while the measure becomes costly. Enquiry free and independent people, and their Govfollows; and then it is evident the conquest ernment a free and independent Governhas been the mere occupation of wastes ment.' The second Article affirms that almost uninhabitable, attended with constant 'The British Government has no alliance inconvenience and dangers to the State, arising from nothing less than the extinction whatever with any native chiefs or tribes to of the rights of the natives, to protect whom the north of the Orange River, with the exwas the pretext of the extension of our au- ception of the Griqua chief Adam Kok; thority.' and her Majesty's Government has no wish or intention to enter hereafter into any treaties which may be injurious or prejudicial to the interests of the Orange River Govern ment.' no such wish or intention at the time when Sir George Clerk's argument decided the resolution of the Colonial Office. The Orange River Boundary had become a fixed idea-a sound idea, had it been carried out completely and adhered to consistently-as Adam Kok was excepted for special reamischievous in its consequences as it was sons, with the consent of the Boers, who unjust and precipitate in conception, in the subsequently purchased his reserved rights form in which it was dictated from Down- from him. The words 'wish or intention ing Street. Sir George Clerk was ordered were accepted in good faith. The correto proceed on the precedent of the Sand spondence proves beyond a doubt that the River Convention. The delegates were reBritish Government had resolved finally and assembled. The final resolution was made definitely to withdraw behind the Orange known to them (February 23, 1854), and River. They did not anticipate that a British the Orange River Sovereignty was reluct- Governor, at the first temptation, would antly endowed with the independence which construe those words to mean that there was it deprecated. The Articles of the Treaty the Treaty was signed, but that the British were few and brief. Sir George Clerk was in haste, and details which might have been Government retained its right to form and embarrassing were slurred over. The object act upon such a wish should it be convenient was declared to be the transfer of the govto do so in the future. If the ambiguity ernment of the Orange River Territory to was intentional, it was a fraud; if it was representatives delegated by the inhabitants accidental, Englishmen sensitive for the to receive it.' The boundary of the Terri-honour of their country will regret that it tory had been defined in 1848 as the Dra- should have been taken advantage of. chenberg Mountains, the Orange River, and the Vaal River. The native chiefs between these limits had been declared British subjects. Were they now constituted subjects of the Government to which the British authority had been transferred? The Colonial Office had not intended this. The native chiefs and tribes,' the Duke of Newcastle wrote to Clerk, will, of course, resume their former independence as soon as the rule of Great Britain terminates.' The relations in which they were to stand towards the independent community about to be formed,' Sir George Clerk was left to determine.t 6 Sir George Clerk finding the subject a tender one left it open. But the delegates refused positively to be parties to the Treaty unless the British Government would bind itself not to interfere between them and the natives, and not to enter into any treaties with the natives by which their interests would be prejudiced. And to this Clerk distinctly consented. By the first Article of the Treaty the Boers of the Territory were declared to be to all intents and purposes * Sir George Clerk to the Duke of Newcastle. -January 14, 1854. Duke of Newcastle to Sir George Clerk. -November 14, 1853. a Of the remaining Articles two only require notice. The Boers undertook to permit no slavery, or trade in slaves within the Territory. The British Government undertook that the Boers whose trade must pass through the Colony or Natal should receive a remission of import duties. The second of these two engagements has never been fulfilled. The duties levied on goods imported for the Orange Free State have continued to be paid into the Colonial exchequer, and no account has been rendered of them. By the first the British Government has remained saddled with the very responsibilities which it was most anxious to avoid. The right of interference implied in the stipulation has been the occasion of perpetual bickering and bad blood; persons who dislike the Boers, and disapprove their system of native management, having ever since besieged the Colonial Office with passionate denunciations of them, in which truth and falsehood can with difficulty be separated. The Boers are a hundred years behind us in what is called civilisation. Their apprentice laws and their vagrant laws under the Commonwealth, and compulsory are like those which prevailed in England apprenticeship and forced labour as a penalty for vagrancy appear to many good peo ple to be