fox of the fable. She will pounce upon the booty. Thus will Germany possess herself of what she has so long desired-a readymade Colonial Empire.

England, that has not shrunk from countless sacrifices in order to found a dominion which might prove the basis of a magnificent Anglo-African Empire, where her pent-up starving millions might have room and breathing space for further development; will thus witness the first act in that drama of imperial dismemberment, for which the way has been prepared by her rulers with sedulous and unremitting assiduity.

Before the next century dawns all will be settled. England will have succeeded in forming the grandest and noblest UNITED EMPIRE the world has ever seen, or she will have sunk like Lucifer, never to rise again. Unless we let our sons in Australasia, Africa, and Canada, speak and be heard with authority on matters which go to decide their destiny; they will be for ever silent.

That our children in the Colonies should speak for themselves is an absolute necessity, else England will sink into permanent insignificance and imbecility, which position she seems meanwhile to be willing to occupy; for she tolerates rulers of both parties who have achieved successes unparalleled in our annals, in the way of making her an object of contempt and ridicule to her enemies, and of well nigh hopeless and heart-broken pity to her friends.

I cannot better express my feelings regarding South African policy, than by quoting those scriptural words, once quoted with such signal effect by my friend, Mr. Whistler.

"Therefore is judgment far from us. We grope for the wall, like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as in the night. We roar all like bears."

ROYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE,

JAS. STANLEY LITTLE.

NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE.

CHAPTER I.

THE DUTCH VERSUS THE ENGLISH.

"A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES."

"Two households both alike in dignity,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny."

-Romeo and Juliet.

In order to present to my readers a clear view of the existing state of society in South Africa, it will be necessary to say something about the component parts of that society. In a country where political warfare has its root far more in the antipathies of races than in the clash of classes, politics become inextricably interwoven with social problems.

It is no part of my present purpose to enumerate the various aboriginal races which either now, or in the past have peopled South Africa. Some are practically extinct, as the Bushmen; others are becoming so, as the Hottentots; while others, as the Zulus, show, as yet, no signs of decadence. But these races, in the aggregate, form a very important factor in the social economy of Europeanized Africa. I allude especially to their utilization as servants and labourers. In Natal, if we leave out of the question the recently imported St. Helena women and Indian coolies, the manual work of the community is almost entirely performed by Kaffirs. On the Diamond Fields, and in the Dutch Republics, similar offices fall to the lot of the Zulus and other tribes. The domestic requirements of the older colony (Cape Colony) are met by Basutos, Fingoes, and allied-Kaffir-races; whilst in the neighbourhood of Cape Town itself, to the Mahomedan Malays, who are descended from the Sumatran slaves whom the Dutch brought into the country, we must add the mongrel residuum of the Hottentots, a residuum more or less tinctured by white blood, who are both employed in similar capacities.

It is no part of my present purpose to deal with these—as I have said-by no means unimportant elements of African society. I mention them here in order to give force to my subsequent remarks regarding the social and political jealousies of the two leading races of European descent, who divide between them the control of the southern portion of the African continent. These jealousies tinge the social life of Africa throughout; their existence constitutes one of the most difficult problems with which the Colonial Office here, and our Governors and the respective Local Ministries there, have to deal.

The stranger finds the greatest enigmas which he is called upon to solve in studying the peculiarities of South African life, have their root in this divided feeling in the community.

The feud between the western and eastern provinces is in some measure due to this cause, and so in a far greater degree have been our recent troubles in the Transvaal. The existence of large masses of aborigines has had much to do with the creation and perpetuation of this animus.

In the old days the Dutch came to look upon the natives as their exclusive property; and the feeling of superiority which the possession, and almost absolute control, of a number of men of an inferior race gave them, made it most difficult for them to brook English interference and assumption. Englishmen coming into South Africa, finding that the Dutch despised manual labour, were not loath to take their cue therefrom, and they made use of the natives to the fullest extent of their power. Thus Dutchmen found Englishmen, who in this country would be glad of any chance work to turn a shilling, not only assuming perfect equality with themselves on the grounds that they, too, were above labour, and moreover that they belonged to the ruling race; but in time, backed by a paternal Government at home, arrogating to themselves the right to dictate as to the manner in which those natives -whom the Dutch had for generations regarded as their own peculiar property-should be treated. Thus the feud began and thus it has been continued, and in this chapter I shall endeavour to trace its progress and development.

