on them to support this or that Imperial object in opposition to their own chosen authorities. A momentary advantage might be gained by thus organising what used to be called a British party.' But such a detestable success-as detestable we are sure to Lord Carnarvon as to ourselves—would be gained at the expense of all that is wholesome or cordial in the relation between the Home and Colonial Governments, and, in particular, by the loss of the confidence now felt, that controversies will be carried on by direct means, and according to settled laws of warfare. * Now this understanding it is which Mr. Froude is accused of violating, and in fact did violate. He went out to the Colony to represent the Crown at the proposed Conference. He put himself forward as the accredited exponent of the views of the British Government. He styled himself, we are told, the unworthy representative of Lord Carnarvon,' and in this capacity thanked a public meeting for the splendid 'support which it had rendered to Her Majesty's Secretary of State.'† Occupying both from the nature of the case and in his own opinion this representative position, he recommended Lord Carnarvon's policy, not by a written exposition of his views, addressed once for all to whom it might concern, but by the process rudely described as 'stumping-that is, by a series of speeches made in different parts of the country, and, in the opinion of his accusers, by speeches calculated to revive certain sectional animosities between Dutch and English, East and West (we are trying to look at their story as they see it themselves') which, since the establishment of Responsible Government, local legislation was in a way to efface. represent all this as a trespass on official etiquette' does not at all convey the real nature of the charge. What the Imperial representative seems really to have done was to violate publicly and perseveringly a constitutional obligation, which the Colonists have a right to view as one of the essential safeguards of constitutional right. To It might have proved rather unfortunate that about this time Lord Carnarvon recommended the Governor to dissolve the Parliament if he had reason to think that it did not represent the wishes of the people. If this had been done on the back of Mr. Froude's agitation (which it was not), a rhetorical reviewer of different politics might plausibly have denounced it hereafter as a dissolution, unconstitutionally dictated by the * The South African Conference, p. 14. † Ibid. p. 15. Secretary of State, in the crisis of an excitement unconstitutionally got up by his agents, and, in that view, perhaps the 'most discreditable' violation of the guaranteed rights of a free Colony which is recorded in British Colonial History. Proceedings of this kind are sometimes done, disavowed, and rewarded. Lord Carnarvon* did not disavow; he did all that he could do, and indeed more than he ought to have done, to shield his representative.' He eulogised his character, ability, and earnestness-he justified his giving explanations, 'such explanations as might appear to him to be necessary at a very critical moment;' he also, most unnecessarily, approved his ceasing to give them; he gently indicated his own position by pointing out that Mr. Froude was unfettered in the exercise of his own discretion as to the events of the moment,' but expressed himself fully satisfied that no unconstitutional agitation had been carried on. Then he turned over a new leaf and began a new chapter' by transferring the question from the dust of the Colony to the serener skies of Downing Street. There it might have rested, if Mr. Froude's apologist had not given so violent a stir to the subject. Thus much for merely incidental matters. We now proceed to the main subject of this article-the discussion of British policy. And we have first to deal with a general presumption of neglect, disdain, or something worse, founded in the fact that many of our Dutch subjects broke up their homes and fled into the interior of the colony, to settle themselves, rifle in hand, among hostile tribes, rather than submit to a dominion so odious as ours had become to them. In most matters quarrels between the Home Government and the Colonists are unnecessary. All that is required is good government, and if this is given everybody is pleased. But there are questions on which the principles or interests of the Mother Country conflict with those of the Colony, and on which no wisdom can prevent antagonism. These points of unpleasant contact during the last half century have principally related to the abolition of slavery, the management of aborigines, the terms of giving military protection, the location of convicts, and the distribution of political power. The Cape has been affected by all these. We only intend to deal with those which affect our dealings with the natives, in the front of which stands Slavery. The suppression of the slave trade and emancipation of the *Parl. Papers, Correspondence respecting the proposed Conference of Delegates on the Affairs of South Africa. Feb. 1876; pp. 87–91. 6 slaves were accompanied by measures keenly and continuously but unavoidably irritating to the slave owners, and on the whole more annoying, though probably less ruinous, to the Dutch Boer than to the West Indian proprietor. By the suppression of the maritime slave trade the Cape Colonists were untouched. To send slaves by sea to the Cape would have been to send coals to Newcastle. In either case there was a black 'country' close at hand which rendered importation absurd. However they got their slaves, they were neither directly nor indirectly chargeable with the horrors of the middle passage.' Moreover, the slavery was not in its nature virtually manufacturing like that of the sugar-producing colonies, but domestic, agricultural, or pastoral. Instead of the grinding labour of the sugar-mill or the coal-field, when the gang could work almost under the whip of the overseer, the slave's lot was cast in the farm or the vineyard, or the pastoral valley, under the eye of an owner who was satisfied with comfort without engaging in a race for wealth. The evils therefore which had to be redressed were possibly less than those which existed elsewhere. But their removal was even more sharply felt. The slavery of the Cape, though in some degree patriarchal, was still slavery. And the British Government had to see that, when it was abolished in law, it was abolished in fact. This itself involved a more inquisitorial