identical with slavery. During the British occupation there had been frequent trouble with the natives. Men had been killed, and their women and children, to save them from starvation, bad been distributed as servants among the farmers. It was a practice which might be humane or wantonly cruel, according to the circumstances. On the frontier of the Transvaal, where miscellaneous ruffians of all nations had collected, an infamous trade sprang up in native children-black ivory, as they were called-who were carried into the Dutch settlement and disposed of for money as apprentices. The Orange Free State soon put a stop to these villanies. They lingered longer in the Transvaal; but at length were suppressed there also. Every instance, however, was made the worst of by persons who wished to force the British Government to resume its half-abandoned duty of protecting the native population. England was taught to believe that the Boers were little better than wild beasts, and the independence which had been conceded was so far encroached upon that the Free States were forbidden to communicate with the Home Government, except through the Governor of the Cape. This ambiguous position was so painful to them, that in 1858 the Volksraad of the Orange Territory petitioned to be taken back under the British flag, and Sir George Grey, then Governor of the Cape, advised strongly that their prayer should be complied with. The British Government preferred to leave them without the protection which, as British subjects, they could have claimed, but without also that perfect freedom which they had been promised, and which alone would have enabled them satisfactorily to protect themselves. was on the roads and bridges of the West. So strong was the opposition, that had the British Government left them free to take their own course the Eastern Province would have insisted on separation, and if the West had refused to let them go they would have taken possession of their own Custom House. The Colony having the disposition of its own revenues, the Imperial Government naturally desired to diminish the number of its troops, and to leave to the colonists the expense of defending themselves. The colonists held the Imperial Government at an advantage which they would not part with. The native question in South Africa presents more difficulties than in New Zealand or Australia. The natives in South Africa are multiplying, not diminishing. Behind lies the inexhaustible reserve of the tribes of the enormous continent. To leave the colonists to defend themselves alone would be to tempt the natives into aggressions which could be successfully resisted only by means which British opinion would not tolerate in the Queen's dominions. In Natal, which was a Crown Colony, and most dangerously exposed, it was absolutely indispensable to keep a military force. The Cape Legislature knew, and still know, that as long as we keep a regiment at Cape Town to protect the naval station, and another regiment in Natal, we shall be compelled, whether we like it or not, to share the burden of the defence of the frontier, and that on us, and not on them, will fall the weight of a serious war, should such a misfortune occur. They were unwilling, therefore, to tax themselves unnecessarily, and were content to enjoy the advantage of representative Government while they escaped its responsibilities. Meanwhile a Constitution bad been con- The situation soon became intolerable. ceded to the Colony, and a representative The happiest solution of the difficulty would legislature met at Cape Town in 1854. The have been to have made a sanitary station opportunity had been ingeniously taken at the Cape for the Indian army, where regwhen the Dutch in the Colony had been iments suffering from the Indian climate irritated by the hard treatment of their might be alternately transferred to recover kinsmen, and from the first the new system themselves. The mere presence of a large worked unsatisfactorily. The inhabitants force in the Colony would have been a perof the two Provinces into which the Colony fect insurance against any disturbance from is divided are distinct in race, in language, the Kafirs. This plan, it is said, was once and in habits. The Western Province is seriously thought of, and some preparations Dutch and agricultural; the Eastern Prov- were made; but it was soon abandoned. ince is English and Scotch, and commercial. The impatience of the Colonial Office inThe Western Province had a majority in the creased, and in January 1867 the Colony Assembly; the Eastern produced the largest was informed that the force which was to share of the revenue. The Eastern com- remain there was positively to be reduced plained that under the existing Constitution to three battalions. they were unfairly treated. Two-thirds of the Customs' duties were raised at Port Elizabeth; three-fifths of the expenditure Sir Philip Wodehouse, then Governor, whose ability and experience entitled his advice to more weight than was unhappily It was equally impossible that the Imperial Government