyond what the land will fairly support, they swarm out
and purchase land elsewhere. 8,000 acres are thus planted,
with 2,000 inhabitants. If we are to believe the Eev.
Mr. Carlyle, formerly the Presbyterian chaplain at Natal,
nowhere has the missionary been more successful than in
South Africa.

p V^

W. SPEAIGHT AND SONS, PRINTERS, FETTER LANE, LONDON.

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University of California

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YB 34477

M&L2940