1> T IMPERIALISM 
 
 1881 
 
 SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 M9~HRLF 
 
 $B 303 ?s b 
 
 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. 
 
 xT 
 
 xj- 
 
 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 
 
( 6 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 1 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 8 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 9 ) 
 
 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 
 
 a 3 
 
( 10 ) 
 
 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, 
 
( 11 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 12 ) 
 
 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. 
 
( 13 ) 
 
 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. 
 
( 14 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 15 ) 
 
 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- 
 
( 16 ) 
 
 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- 
 
 A 5 
 
( 18 ) 
 
 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. 
 
( 19 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 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, 
 w T hen 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 
 
( 48 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 49 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 51 ) 
 
 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- 
 
( 53 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 56 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 57 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 58 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 59 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 60 ) 
 
 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 
 
( 61 ) 
 
 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. 
 
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