A Hint to Downing Street.

“An over-sensitive English sentiment is at the root of many of the past disturbances. When I was going to South Africa on the Norman the great question of the hour was the indenturing of the Bechuanaland rebels. I talked a good deal with Colonial people on board, and they were not disposed to be reticent about their feelings. They frankly said the British people were just beginning the same old game of meddlesomeness. ‘Here,’ they said, ‘are rebels whom we have caught in the act of fighting against us, raiding and murdering our fellow-colonists. We pay for the forces to suppress that rebellion; we have taken hold of the prisoners who have surrendered. We do not know what to do with them better than to distribute them, with their own consent, among the farmers for a term of five years, instead of imprisoning them, and thereby making them non-productive and a burden to the State. If we had sent them back to their own country, they would simply have died, or made it very dangerous for anyone with property to go near their country, and we should have had to begin again. You English say it is a form of slavery. We deny it. It is no more than Sir Charles Warren did in 1878. What the British Government did in 1878 we are doing now. Don’t you suppose that, having given us an almost independent Government, we have got plenty of pious, well-educated, intelligent men as capable of looking after our morals as the civilised people of England? Why do you all the time place English sentiment in opposition to us, with a view of tyrannising over us? We make our laws, and can correct them if they are wrong. We do not want you to interfere all the time. Our lives and our property, the welfare of our wives and children, depend upon good government. But immediately we do anything you raise the cry that we are barbarous and wicked, and are reducing rebels to the state of slaves, and thus you excite and disturb the people.’ ‘Supposing,’ said one of the speakers, ‘that the majority of the British nation were inclined to that opinion, and believed that we were so wickedly disposed as to subject our coloured people to a condition of slavery, Parliament would raise the question, and very possibly, if the sentiment has taken deep hold of your people, would pass a law to prevent it. Then a collision of interests would take place—Boers against English. The English would probably follow the British Government, except a few who have been resident in South Africa and understand those questions as well as the born Colonists. Thus the Colonists would become divided. The Boers and Afrikanders could not trek again, as Bechuanaland and Rhodesia shut them off from the north. They therefore would demand a republic, to cut themselves adrift from the Imperial Government. The same question would be raised as was raised in the United States when they separated from Great Britain. Danger only can arise from the English habit of interfering in Colonial matters which they do not understand, and from not giving the Colonists credit for being able to manage their own affairs.’”

“Then, in your opinion, the remedy for that is to reinforce the English population in South Africa, and for Exeter Hall here to exercise more reserve?”

“Precisely,” replied Mr Stanley. “If you have a manager of an estate and you suppose he is a man of ability and you entrust him with the management of your estate, and then cavil at everything he does, he will resign. That is just the sort of feeling that is so apt to be raised in South Africa—the incompatibility of temper between the people of South Africa and the too sentimental people of Great Britain. There are two parties in South Africa, Boer and British, and if the former are inclined to be tyrannical to the natives and subject them to slavery, you have the English party, which is as clever and intelligent as people here, ready to preach to and convert the oppressors and to act in opposition to them. Therefore, the English criticism at home is not needed, and it should not interfere with the Colonists’ domestic concerns. England must give the Colonists credit for their intelligence, and for a desire to act like civilised people. There would be no need then for a Republican, or a Separatist party at the Cape.”

A Great Emigration Company Wanted.

“What do you propose as a means towards the end you speak of?”

“It is natural,” replied Mr Stanley, “that the English of Cape Colony should be anxious for the future of the country in case of a separation from Great Britain, and that they should fear the establishment of a Boer Republic. I see in this a very strong reason why someone with power, wealth and influence should step forward and try to lead them to do something to prepare for maintaining the balance of power. Rhodesia, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State and Natal draw away from the Cape Colony a large number of enterprising Englishmen, and consequently the Boers, not being so enterprising, nor so very fond of running from one home to another unless a great political principal is at stake, prefer to stay on their farms and multiply there, whereas the English are all the time thinned down by those everlasting discoveries and developments in the north and north-east, so that they remain numerically inferior to the Dutch. If there was a Company with a man like Mr Rhodes at the head of it, which would buy land and settle on it new colonists of English birth, they would be all the time keeping up the equality that is necessary to prevent the English from being Boer-ridden.”

“Do you think Rhodesia would adapt itself to such a policy as well as the Cape Colony.”

“Quite as well. With the opening of all those mines reported to be so promising, and with the vast advertisement of the opening of the railway, Mr Rhodes ought to see that more miners have been coming into the country than agriculturalists, and something ought to be done to provide for the provisioning of so many people and keeping the prices of food down by multiplying the producers of food. The country is just as well adapted for them as any other in South Africa. If the Government of Rhodesia neglect this, the Boers will go on filtering through the Transvaal to Rhodesia, and the same mistakes will recur that have been made in the Cape Colony and the Transvaal, where the settled population is Dutch and the moving English.”