could continue to bear the constant expense and the indefinite responsibilities of the defence of the Colony, when it had parted with its control over its revenues and its legislation. A further development of the Constitution was therefore, as Lord Granville said, inevitable. The experiment was a new and a dangerous one. Australia and New Zealand were English colonies. In Canada the French were in a minority. The Cape was a conquered province, in which the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants were of a different race and a different language. The risk was increased by the tone in which the grant of self-government to the great Colonies was generally spoken of by the Liberal party in England. It was assumed that their complete separation from us was a matter of time merely, and that the period of separation was rapidly approaching. It was to be expected, therefore, that among the Dutch of the Cape a party would form itself in favour of independence. The distinctions between the Eastern and Western Provinces, the inability of the Cape to defend itself against an attack from the sea, and the temptation of so commanding a situation to any aggressive foreign power, about which if the Dutch and English quarrelled this power might be invited in by one party or the other, created peculiar and complicated perils. Before so momentous a step was taken as the grant of responsible government, which could not afterwards be recalled, Lord Granville ought to have considered whether the Cape station continued to be of real consequence to the Empire; and if the Cabinet decided, as it is fair to presume they would have done, that the Cape could under no circumstances be allowed to fall into the hands of a rival power, the change in the government ought to have been accompanied with certain specific stipulations. allowed to it, pointed out that the Imperial | further evidence was needed of the impossiGovernment was doing too much or too lit- bility of a good government for South tle. An adequate force must be main- Africa being dictated from Downing tained in the Colony or none at all. A Street, it was about to be supplied in the weak garrison would only invite disturb- worst mistake which had been yet commitances, and if danger came must be rein- ted. forced. The Colony of course might be thrown on its own resources, but the form of the Constitution must then be changed. A Governor without troops and without a responsible ministry could not govern at all. The Imperial Government must make up its mind as to what is wanted. Responsible Government was a step towards independence, and was only suited for countries advancing to independence. Was Great Britain prepared to allow the Cape to become independent, and to accept the possible consequences of such a position? Lord Granville, to whom the question was referred when he came into office under Mr. Gladstone, was prepared to face the alternative. His principle was a simple one. The Colonies must bear their own expenses. If they considered the British connection of value to them they must pay for it. If they did not, they were at liberty to separate. Whether the Cape might become independent or were fit to be independent; what the nature of the population might be; or whether the Dutch majority might not desire to resume their connection with the Low Countries, Lord Granville does not seem to have asked himself. He had perhaps for gotten that South Africa was not a colony properly, but a conquered province. In what proportions the Dutch and English stood to one another we cannot infer from his despatches that he either knew or cared to know. He informed Sir Philip Wodehouse peremptorily that the troops were to be withdrawn, with the probable exception of a single regiment, which might be left for the present for the protection of the naval station. As to the Constitution, it would not work in its present state. His own opinion was in favour of responsible Government whatever might be its risks. As the Colony was said by Sir Philip Wedehouse not to wish for such a Government, an alternative might be tried. If the Colony would give the Crown more power the Crown would take it, and would continue its responsibilities. The Colony, when the alternative was laid before it, declined to part with the liberty which it already possessed. After so long an experience of the uncertainty, the caprice, the indifference to the wishes of the majority of the population which they had met with at the hands of the Colonial Office, it was no wonder that the Dutch were unwilling to return under its authority. If 1. The station at Simon's Bay should have been separated from the rest of the Colony, and retained exclusively under Imperial jurisdiction. Simon's Bay is the only secure and defensible harbour in the Colony, and without it no foreign power could be tempted to meddle with the Cape. It is supremely valuable to us, and is barely large enough for the purposes to which it is now applied. Yet it is left under the Colonial authorities. They may claim it, and they will claim it if their trade increases, as a commercial port. Already the Dutch papers in the Colony are arguing that if England goes to war the Colonial harbours shall be neutral. If such a resolution was arrived at by the Legislature and adopted by the Colonial ministry, the most painful embarrassments would follow. 