The Cape of Good Hope was discovered by the Portuguese

WHAT IS ONE BLUNDER AMONG SO MANY!

3

some four centuries since, but they made no serious attempt to colonize the very small portion of modern European South Africa of which they took possession; and when they ceded their territories to the Dutch, in the middle of the 17th century, they withdrew entirely from the country. From that time until the beginning of this century-when Holland made over the whole of her South African dominions to England-the Dutch were the dominant race in South Africa; for the French refugees, who had been driven from France by religious persecution, soon lost their individuality, and their names remained the only index to their origin.

As might naturally be supposed, the descendants of the initial settlers viewed with no favourable eye the many innovations which their new masters were not slow to introduce; and their determination to enforce the observance of more humane ideas regarding the treatment of subject races was especially distasteful to them.

This feeling reached a climax when the abolition of slavery brought ruin to many of the most prosperous sheep-farmers and cultivators of the vine. It is a well-known fact that in many cases such was the result, despite the enormous sum of money which England voted to the slave-holders by way of compensation. The meagre information possessed at home, regarding the value and necessity of native labour to the Dutch, and, moreover, of the great difficulties which they experienced in procuring any kind of labour of a non-compulsory character, rendered the sums granted -large as they were-totally inadequate in themselves to meet the case; but the absurd stipulation that no compensation money could be paid unless applied for personally in London, meant, in numerous instances, the total loss of the money. It was swallowed up in legal and travelling expenses. The unfortunate circumstances which followed so closely upon the bungling of the home Government did much to force a feeling of irritation into a much stronger sentiment. I allude to the public hanging of several Dutchmen for what was called high treason.

The "taking off" of a native, had, in the old time, been too often looked upon by the constituted authorities, as too trivial a matter to call for investigation, much less for punishment; and under certain conditions of sufficient provocation it was regarded

as being a most proper, nay, laudable action. The English Government very soon set about changing all this. A number of Boers becoming exasperated at the punishments which were inflicted upon them for ill-treating Hottentots, in one way or the other; broke out into open rebellion, and the authorities singled out five ringleaders-members' of the best Dutch houses-for prosecution, conviction, and death, according them but a very imperfect, and, I must add, unfair and one-sided trial. No wonder, then, that the hatred of the old settlers to the new régime reached fever pitch; especially when we take the fact into consideration that the whole weight of the most influential families at the Cape, and, in short, of the entirely Dutch community, was thrown into the scale to prevent the sentence of death being carried out. Smarting under this and subsequent interference with their liberty, and with their deeply rooted ideas regarding the natives, all of which intermeddling appeared to them to be intolerable wrong, they determined to migrate across the Vaal River. Thus it was, that the Dutch Republics were founded.

Since this time, Englishmen have done very little to soften old asperities. The first offences were national-they were committed by the Government of the day; the more recent offences have come from the colonists themselves. It must be remembered, in this connexion, that the original Dutch settlers, and the French refugees, with whom they amalgamated, were scions of the best blood of Holland and France. They did not bring with them, in any marked degree, their servants or their underlings; as they found native labour, or the imported labour of which I have already spoken, amply sufficient to supply their requirements. Now, on the contrary, the vast majority of the immigrants with which England has favoured South Africa have been persons of a very low social status. I am speaking of the mass; of course there have been many notable exceptions.

I am sorry to say that the bearing of Englishmen, and especially of Londoners, in South Africa, towards the older settlers of European race, is not calculated to redound to our credit either as gentlemen or as men. I can personally testify to the fact that there is a peculiar self-assertiveness and assumption about nine.