method where the slaves formed parts of scattered families, than where gangs were collected in great workshops; and it also involved the substitution, for this purpose, of magistrates imported from England for the Landdrosts or other Dutch functionaries, who could not be expected to understand the propriety of treating black servants as freemen. All this was inevitably odious; and the sense of injury was heightened by what certainly seems to have been a piece of mismanagement. The mode of paying the 1,200,000l. due to the Colonists as compensation for their slaves was ill understood by the Boers, who, it is said, not knowing how to get their money, and not feeling very certain that they would get it at all, were induced to dispose of their certificates at a loss to sharp-set English speculators. When it appeared that the certificates were really worth their nominal value, the Dutchmen felt that they had been not only oppressed by the English Government but taken in by their English neighbours; and their anger was not probably less because their losses were due to their own want of penetration and misplaced suspiciousness. Again, there was another important difference between the Dutch Boer and the West Indian proprietor. The latter was usually a man of fortune, residing in England, and chiefly interested in the Colony as a source of income. By the abolition of slavery a large body of Englishmen became poorer. They were of course very angry. Who could be otherwise? But they remained English. They adjusted their expenses to their changed circumstances. Their children entered professions instead of leading lives of leisure, and in a short time they became a body of gentlemen, protecting their interests by the usual methods, and subject to no annoyance except that of remembering that they had been better off than they were. The Dutch settler was in a different case. It was not that the remittances from his attorney were reduced in amount. The revolution had invaded his home. His every-day relations to those around him were altered for the worse. His familiar modes of discipline were prohibited. His servants were at liberty to rebel. He was called on to treat them with a consideration to which neither he nor they were used-a disturbance of relations, degrading to his self-respect, and not without a certain demoralising effect on them. If slavery was to be really abolished, all this was unavoidable. But he saw no reason why slavery should be abolished; and it was plain that at least a generation must pass away before the new state of things could be recognised as endurable. Before that time fresh causes of quarrel had arisen in connexion with the management of the natives. Very The question of native policy, as it is called, is one on which, in the early stages of a colony, it is almost impossible for the Central Government and the settlers to agree. broadly speaking, there are two modes of dealing with natives -the way of patience and the way of extermination. The way of extermination is the readiest, the most complete, and the most usual, and is constantly supposed to be that of mani'fest destiny.' A settler takes possession of the country in his way, and the natives whom he dispossesses resent his intrusion in theirs. He creates property in his way, they steal it in theirs. It is not to be expected in the infancy of a colony, and especially in a country of large and scattered cattle farms, that either the local or Imperial Government can at once equip a body of armed police sufficient to ensure to a few enterprising farmers all they could desire for the secure development of their property. They, therefore, have to defend their own interests in their own ways, and those ways are mainly two. First they collect in armed bands, called in the Cape Colony 'comman'dos,' and scour the country, taking such steps as they think fit to avenge what is past, to prevent danger in the future, and to recoup their losses, on their own valuation. Of course in this case irritated and irresponsible men are likely to kill what they see, and take what they can lay hold of. Next they proceed to punish native offences by successive appropriations of native territory as long as there is any valuable territory to be appropriated. The natives, slaughtered, impoverished, and confined to what is valueless, will of course resist and resent the loss of lives, cattle, and country. On either side excessive retaliation begets excessive retaliation till the weaker perishes; and the weaker is the savage. Either superior arms, organisation and steadiness of purpose prevail over numbers, or, if this should not be the case, the mother country is expected in the last extremity to save her children, and, without much inquiry into antecedents, it is held necessary to crush the native power, once for all,' as the phrase is, by an overwhelming employment of military force. This is often assumed to be inevitable, and it is certainly frequent. Yet the way of patience, though difficult, is not quite so impracticable, and the way of extermination, though simple, is not quite so unavoidable as is generally assumed. The savage is capable of understanding justice and consideration. On the west coast of America he clearly embraces the difference between the British methods and those of the United Statesthose of the King George men' and those of 'the Boston men' as he still, we believe, calls them. Till lately-and perhaps even now-Americans have been astonished at the easy security with which known Englishmen can travel where known Americans can only move about in well-armed bands, every man, as Bernal Diaz has it, with his beard on his shoulder.' And a strange illustration of this contrast occurred some time ago, when in a school kept by a missionary on the United States frontier, every child of American origin was, on some wild misapprehension, cruelly massacred, while two or three, who belonged to a Hudson Bay trader, were carefully distinguished, spared, and sent back to their parents. On the west coast of Africa our proceedings in the cause of humanity have given us an influence over the natives so exceptional that the attempt to transfer some of them from our jurisdiction to that of Holland caused a resistance, which virtually expelled the Dutch from the coast. In Natal hundreds of thousands of natives are contented under our rule. The state of things in the Cape Colony is thus described by an Old Colonist,' author of the pamphlet the name of which we prefix to this article: |