mercial embarrassments were the real difficulty, and there was always the risk lest the Colony, not yet attained to full national manhood, should seek protection within the broad portals of that great Republic, whose unequalled physical position allows her to combine, with protection against the outside world, the fullest and freest interchange of the most varied products of every soil and climate. How strong was the temptation can only be surmised. That it was resisted was due in the first place to the engrained loyalty of the Canadian people, and next to Lord Elgin. English statesmen at home could certainly claim no credit in the matter.

A more serious cause of quarrel than the New Brunswick bounties threatened to arise when, on the petition of Sheffield manufacturers, the English Ministry seemed inclined to disallow the tariff imposed by the Canadian legislature in 1858. The Home authorities finally gave way, but there was an ominous ring in the language of the Canadian Minister which threatened trouble in the future, if the claims of the Mother country, as put forward by Lord Grey, were to be persisted in.1 "Self-government," wrote Mr Galt, "would be utterly annihilated if the views of the Imperial Government were to be preferred to those of the people of Canada.”

1 Parl. Pap., 1858.

CHAPTER III

Cape THE difficulty of arranging the diverse and varied doings of Colony. a world-embracing empire under the formulæ of any particu

lar theory is especially illustrated by the case of South Africa.
It has been seen that, taking the Empire at large, the period
in question was one of achievement. Mistakes were doubt-
less made; practice lagged behind theory, and theory itself
was but half-understood. But, if we compare the position of
the Colonies in 1860 with their position in 1830, we are struck
with the progress. How comes it that South Africa alone
appears to some extent an exception? that here British
Colonial policy seems always attended by failure; that
even, when the measure was right, it was taken at the
wrong time, and that a heritage of future trouble was laid
up, the final outcome of which puzzles even now the shrewd-
est of political prophets. In one sense it is, of course, pos-
sible to exaggerate the importance of such failure.
As years
went on, there was in the Colony great moral and material
development, and it was no slight triumph that, amongst a
population so different in origin and tradition, representative
government should have been peacefully introduced, and
have worked on the whole so quietly and well. Neverthe-
less, it is the dark side of the shield which must mainly
detain us. The great source of trouble has been already
mentioned. Public opinion at home,-meaning by public
opinion the opinion of the few people who took interest in
the subject, and colonial public opinion were at hopeless
issue on the question of the treatment of the natives. The
fixed idea of English public men was that the constant prac-
tice of the Dutch colonists was to enslave and tyrannise over
the natives. In accordance with this view, Lord Goderich
directed that Dutch farmers should not be allowed to settle
in the new frontier districts. It was in vain that Governor

after Governor sought to combat English prejudice. Thus Sir Lowry Cole wrote with regard to the alleged ill-treatment of the coloured people,1 "It might suit the views of some writers to hold up the local government and the colonists to the detestation of mankind . . . and to represent the native tribes as the most injured and innocent of human beings, but those who have the opportunity of taking a dispassionate view of the subject would judge differently."

More striking is the testimony of D'Urban. He went out in 1834 to administer a new policy. The civil establishments were to be greatly reduced, the expenditure was to be brought within the revenue, and the balance scrupulously applied to the payment of the public debt. The system of dealing with the natives was to be altered, and friendly alliances were to be formed with Kaffir chiefs. D'Urban started with the sincere belief that the colonists were wholly in the wrong, but facts on the spot soon led him to alter his views. The experience of the Kaffir War, which broke out at the end of 1834, taught him the value of the idyllic picture of the Kaffir, as drawn by the missionaries. After the close of the war, he considered it necessary to annex to the British possessions the tract of country between the Keiskamma and the Kei. The despatch announcing his intentions was thus answered by Lord Glenelg : "In the conduct which was pursued to- Dec. 26, wards the Kaffir nation by the colonists and the public 1835. authorities of the Colony through a long series of years, the Kaffirs had an ample justification of the war into which they rushed with such fatal imprudence . . . urged to revenge and desperation by the systematic injustice of which they had been the victims, I am compelled to embrace, however reluctantly, the conclusion that they had a perfect right to hazard the experiment, however hopeless, of extorting by force that redress which they could not expect otherwise to obtain." In these circumstances "the claim of sovereignty over the new province... must be renounced. It rests upon a conquest resulting from a war in which . . . the original justice is on the side of the conquered, not of the victorious 1 Quoted at p. 377 of Theal's History of South Africa, 1795-1834.