2. Nothing would be gained by the Imperial Government from passing over the administration to the Colonists, if the garrison of the naval station was liable to be called on in extremity for frontier defence. If the direction of the native policy was committed to a legislature which in 1837 we considered unfit to be trusted with it, British troops could in no case be employed to maintain such a native policy. Yet, as matters stand, the Colonial ministry is aware that in the event of any serious misfortune public opinion in England will expect the garrison to take part in the defence. The British troops indisputably will be sent to the frontier, and the responsibility still clings to us. 3. When responsible government was granted to the Cape, Natal ought to have been reattached to it. The native question throughout South Africa is one. The great stronghold of the Kafirs lies between Natal and the Colony. If there is war on one side there will be war on the other. If a Kafir war breaks out, large reinforcements must be sent to Natal. And, as we said before, the Cape Colony will never tax itself to maintain an adequate police force on its own frontiers so long as it knows that it can count with certainty on the presence of a British army in Natal. 4. The Governor of the Cape, beyond his local functions, possesses as High Commissioner an indefinite right of interference in native questions beyond the Colonial border. This office is a relic of the policy of 1837. In the discharge of it the Governor is independent of the advice of his ministers. If the course which he pursues is such as his ministers disapprove or decline to support, he has to fall back upon support from home, and the Imperial Government thus remains exposed to liabilities of the most dangerous kind. The High Commissioner can lecture the two Free States, he can order inquiries and demand satisfaction; yet if satisfaction is refused, he cannot move a Colonial policeman to enforce it. An authority so power. less for good, so powerful for mischief, ought either to have been abolished, or in the exercise of it the Governor should have been directed to consult his Colonial advisers. None of these considerations appear to have touched Lord Granville. He was in a hurry to see the constitution established and the troops recalled, and he did not care to anticipate difficulties which might delay a conclusion. Oversights of this kind, however, were trivial in comparison with what followed. The establishment of Lord Grey's representative legislature had been accompanied by the convict affair, and the exasperation of the Dutch by the repudiation of the Orange River territory; with analogous ingenuity the occasion of the more momentous change was chosen by Mr. Gladstone's administration for the most deliberate act of injustice of which the Dutch of South Africa as yet have had to complain. The annexation of the Diamond Fields is perhaps the most discreditable incident in British Colonial history. We must return to the Orange Free State. The disputes with the natives which we left behind on our departure, formed an inconvenient legacy to the Boers' Government. They could not renew their friendship with Moshesh; and in 1864 the Free State and the Basutos broke into war. The Boers at first had the worst of the conflict; but they persevered for four years under frightful losses-one in five of their able-bodied population having been killed. At last they conquered, and were proceeding to dictate terms of peace, when the Governor of the Cape stepped in, intercepted their supplies of ammunition, and took the Basutos under British protection. It was a distinct violation of the Convention of 1854. The British Government was doing precisely what it had bound itself not to do; but the war had excited feelings in England, and the treaty was set aside. The President, Mr. Brand, who has been lately in London, behaved with creditable moderation; and Sir Philip Wodehouse was more sensible of the imprudence of irritating the Dutch Colonial constituencies than the irresponsible advisers of the English Government. They met at Aliwal North in 1869 to arrange the dispute. A slight extension of frontier was granted to the Free State at the Basutos' expense. The Basutos themselves were made British subjects, and the Free State was guaranteed against further aggressions from them. The Convention of 1854 was then formally renewed. The infraction of it was not to be regarded as a precedent; and the British Government again disclaimed the intention of interfering beyond the Orange River. Lord Shaftesbury and his friends complained that Sir Philip had been too lenient to the Boers. 