Y

Frontier

party." Lord Glenelg further announced that a LieutenantGovernor would be sent out for the eastern district, and that an Act was being drafted to enable Courts of Law to take cognisance of offences committed by British subjects beyond the borders of the Colony. The new Lieutenant-Governor proved to be Captain A. Stockenstrom, whose main title to distinction at the time was that he had just been bringing the strongest accusations against his fellow-countrymen before a Committee of the House of Commons. The composition and findings of that Committee indicated very clearly the tone of the English public opinion of the day. Mr Fowell Buxton was its Chairman, which was very much as though the Committee on the South African Chartered Company had been presided over by Mr Labouchere. The Report appears to have been drawn up under the inspiration of Dr Philip.2 The opinion of men like Sir Rufane Donkin, who had had actual experience of the Colony, went for nothing, although many now-a-days will agree in his preference for missionaries, who did not intermeddle "with the politics, either internal or external, of Colonies."

The new Lieutenant-Governor, in accordance with his inPolicy. structions, negotiated treaties with the chiefs, under which the two parties were placed on a footing of perfect political equality. "Colonists were to have no more right to cross the boundary eastwards without the consent of the Kaffir chiefs than the Kaffirs to cross westwards without the consent of the Colonial Government. White people, when in Kaffirland, were to be as fully subject to Kaffir law as Kaffirs, when in the Colony, were to be subject to Colonial law." The result of all this was plain enough. In D'Urban's words, the new and reckless policy had "sufficed to dispel the salutary fear of our power . . . to shake-if not altogether to alienatethe respect and confidence with which we have been regarded by our friends, to banish the flower of the frontier farmers, and to leave those who yet remained in a state of the most fearful insecurity." D'Urban, at least, was not wanting in 1 Parl. Pap., 1836 and 1837. 2 See supra, p. 270.

* Theal, Hist. of S. Africa, 1834-1854.

the courage of his opinions. His reply to Lord Glenelg's indictment of the colonists was to demand compensation for "faithful subjects who had been visited with calamities rarely paralleled, undeserved by any act of the sufferers." No wonder that in the following year the Governor was informed May 1837. that the King had thought proper to dispense with his services as Governor of the Cape Colony.

The old frontier policy had been the rough and ready one of punishing native raids by commandos on the part of the settlers. The new policy was to trust to the promises of treaties, and to a frontier police of forty Kaffirs, a goodly proportion of whom were in the pay of the native robbers. In the language of D'Urban's successor,1 Sir G. Napier, himself a chivalrous friend of the natives, and an advocate of Lord Glenelg's policy,2 the effect of the treaties was to bear "hardly and unjustly upon the colonists, to tend rather to encourage than to discourage stealing upon the part of the Kaffirs." Although he recognised that "the good faith and equality upon which treaties are based are and must ever be wanting in treaties with barbarous tribes"; nevertheless, the policy must be continued, because "the effect of force would 1843be to postpone the great object of these treaties, viz., to raise the Kaffirs in the scale of civilisation by appealing to their sense of justice." Lord Glenelg himself admitted that "time and experience alone can reduce to a satisfactory test the 1837conflicting expectations of Sir Ben. D'Urban and myself." What was the answer of time and experience will abundantly appear in the sequel.

exodus.

In a yet more important way, the doings of these few years Boer were to leave permanent traces on the whole future history of South Africa. Whatever may have been its causes, the exodus of the Dutch farmers, which began in 1836, has

1 Parl. Pap., 1851. "Extracts of corr. relating to Kaffir tribes between 1837 and 1845."

2 Sir G. Napier lived to change his mind. He told a H. of C. Committee " on the Kaffir Tribes," in 1851, that he had been prejudiced against feeling in favour of D'Urban's policy, "but common sense told me that I was wrong."

3 Parl. Pap., 1851.