'They seem to think,' Sir Philip wrote to Lord Granville, that I as the Governor of a Dutch population, with a legislature largely pervaded by the Dutch element, ought to have pushed matters to extremity with a Dutch Republic, inhabited by the nearest kinsmen of the Cape Colonists, and sown the seeds of bitter and lasting animosity."* The force of so extremely obvious an argument was unfortunately less apparent to Sir Philip Wodehouse's successor. The productiveness of South Africa is marvellous in extent and variety. The soil needs only the distribution of the water of its abundant rivers to produce everything which man can desire. If agriculture is behindhand, it is only because so many other avenues to wealth are open. To cattle, sheep, and horse breeding is now added the fabulously lucrative trade of ostrich-farming, The grass which is annually burnt from off Natal is equivalent to the food of ten millions of human beings. The mineral wonders are no less astonishing. Coal, iron, copper, cobalt, gold have been discovered one after another in profuse abundance. Copper ore, rich as the best Australian, lies scattered over the surface of Namaqua Land. Gold reefs run from the Transvaal to the rise of the Zambesi. Beyond all this, South Africa was found, seven years ago, to contain more diamonds than are known to exist in the rest of the world put together. The mines are elliptical holes, with vertical sides, punched, as it were, through the level strata of shale, which floors the interior plateau, and filled with a grey clay, in which the diamonds are embedded. One or more of these places must at one time have been broken through by the Vaal River, in the bed of which the first discoveries were made. Subsequently three of these holes were found twenty miles from the river bank, within a circle of two miles diameter, and perhaps communicating with each other underground. From the date at which the mines were opened, two millions worth of diamonds can be traced from them annually through the great houses of Port Elizabeth alone. Half as many more must have been either secreted by the natives at work in the pits, or have found their way into the world's market through other channels. So sudden and so vast has been the consequent increase of wealth in the Colony, that the revenue has been trebled, the prices of oxen, horses, and sheep have been quadrupled, and the cost of living has been as extravagant as at Ballarat on the first rush to the Gold Fields. Unfortunately the diamond country lies north of the Orange River, in the *Sir Philip Wodehouse to Lord Granville. April 18, 1870. territory from which we had withdrawn, and where, as late as 1869, the very year of the discovery, we had again bound ourselves not to interfere. The farm on which the mines were opened had been occupied by a Boer, during the English occupation of the sovereignty. It was held under a title the British Resident at Bloemfontein; and which had been issued by Major Warden, ment had exercised jurisdiction there from the magistrates of the Free State Governthe day on which we made over the territory to them. When the diggings were opened, and a rush of people came in, a regular administration was set up by the officourts of justice. cers of the Republic, with a police and vious that it mattered little to South Africa It ought to have been obor to Great Britain under what authority the mines were worked. The diamonds would belong to those who found them, and the revenue from the digging licences would do no more than pay for the cost of management. the Free State was too weak to control a If, as was alleged at the Colonial Office, large and disorderly population, the means of undoing the error (as it was now believed to have been) of the abandonment in 1854 was thrust into the hands of the British Government, for the Volksraad of the State If order could be maintained, the same rewould have petitioned for our assistance. sult would have been arrived at in a very few years from the mere influx of so many thousand British subjects. Sir Philip Wodehouse had most unfortuinterim Governor until a successor should General Hay, the nately left the Colony. arrive, allowed himself to be persuaded that the wealth of the Diamond Fields would fall to the State within the boundaries of which not be left to the miserable Boers at Bloemthey stood, and that so rich a prize must fontein. It will be remembered that at the time of the abandonment the relations be tween the Dutch and the natives had been left undefined, the British Government only with the natives, and to leave them and the binding itself to relinquish all connection selves. Boundary questions had often risen, settlers to arrange matters between themsome of which had been settled by purthe rest a difference existed with Nicholas chase, others were still pending; and among Waterboer, the Griqua Chief (with whom Cathcart had refused to renew a treaty on the ground that it would be inconsistent with the Sand River Convention), as to the ownership of the district in which the diamonds had been found. Unquestionably the country had once been occupied by the Griquas; but there were three Griqua |